"Glorwing is a young world, you know. It was discovered about a hundred years ago by a young mage named Gilmor. The mage was trying to make a love-spell when he accidentally created a rift in the fabric of space and time. This might teach you all something about not messing with love-spells."
- An accounting of a story of the exodus from Drakmark to Glorwing, told by an old storyteller whom some call Fjäril

With a dash of humor a new adventurer is brought into the detailed world of Glorwing. With quests, glowing standing stones that can transport you to the far flung parts of this world, and interesting characters to meet along the way, Glorwing has become known for being an easy world to start your persistent world journeys with Neverwinter Nights. We spoke with founder and organizer Cornflower.

What is the main website for your world?

www.glorwing.com

How long has Glorwing been in existence?

Cornflower: I started working on Glorwing in January 2003 and we launched March 16th 2003.

Why did you start this project and what keeps your interest?

Cornflower: Glorwing was once a pen and paper world that I made around 1985-1986 as a background to a lot of campaigns my friends and I were playing at the time.

I'd been playing a lot on many PWs ever since NWN was released, but I'd always felt that something was missing. Either the world was not what I wanted, or the staff was disrespectful of the players. Anyway, when one of the administrators on the best PW I found made a (reasonable, I thought) suggestion with "Why come to my world and biatch? If you don't like it, build your own", I decided to do just that.

So, I dug up my old Glorwing documentation, almost choked on the dust, and got to work. Some 600 hours later, the first version of Glorwing was launched.

For me, the community is what makes Glorwing a great place. Our players and staff form a community of happy, outgoing, creative, helpful, and friendly people. It's very satisfying to work with such a great gathering of people. One never knows what can happen on the forums or in the game; that makes it still exciting after all this time.

If I'm somewhat new to persistent worlds what can I expect in terms of help?

Cornflower: On our forums you'll find links to great RP-guides, newbie instructions and stuff like that. In game, we have a "newbie book" that helps you get started as well and has lots of other information. More importantly, the community will give you friendly answers and hints to any questions you post on the forums. We're rightly known as a very newbie-friendly PW.

What features are not included in NWN that would make running a persistent world easier?

Cornflower: The toolset is great. Performance becomes an issue when you have a 60 mb module though. Other than speed, what I would like is some kind of performance analyzing tool. We don't have much lag, but if we do, it's almost impossible to find out what's causing it.

Although more a server issue, the highest priority is the 39+ bug. Regardless of how big a server you have, you run into heavy lag whenever more than 39 players are online at the same time. Besides being plain annoying, it prevents PW growth above a certain limit.

What are some of the highlights of Glorwing?

Cornflower: I think my original mission statement describes a lot of what I feel makes Glorwing unique:

• I want the staff to treat the players with respect and patience. Listening and thinking are key features for staff.
• I want the players to treat each other with respect and patience. Providing good entertainment for your fellow players should be most important in all players' actions.
• I want the players to feel that they can suggest things and that most of those suggestions actually get implemented.
• I want the world to grow with the player community so that players feel that they have taken part in building it.
• The world was intentionally made without history, factions, guilds, etc. I want this to be formed by the player community over time.

As a consequence of that, we are very generous in accepting player designed items, areas, and player ideas.

One of our main features is the Key Player concept. Key Players are players who accept the role of an official character on Glorwing. Their mission is to provide a living backdrop for the other players. Not as DMs, but as "living NPCs". We have Key Players who act as Queen, Mayor, High Priestess, Sultan (major bad guy), etc, etc. This allows frequent players to take an active part in the in-game development of Glorwing.

Another is our guild concept. Anyone can start a gang. A gang can develop into a guild/church if you gain enough followers. As an official guild/church you get lots of advantages and some responsibilities in game as long as you have enough members. So it's basically the players that define the guild structure on our world within these guidelines.

Our major creed is known as "Rule #1: Glorwing is not for your enjoyment alone. It exists to provide entertainment to ALL players and staff. Keep this in mind please. If you cause others grief repeatedly you'll be banned. Focus on providing FUN for others instead of FUN for yourself; if we all do that, the amount of FUN for all of us is maximized. Trust me. I can prove it mathematically."

Technically, we have more than 320 areas which provide exciting gameplay, but more importantly, we have very friendly and good roleplayers who will guarantee that you won't get bored.

Can I read more about the background of the setting?

Cornflower: We have lots of information in our forums on www.glorwing.com. Everything from rules and history to screenshots and player-written stories.

What do you see happening to Glorwing in the future?

Cornflower: Short term, Glorwing will continue to prosper and grow. Our community is large, newbie-friendly, creative, and tolerant. This guarantees that new players will always feel welcome to Glorwing.

Long term? That depends a lot on what BioWare does. I sincerely hope that BioWare and the others realize that they have a unique opportunity seldom seen in the gaming market. The size and perseverance of the NWN community in general and PW players in particular is awesome! A marketing truth is that it costs 10 times more to find a new customer than to keep an old. Through PWs, BioWare has an effective tool to keep the NWN not only living, but growing. Each PW represents a lot of current customers who really want BioWare to keep developing our favorite game. As long as BioWare keeps releasing things, regardless of it being CEP or expansion packs, the general interest of the NWN community will keep most of the PWs alive. Also, I think a key issue is the 39+ bug, which hampers PW growth. If that's fixed, PW's can grow more and faster, ensuring NWN survival.