 |
 |
 |
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Wheel of Time Persistent World Profile by Jay Watamaniuk
What is Wheel of Time: The Third Age?Luck Day: We are an NWN persistent world based on the writings of Robert Jordan. Jordan's Wheel of Time series has run 11 books, a prequel, and a short story or two. Next to the writings of Tolkien, it is one of the most popular fantasy series, or book series for that matter, in recent years. The server has run since October of 2002 and has consistently been one of the most popular servers in the role play room. We have plenty of active DMs, several book-based factions, and well over 500 areas. The server can always be found on GameSpy under the name, Wheel of Time: The Third Age. Alternatively, you can connect directly to it at this URL instead: Or this IP: 67.181.32.209
Who are you?Luck Day: My handle is Lucky Day. I'm a co-owner of this little-server-that-could, along with Turk_Blake and TalionRev. I am Canadian (a proud BCer from the wettest spot in North America, called Prince Rupert). But I'm an ex-patriot living in Californ-ia. It has much nicer weather than your Edmonchuk, don't you think? But you guys did get to the Stanley Cup finals (again!) didn't you? Grr. Do you have a website?Luck Day: http://wheeloftime.servegame.org is our new website. Our Webmistress, Verrath, is doing a bang up job getting it together. She's quite literally a pro at this. However, all of our talk goes on in the very popular Wheel of Time - The Third Age BioWare Guild. Currently we're Number 2 in the top 20 list of guilds. We now have four of our sub-guilds in the Top 20 as well, including the DM Forum for all those nay sayers that think we DMs never discuss things ;). How did your server come to be?
Word got back to the host of that other WoT server and he decided to check it out. There was some talk of combining the two servers, but after a misunderstanding both servers decided to continue independently. And thus Wheel of Time: The Third Age was born. It proved so popular that the other Wheel of Time server had to change its name, and then it eventually folded. The first run of WoT:3A lasted for about 6 months. Sowens wanted to move on to his noble experiment, The Fourth Age, an interesting idea of post apocalyptic fantasy that was original, heavily scripted ,and geared for heavy role play. It was cut short for technical reasons and Sowens had to move on to real life issues. Wheel of Time being my favourite server, no other server quite fit right. So I had tried to keep the community together hosting a few servers and even doing a couple of Wheel of Time servers that were more and less successful. It was on one of these servers I was running that Rolks walked in. Rolks was the backup host when WoT:3A first shut down back in Feb 2003. I must have pestered him at least three times to look for the mod and he kept insisting it was long deleted and the motherboard was fried. Well, one day I get a PM from him. It was deleted. But it was still sitting in his Recycle Bin on the Hard Drive of the old computer! With the help of my best buddy in real life and right hand man, Bear_Warrior, we re-launched it for Labour Day weekend to a resounding success. Even Sowens showed up to say hello. Why is it so popular?Luck Day: Since Day 1 of both its launches, WoT:3A has been extremely popular.
Bringing Wheel of Time to NWN is a real natural. Many people have made Wheel of Time-inspired content with NWN over the years since it was released. The biggest reason for our server's popularity has been its ease of play for new people. We have never used Haks or Custom Content. All you need is a copy of NWN and its expansions and you can play. You don't have to go to an off-site 3rd party to obtain anything to start. You don't even have to be familiar with the books. I wasn't when I first joined, and neither were many of our top players, including the next two hosts of the server, Hudson77 and Turk_Blake, and they grew to love them too (we've read them all now and any short story we can get our hands on). Under Hudson we were also one of the few PWs that were hosted in Europe. That helped bring in a lot of new people. However, it's the role play of Wheel of Time that really brings in new players and hooks them. The setting is rich with plenty of conflict. The most powerful organization in the world is the White Tower, run by female channelers of the One Power, called Aes Sedai. There is an entire faction, The Children of the Light, whose only aim is to bring Aes Sedai and other channelers down. To the Children, Aes Sedai are puppets for the Dark Lord. Children of the Light are often derided as "Whitecloaks" for their penchant to wear all white. They also have a unit called the Inquisitors. Those are just examples of the kinds of conflicts that make the role play so dynamic here. How did the Wheel of Time mythos and the tools of Neverwinter Nights mix?Luck Day: Since we don't use custom content, you play your character as close to a similar WoT character as possible. Wizards can be an Aes Sedai, and a champion can be a warder, for example. You don't actually play D&D paladins and such. It's not perfect, but we've got it to where it works. Also, you don't cast spells - you channel the One Power. The Creator put the Wheel of Time in motion with the threads of Saidin and Saidar, the male and female halves of the One Power made from the five elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and Spirit (I bet most people didn't know about the last one). Wheel of Time players are a special group in that regard. If I go to another server I always have to stop myself from saying I'm channeling.
There are two races in the world, humans and ogier. All the game's races on our server are playable, but they are a played as some variation of human. The shorter races are often played as someone from the city of Cairhein. Half orcs are the exception. They get to be ogier. Wise and slow to anger, these ten foot tall creatures are some of Robert Jordan's most interesting. It takes some depth of understanding to play them well, and you will often see them carrying a book. But if I were an Eyeless Mydraal I would carefully avoid them. Don't make them angry. You wouldn't like them. ~
Next Week: Lucky Day reveals what players can expect to see and experience in the treasured NWN persistent world, Wheel of Time. Related Links
Want to comment on this article or read what others have to say about it? Join the official discussion!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Luck Day: This is interesting. Sowens and Ox-Espatato were players on the first known Wheel of Time server, and during one of its many multi-week overhauls Sowens got bored and started playing around with the toolset. This was in the summer of 2002. He made some areas that weren't already on that mod and posted them as WoT2 for bored players to hang out. That's where he met Ox. Ox liked it and offered to contribute.
The huge success of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy books (the last few were number one on the NY Times Bestseller list) lead to an agreement with Wizards of the Coast to develop a WoT pen and paper RPG that was similar to d20. It was hugely successful and released shortly before the launch of Neverwinter Nights.
The male half has been Tainted by the Dark One and channeling it will drive a man insane. This, of course, leads to another great role play dynamic. Everyone fears this group the most, as 3000 years ago they broke the world in their insanity. (The main character of the book series, the Messianic Rand al'Thor, is a male channeler.)
