EE and the Arelith Migration - 6 months in.

[Irongron]

Well we’re six months into EE, and its been a crazy time for us. We’ve seen a massive renewed interest in NWN, Arelith has featured in mainstream game publications, and thousand of new players have passed through our doors. Multiplayer support has returned, and people can now purchase and play the game on Steam without the need for a ‘critical rebuild’ or any issues with obtaining cd keys.

Back when this began, I alone made the call for Arelith to migrate to EE as soon as day 1 as possible. It was a big ask of the team – we all knew that this would throw up many problems that we’d have to deal with as they came up. A major kudos to our developers, like Morderon, Liareth , Action Replay, Mithreas and Dunshine who worked extremely hard to make the transition as painless as possible.

For myself it was not a decision I made lightly. We asked our community to go out and purchase a new NWN, and in doing so adopted a more market based approach then was natural for Arelith. We’ve always been a cooperative, a grass-roots gaming collective, and something of an escape from the corporate world of gaming that is the norm in the industry.

I made the Distant Shores, along with a lot of help from such as yellowcateyes and Septire, so as to provide a new ‘module’ to accompany the purchase, keenly aware that if our player were to buy something they should have something ‘new’ to show for it.

I remain extremely enthusiastic about Neverwinter Nights, and am still hopeful for what is to come with EE.

Nevertheless I would be doing our community a staff a disservice by not recognising the many issues that have surfaced, and endured, during this period. Stability issues remain, performance (particularly frame-rate issues) has not seen any dramatic improvement (and in some cases has actually deteriorated) and functions like disguise remain unaddressed (remember the NWNX folk are NOT Beamdog, are not paid, and do this only out of goodwill). In short -there are problems.

While one of the big advantages of the EE is that it works better with modern hardware, outstanding bugs such as the intel crashes and poor performance - which have been on the radar since the game released but have gone largely unaddressed – concern many of our community & staff more with each day that passes (there have been many threads about this topic, and there are still many areas of Arelith that some players cannot access on EE)

The chief difference for the server, the staff, and myself, is that where in the past we could work alone to improve, develop and maintain Arelith on Neverwinter Nights, we are now increasingly reliant upon a third party. Rather than fix bugs and improve performance ourselves, we now must to make requests for that to be done on our behalf, and are no longer able to make any guarantees to our community. For their part Beamdog have been helpful and enthusiastic about Arelith and the relationship, I feel, is worthwhile.

Of course, this has gone both ways. Our players, through their many reports and logging of issues, have helped them pinpoint and address issues, and we have, along with a few other servers, have provided and active and enjoyable multiplayer experience. Frequently Arelith has accounted for between one quarter and one half of all those playing EE online.

While that is good news for Arelith, it is clear that other servers are suffering. A brief glance down the server list reveals that most languish in single digit players, or no players at all; the audience for EE is far lower than total amount of those attempting to develop for it. Furthermore many servers are still operating on 1.69, likely because many simply do not have the resources we enjoy to successfully make a transition.

I continue to defend the migration, and still feel is was, and is, the absolute best thing for Arelith and its future, nevertheless the strain on our players and developers has been very real. We posted at the time of EE’s release that should problems persist on EE, or if it did not prove to be all that we hoped we would always have the option to return to 1.69.

6 months in, and with direct experience of what EE has entailed, we would now like to ask our community for their own input.

[Bryce Silver-Wind]

Have you considered opening up the server in both 1.69 and EE, while this would require a bit more work, and another hosting, it might at least offer the players a choice.

[Irongron]

Have you considered opening up the server in both 1.69 and EE, while this would require a bit more work, and another hosting, it might at least offer the players a choice.

It's one or the other really, we need our players together, and developers are already extremely stretched in what they can achieve. My own opinion is clearly stated above, it has just got to the level now that I feel the community needs to be heard, and to know that these concerns are not falling on deaf ears.

[susitsu]

stay tuned for more improvements

[Basementfellow]

We've already bitten the bullet. Spent our $20. May as well stick it out and see where this goes.

[Regionals]

I'm just happy it runs natively on a Mac myself.

I do wonder what will happen when the game is released on Android (and iOS after?). That could be a new population explosion, but of people playing on touchscreens and without physical keyboards and who probably aren't going to take the server's RP rules very seriously.

[StrykerMontgomery]

We've already bitten the bullet. Spent our $20. May as well stick it out and see where this goes.

That is how I feel. My old nwn cdkeys over the decade and a half are a bit of a mess too.

I feel Iron's point about all of EE being both a blessing and a problem. On the plus side it does encourage Beamdog to communicate with us more. On the other wise it makea other servers much more lonely and even makes us sometines isolated in our roleplay. What first was ibtended to reduce the number of perma epics walking around has created a lack of long term overarching story. In the past a character would be leaping with joy to find someone of similar interests/faith. With the increase of discord use and such, things feel a lot more cliquish when trying to get involved in faction RP (at least I find). Have a high player count probably enhances this, you can't be everyone's friends and already well established groups are hardly hurting for numbers. It has has a dramatic effect on the build/roleplay community as well. It's not wrong/bad, but it has vastly transformed.

[kiljaedon]

Sadly I can only play ee. It is why I came back so I hope things work out

[Irongron]

It's also worth noting what with the huge influx of players the above question is pretty meaningless to many.

The majority of players I suspect have no experience of 1.69, and therefore have nothing to compare EE to.

[StrykerMontgomery]

*double post* (phone issues)

[PinataPlethora]

I dislike what EE currently is and what it has been, but I like what it represents and has the potential to become. Whether I'm happy with it in the long run will depend on Beamdog's adherence to their promise of a genuinely "enhanced" experience.

As long as Beamdog remains in business and actively working on EE, I'm happy to stick with it and see what they can do, but if they go under or declare EE "finished" when it isn't, I'd give serious consideration to going back to 1.69.

[flower]

Seriously, whatever you may think of EE, return to 1.69 is not possible.

* large part of work would not work, and would had been trashed in return
* majority of people who bought game would loose investment of 20 EU.
* large part of new players have no clue what is 1.69 and i cannot imagine how They buy old game and direct connect
* big portion of various software updates already do not work on 1.69


We could continue forever, why return is not possible i just picked the main.

[Irongron]

I feel I should also add, for the sake of clarity and fairness that 1.69 is far from dead. At the time of writing this there are actually more people playing on 1.69 than on EE. 423 vs 364.

And, well, I'm thrilled to see Arelith doing so well, but its not really a level playing field. Many 1.69 cannot migrate, though some will eventually. It's been horrible to see the community that endured for 15 years split down the middle, and to see what is years of work by players and developers on pre-EE servers look set to go down the drain. (because there really are other great servers out there)

I honestly don't know if there is more Beamdog themselves could have done in that regard, but while I've been almost giddy with excitement over the resurgence of NWN with EE, that's something nothing short of a tragedy in the story of this game. We should all be sad about it.

[Bryce Silver-Wind]

I think what people need to remember, is that EE is only 6 months old. The game itself is older, but had just as many if not more hiccups very early on as EE does now, it requires patience and diligence and letting the Devs at Beamdog have the chance to make it work. I do think we jumped onboard a bit too early in personal ideals, but at the same time, I can understand why we did.

[Roketter]

I think having the game accesible on Steam is a must in order to extend the server's lifetime and keep new players able to join and not have to navigate sites sending emails to demand their "Multiplayer cd key" from the sales sites because the online system is dead long ago. No matter how many classes , features, mechanics and expansions you have it all comes to naught if you don't have enough players willing to join in as was the death of many servers during NEverwinter nights' gold age.

Back then there were so many incredible servers with amazing hacks, scripts and modded content and most of them abruptly died simply because it was always just the dms and their handful of players and they were always empty, became abandoned and ultimately went offline for good.

Ee restores the Server List, and that is where it's all about.

[Twily]

I wholeheartedly support the migration to EE, which I haven't really made much of a secret.

There are problems, but they are working on them, and in time many are likely to be fixed.
As long as people report them- I really feel like reporting things needs to be heavily stressed, and maybe Arelith could offer a streamlined way to report crashes to Beamdog?

More over, I'm extremely excited at the possibilities for the future of Arelith.
If they add the integrated hak downloads for example, that will open up a whole new world of possibilities for map design, dungeon design, class design, character appearances, etc; all without the hassle or drawbacks that haks on 1.69 had.

[DM Sollers]

I love completely crashing out 5 times in 10 minutes and spending an extra 5 minutes waiting to log back in when I'm trying to reset all three servers, with warnings, within 1 minute of each other to avoid time discrepancies.



I support the move to EE. I am not happy with how many bugs we suffer both player-side and DM-side for it.

DM Sollers

[TimeAdept]

I despise EE but moving back likely causes more headaches than dealwithit.jpg'ing at this point, as unhappy as that makes me.

Mostly I'm just glad I don't play a character that thrived on disguise. Not being able to properly fashion souls due to a Beamdog bug that took forever to be fixed hasn't been fun either. Or the doors. Or the PLC lag. Or everything else.

Despite this, I can't imagine dropping it all back to 1.69 is worth it. Plus, we've all spent the money, rather not flip everyone the bird.

Let's be real: At this point, you buy EE to play Ravenloft or Arelith. That's the only reason it exists. You stay 1.69 if you play anywhere else. Other servers continue to try to dig into Sinfar's gateway tech, but frankly if every patch broke that functionality into the ground every time it occured, I'd be thrilled.

[Scurvy Cur]

I hesitate to use the term unmitigated disaster, but only because I know the dev team here has put in herculean effort mitigating the problems.

EE has more compatibility issues, worse functionality, worse performance and stability, and more minor annoyances/bugs than 1.69. Worse, what patches seem to be coming are not focused on any meaningful improvement of the game, but on very slowly fixing the things that beamdog broke.

I also am reluctant to credit the "it's only a 6 m/o game give them time : )))))" line of reasoning. 6 months is a lot of time. Very few of the bugs, stability issues, and other minor annoyances that currently bother me are new occurrences. They've been there since launch. Moreover, as IG has noted, a number of the performance concerns seem to be getting worse, not better. Finally, any argument that the game might be ironed out eventually is less an argument to stick with it than it is an argument to go back to the game that works, and to reconsider EE when it's a working piece of software, if it ever gets to that point.

The worst possible reaction to learning that you've wasted 6 months and a bunch of money is to waste more time trying to make it all worthwhile. Don't throw good money (or time) after bad.

[The GrumpyCat]

Mostly I'm OK with EE. I don't feel it's a huge improvements - and some things have been a drawback (DM side the crashing is just infuriating, player side I miss the disguise sytem.)
With that being said the huge influx of players it's brought in has been great. The promose of an enhanced life span of the server is also awsome. Being able to play NWN on steam, with easier access to portrait packs and stuff is marvelous.
I also hope that, if Beamdog DO put in a Hak Downloader, that in itself might make it much more 'worth' the price of admission alone.
I do think Beamdog should have waited and made their product truly 'enhanced'.
I do feel a little dissapointed with the lack of updates of late.
But over all if not a good thing, I think it isn't a 'bad' thing. And with a little polishing it could be a great thing.

[TimeAdept]

6 months is enough time to have had all of these issues fixed and actually be adding new content instead of putting artstyle clashing high poly models of weapons on the workshop and shilling out paid DLC portraits.

[Irongron]

This is already a really interesting thread, and vote, and really shows how divisive the question of the EE still is.

There's not a single post thus far that has failed to resonate with me.

[Vincent]

I voted the second option, though it's a hard one. I want to vote what's in the best interest for Arelith, and I think that's staying on the new version where people are most likely to join the server. However, personally, I'd rather play the 1.69 client. I had no FPS issues and the game somehow ran better for me—I have no idea how Beamdog managed to downgrade this ancient game. There have at least been patches, which give me some small hope, though the most appealing element to them were the fixes they implemented... to bugs they'd created...

[Mr_Rieper]

I like the potential of EE. I would like it more if the priorities were in order (more Persistent World support and better optimisation before mobile game version).

It was rushed. EE came out too soon, should've had more time to bake in the oven. Arelith migrated a bit too soon as well.

But that's in the past now. Nothing we can do about it now, Arelith just has to do what it has always done and make the best with what we've got. It's just not possible to backtrack on the migration.

I voted neutral. I like the singleplayer and multiplayer features, I dislike the neglect towards persistent worlds and the scattered priorities. I think Arelith should remain on EE, for better or worse.

We had some great scripting magic from Scholar and the code contributors in the past to get around certain issues, I'm sure EE will shape up eventually. It's uncomfortable for now, but doable.

The plus side to all of this is that EE is very much streamable on Twitch and may just net us a few more people. So it might have been too soon for it to come out for Arelith as a whole, but it was right on time for people like me.

[RoyalBlood]

I think EE does for sure broaden NWNs horizons. It has great potential. I guess my main frustration is how much of that potential has been squandered by broken game features, like the intel graphics bug, other lag causing issues, and the hard crashes? Crashing is still a fairly frequent occurrence for example, just out of the blue! How many fellas did we lose because they can't play?

Another part of my annoyance is just at an over-all agenda of developer companies now that hype up their games, then launch them half baked promising it gets better in the future. That's annoying, at least they don't make us pay for the DLC that has all the actual fixes/content in it. At least these come free! Still, I think when you are re-mastering games you're getting everyone to pay for something they already have. It better be an improvement from the original.

The fact ENHANCED is a meme statement regarding the quality of EE speaks for itself.

And a lot of what Beam dog is trying to do is things player devs have already done. I know of at least one server that had an auto hak downloader. You launched their server from a desktop shortcut that automatically updated your folders then put you into the server.

It seems like Beam Dog is just making us pay for what players across the board had already made for free. They are just re-doing work players have already done. I'd re-affirm the statement that they should have bought player made content and published it with EE. IT would have -really- made EE, enhanced, with all these new models and features integrated into the core game.

That being said, there's no way i'd want to go -back- to 1.69. Things like windowed mode is beautiful. Not having your character have a spaz attack every time you click back into the window is great heh. Per part armour coloring? The hak downloader? Being on Steam, server lists? These are all improvements. Another big features is that NWN EE has an active, proffesional Dev team working on it. That means things -can- get better. And some of the improvements are worth keeping. I don't know that i'd play on 1.69 if we went back.


Overall, I think Beam Dog really missed a ton of opportunity with NWN relaunch. They launched too early, too many bugs, and they have probably ruined the potential of a lot of fans/players by pushing a game that litterally won't let them play. I think it's right, and fair to be critical of Beam Dog for these mistakes. When you buy something, you expect it to work. EE doesn't work.


Can you imagine buying a car and the dealer says "You pay us full price for the car, and 1 month later we'll add the back seats. Then a month after that, we'll add the radio" ... Why is it any different in the game dev world? Launch the stable product. Give us the full car now, not later.

Keeping with car examples, I'd still rather ride with the modern EE car even if it's missing half its parts then the old 1.69 car. 1.69 won't be improving. It has no connection to modern systems like steam, heck, not even a server list. EE gives us a bridge to a better future. It's only a shame we'll have to wait even longer to really fully realize that future.