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Community Profile - Lands of Lore

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk,
August 13, 2003

The Neverwinter Community is sustained by the passion and commitment of role-players, artists, designers, writers, and technical professionals and amateurs using their skill and dedication to take Neverwinter in new and unimagined directions. We caught up with Herner, the grand high overlord over at Lands of Lore, to talk about his thriving Neverwinter community that has grown with Neverwinter over the last year:

 

How did Lands of Lore get started?

Lands of Lore got started a year and many months ago. I started it after playing the single player game and seeing the amazing toolset it came with. I have an IT background so it was not too hard to figure out the possibilities of this tool. I came up with the name because I intended to create a land where players molded the world or lore. This is where "Lands of Lore" came from. We have a very large player base of very good players and they are the ones who I give full credit for this world being so great. We have written some great code, and have some awesome content courtesy of the NWN community, but without our players, and large community we would be just another mod.

How would you describe your page to a new comer?

Our webpage is an integral part of our world Lands of Lore. It is hosted by one of my good friends Valcore. He owns a small hosting company and is literally a genius. The site is something I work on in my spare time, but the actual guts of it are the forums, and the players that chat on it. Unfortunately someone hacked into our old website and we lost about a years worth of forum posts -- literally thousands of forum posts -- which was sad, but we are doing our best to carry on. The key focus of our NWN world Lands of Lore and the website itself is the fact that we are a community. The role-playing is not just kept in the game; it also spills onto the forums. Players can easily see what is happening in game at any time by looking at the website.

What sort of folks make up your community?

Well, like any community, we get the good with the bad. We have some really great people, and we have some really bad trolls that come by from time to time to eat the Halfling folk. Luckily we have some really great moderators like Skyde, Indigo, Alador, Gabe, Maikadura, and many others. All have been with Lands of Lore since practically its inception. In Gabe’s case he was my first player. Our site is a mix of teens and adults who all have one thing in mind: having fun in a role-playing environment. We do not enforce elitist role-playing rules, but we do expect that our players act maturely, and most of the time they do just that.

Lands of Lore is not just a web site obviously -- how would I start playing NWN with all these people?

It’s designed to be as easy as possible. First download our hakpak (see readme for sources) and then connect through GameSpy to Lands of Lore, under the role-play section. Or you can direct connect to 65.199.30.241. We are hosted on a T3 connection on a very nice AMD box. We are also looking to move to a new home courtesy of Earthnet on a very fast custom assembled box, on a 45mbps connection. A big thanks goes to Earthnet for this.

Why play multiplayer NWN?

Hands down NWN Multiplayer is the finest option for gaming period.

If you like RPGs and you like gaming, come and visit Lands of Lore and experience the NWN Online experience.

Can you tell us about the crazy features of Lands of Lore such as real estate and custom trade skills? What other features would you like to mention?

Well there are a lot of features in Lands of Lore and it certainly did not happen overnight. Basically it was a long, long haul. The key things in our mod are the real estate system. Players can buy land, without any DM interaction, and then buy and place their own furniture and many types of houses to choose from. It is 100% persistent courtesy of the BioWare database.

We have also developed a very advanced Tradeskill system. I originally developed code for ATS and decided it was time to move on to my own system. I then sat down with Ranmanu and we decided what we thought it should contain, and it spiraled evilly out of control from there. You can now craft everything from traps, scrolls, weapons, armors, machines and then some. If you can think it up, odds are it’s craftable or will be soon.

Another neat feature is our player-run cities. Players form groups like the Elves of Veria, Orcs of Dench, etc., and they are then given the power to govern their city. This includes jailing people, taxing people, buying goods, treasuries, and more. This feature has been in development for quite awhile. Many have helped test it and it will be in our next release of Lands of Lore. Right now it is in limited use, but soon it will be used throughout the world of Lands of Lore.

The other great feature in Lands of Lore is our group of players and Dungeon Masters. Thanks go out to the eight strong Dungeon Masters who make it possible for me to work on the module without having to worry about what’s going on in- game. And of course big thanks to the beta testers: Calis, Vandle, Wareck, Indigo, Maika. Skyde, and all the others.

Does the Lands of Lore community have any plans for the Hordes of the Underdark expansion?

As of right now we are not using the current add-on. The reason for that is primarily because I do not want to exclude players in areas where they cannot get it. Until 99% of our players have voted to go to Shadows of Undrentide and have it, we will remain using the standalone. With that said, BioWare is very smart in their add- ons carefully making it so that our Shadows of Undrentide people can still play with everyone, even though our server is not using it. I am sure that Hordes of the Underdark will be just as amazing as Shadows of Undrentide is and will add a lot to our community. I look forward to including it in future versions.

What can we expect from Lands of Lore in the future? Are there any features you would love to see added?

Well 10.4 is newly out and we are already 50% of the way through 10.5. We are completing the v2 of our custom Hak Updater which is a standalone program. You download it, and run it and it pings our server and downloads any files you need for the hak update. It means that players can download mere megabytes instead of the entire hak again when we do updates. The program is very simple and our first version was a huge hit. Any other worlds looking to use it, drop me an email and we can show you how to make it work for your world.

As for Lands of Lore world updates, it will never end. So long as BioWare keeps incorporating our ideas, and supporting what we are trying to do, we will keep pushing things along. Now that our real estate system is done, our next step is player shops, better NPC A.I., and even more crafting features and functions. I am also steadily improving the Faction Powers system that enables players to govern entire cities. As for where we go in the long run, that is up to the feedback of the fine Lands of Lore community.

How can a new person get involved in the Neverwinter Nights community?

My suggestion is to get involved in the amazing sites that are dedicated to Neverwinter Nights. Some examples are Silven Crossroads which is a great NWN/RPG site, Neverwinter Vault which is great for NWN news and information, and of course, register on the BioWare Official site and get interacting.

You will find lots of great information on single player as well as multiplayer gaming. I am the first to admit that Lands of Lore is not for everyone. I know of lots of great worlds, and talk with many of their developers and we all share insights. It is a good open relationship in the NWN community as a whole and getting involved is easy. If Lands of Lore doesn’t do it for you there are lots of great worlds that will.

Anybody you would like to thank?

Yes, I would like to thank Ranmanu who has become a very close friend during the development of Lands of Lore, MrKrinkle, Alador, Maikadura, GeekFiend, Spoonmerlin, and many others (all listed in our readme) and all of my close friends who continue to inspire this mod. I also want to thank everyone who makes and develops content, and our 600+ community members, and the thousands of players in Lands of Lore.

Last but not least, I would like to thank BioWare for a great game, and for continued support of communities like Lands of Lore.