Our best hope for a NWN successor in a long while

[satellitemind]

If you were dissapointed with Neverwinter Nights 2  than you should celebrate as Shards Online is looking like the best spiritual successor  that we have seen in a long time. It will allow you to build your own custom online worlds aka Shards and host them either individually or together in the form of clusters. In addition to the high level of customization you will also have the ability like in Neverwinter to act as a DM and control world events. A dev has already confirmed that it would be possible to write a ruleset based off of the D20 system. You can learn more about the game via the Kickstarter page which has ended a day ago but you can still get acess to the alpha/prealpha by donating through Paypal though that ends in about 6 hours. If it reaches 10k we will have character customization in the alpha which would be quite nifty. Lets hope for the best

Relevant Links
<--- Kickstarter page
shardsonline.com/pledge/  <--- Paypal Pledge Page
www.youtube.com/channel/UCIrkW5NMPf5CsIvd2gIt9uQ   <--- Developer's Youtube Channel
shardsonline.com/forum/ <---Forums

[Remmy]

Obsidian Studios recently acquired the license for Pathfinder, which is essentially D&D 3.75 Edition. They have also expressed keen interest in doing another Neverwinter Nights game, so I would not be surprised if we see a Pathfinder Nights-like announcement within the next few years.

[satellitemind]

This would be good news; however considering that Obsidian botched NWN2 I wouldn't be surprised if they did the same with this. Not to mention though I of course can't be 100% sure with this one but it probably won't be as flexible as Shards Online will be when it comes to modding, almost every single aspect of this game will be changable since very few things will be hard coded. Unless Obsidian announces anything within the next year than by the time they do Shards will be well established providing that it is sucess. The graphics would have to be amazing because unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat I don't think it will have as high level of customization as this will.

[satellitemind]

Links fixed sorry

[Nymera]

Shards Online does not let you host you own servers or create your own art assets.  It insists on forcing you to connect to the central server hub.  Because...wait for it...they're going to sell DLC.

Because of this, it will never quite reach NWN status.  If the dev goes under, SO goes down.  The game isn't really ours.

[satellitemind]

Your mistaken on the custom assets; Shards does and will allow players to design and import them into their worlds. As for hosting player servers you are half right; you will need citadel's service if you wish to host a Cluster which is a series of shards linked together like an MMO. However, players can host single Shards on their computers should they choose. Like NWN depending on your computer specs also determines how big of a world you can have

[Nymera]

Dec 16, 2014 9:27:59 GMT -5 satellitemind said:

As for hosting player servers you are half right; you will need citadel's service if you wish to host a Cluster which is a series of shards linked together like an MMO. However, players can host single Shards on their computers should they choose. Like NWN depending on your computer specs also determines how big of a world you can have

This is not expressly stated anywhere on the site.  Where do they say that you can  host your own sever independantly without ever touching their servers for authentication?

Perhaps years of developers clinging to control to drip-feed paid content and the erosion of game ownership (to fight "piracy") has made me skeptical and jaded.  I'll believe it when I see it.

[Voice of Kerensky]

I'd be pleased if the art style were a bit less cartoony/vibrant, but with customizable art/content that may be something that can be done on a server basis.

[satellitemind]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLithI0Xr0A&feature=youtu.be

[satellitemind]

Lots of new updates

Developmental Roadmap: shardsonline.com/development-roadmap/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPe6G3HUn5M
Shards Online: A chat with project lead Derek 'Supreem' Brinkmann

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UN82htrfGHQ
Shards Online: Modding 101 - Simple Custom Behaviors

Modding 101 - Templates and World Objects
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTKj0NC_j8g

www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/c/6333342
Latest Community Roundtable

A couple interviews with the lead developer
www.redbull.com/us/en/games/s...rter-interview
www.worldsfactory.net/2014/12...tima-meets-nwn

[rocinanate]

So providing an update since its been close to a year and a lot has happened since. Shards Online is still on  track aiming for STEAM release sometime this year and beta in 2017. A pre alpha admin modder I know is currently working on writing a D20 ruleset for Shards Online in preparation for player worlds who want to use it, if you are interested in helping out and have experience with LUA though if you have a good grasp on C or Python you should be able to pick it up quick send me a message. Here is the latest community roundtable which should get folks up to speed in terms of where the game is at in development right now, custom assets like Maps and everything else is scheduled for later in the year. www.twitch.tv/shardsonline/v/54007465