Neverwinter Nights 2 Persistent World: Sigil: City of Doors (Planescape)

[Agony_Aunt]

Preamble. This is an advert for a persistent world based on the Neverwinter Nights 2 game engine set in the Planescape setting. I've checked the rules and i do not believe i am breaking the forum rules as this is not a commercial advert.

If i am in breach then i apologize and accept deletion of this thread.

Also Moderators, i've put it in the Roleplay section rather than the Gaming section because i'm more interested in targeting Gaming roleplayers rather than roleplaying gamers... err, or just possible the other way around.

On to the topic...

Sigil: City of Doors is a persistent world based in Sigil and the surrounding planes. We have been running since 2008 and once upon a time were one of the more active PWs out there but over the last year or so numbers have dwindled, so i'm reaching out to fans of Planescape and D&D everywhere to try and garner some attention and improve the playerbase.

Yes, the Neverwinter Nights 2 game engine is a bit dated now, but apart from Neverwinter Nights 1 there is no other computer platform out there which can deliver the same D&D experience and provide the same level of modding, hosting, and customization that is required to run a setting like this.

We encourage roleplay but there are also lots of planes filled with monster to satisfy the hardened grinder as well. We also have forums where people can play out their RP with other players, either separately, or combined with the in-game experience. The forums themselves are dated and we should be moving to a new home within the coming months.

Current forums can be found here: http://z13.invisionfree.com/nwn2planescape/index.php?

If you do not posess Neverwinter Nights 2 and the two expansions then it can still be obtained from Good Old Games fairly cheaply.

Feel free to post any questions here about the server, or pop over to our forums and check us out!

[Kane0]

Seems worth a look, might give it a try.

[GoblinArchmage]

A few years ago, I often played on this server. It has its issues, but it could be pretty fun, and I've been thinking about reinstalling NWN2 to play it again. Maybe I will start a new character over the summer.

[Agony_Aunt]

A few years ago, I often played on this server. It has its issues, but it could be pretty fun, and I've been thinking about reinstalling NWN2 to play it again. Maybe I will start a new character over the summer.

The server has gone through many changes over the last few years, although as I mentioned, the biggest challenge we are facing at the moment is lack of players.

But let me know your concerns about the server, and perhaps I can tell you whether those issues have been fixed or not since you last played.

[Firechanter]

Ouh, this might be interesting for me as well.
I have NWN2 Platinum, I used to play on PWs quite a lot on NWN1, and I love the Planescape setting.

I'm gonna have a look soon. ^^ If it's good, I might be able to recruit a few more players. =)

Edit: Downloading ;)

[Agony_Aunt]

By the way, perhaps worth mentioning that since Bioware took the authentication servers down you now can log in with any ID and password and also have to sit through a timeout while the client tries to authenticate.

We have instructions on our forums about editing your hosts file so the timeout is instant and you can jump straight in. Most NWN2 PWs have now implemented server side protection to stop players logging into other players accounts.

[Eldan]

Eh, you know, you lost me when you mentioned grinding monsters. That just isn't Planescape.

[Firechanter]

Eh, you know, you lost me when you mentioned grinding monsters. That just isn't Planescape.

As I understood it, you don't really have to grind monsters; it seems to be more of an offer to players who enjoy that kind of pastime.

[Agony_Aunt]

We like to cater to all types of players, so there are plenty of planes where you can grind, and also some planes and areas where there are no monsters, just areas to chill and RP.

Some players never kill a single monster, and there has been some very rare cases of people hitting level 30 purely through DM XP rewards via roleplay. I know some players who don't even take levels when they are entitled to.

I'd definitely welcome more player like this even though personally i enjoy a good grind, especially after a long day at work.

One of my mid-term plans is to open up general access to several areas which are only currently acessible for DM events to the general playerbase which have no monsters, just nice ambient areas.

But if you go to the Abyss, prepare to be stomped on by demons ;)

[Sartharina]

What sorts of races are playable on the server? Are catfolk of any sort available?

... I really should not be on these forums at night. My mind goes to weird, amazing places when I see talk of enjoying a good grind.

[GoblinArchmage]

Are catfolk of any sort available?

I hope not; cat people make everything worse. Seriously, what's the deal with cat people? Why does literally every MUD, for example, have to have some sort of cat person?

[Sartharina]

1. Due to similarities in facial structure and range of expressions, cats and humans are easy to blend anatomically to create a good-looking results that are distinctly nonhuman. The cat-person form also allows high fidelity without dipping as far into the uncanny valley.
2. Everybody wants to be a cat.
3. Catgirls are the universal standard of hotness

[Eldan]

We like to cater to all types of players, so there are plenty of planes where you can grind, and also some planes and areas where there are no monsters, just areas to chill and RP.

Some players never kill a single monster, and there has been some very rare cases of people hitting level 30 purely through DM XP rewards via roleplay. I know some players who don't even take levels when they are entitled to.

I'd definitely welcome more player like this even though personally i enjoy a good grind, especially after a long day at work.

One of my mid-term plans is to open up general access to several areas which are only currently acessible for DM events to the general playerbase which have no monsters, just nice ambient areas.

But if you go to the Abyss, prepare to be stomped on by demons ;)

See, I do have a bit of a problem with that. I like to be able to at least try to negotiate with the more intelligent "monsters" out there. THat's a core of the Planescape experience.

Anyway. Another important question. The last few more roleplaying-oriented NWN servers I was on had one major problem: attendance. As a European, I never, ever saw a GM, unless I went online at 3am on weekends. How is your coverage? How many people are online outside the peak times, i.e. North American evenings and weekends?

[Agony_Aunt]

See, I do have a bit of a problem with that. I like to be able to at least try to negotiate with the more intelligent "monsters" out there. THat's a core of the Planescape experience.

Anyway. Another important question. The last few more roleplaying-oriented NWN servers I was on had one major problem: attendance. As a European, I never, ever saw a GM, unless I went online at 3am on weekends. How is your coverage? How many people are online outside the peak times, i.e. North American evenings and weekends?

Regarding the first point, well, due to how the game works, to make an NPC "monster" negotiate, you have to give them a convesation, and then, perhaps an option for them to go hostile if you say the wrong thing, then also clean up effort so they don't rampage killing other NPCs for no reason. For this reason, grinding areas are grinding areas, unless a DM (or GM as you call them) go in in-advance and disables the spawn triggers. And why we have RP specific areas as well.

Which really brings us to the point about playerbase and DM presence, through which you can then get a better RP experience. If you carefully read my initial post you would note the reason for it was due to a low playerbase.

As the newest admin and effective lead of the server now, i decided one thing that will help with this (beyond marketing/advertising) is ensuring that we have a good base of DMs to provide engaging storylines for players to be involved in, along with the possibility to make changes to the server history/lore.

The original design of the server was more along the lines of "players should make the RP for themselves" which is fine to a certain extent, but experience shows, with many players this either leads to things going nowhere, a lack of conflict, or people declaring themselves to have god-like abilities and ruling over the cosmos, the latter of which naturally requires the DMs to stamp down on.

So, generally speaking, some of the changes that we are now implementing are:
1) Trying to build a bigger and more active DM pool (two new DMs in the last month, plus some old DMs recently showing more interest)
2) We have a feature that allows regular players to step up and lead events using the DM tool for others (naturally no running events that benefit your own characters)
3) Allow changes to server lore based on events that happen (although changes to areas and stuff requires developer work - so there will be lag with changes)
4) Moving lore from forums to wiki format as well to allow easier changes to be made by all (hopefully will not be abused).

As for current population, over the last couple of weeks i've seen some improvement (including European times), especially at the weekend. We hit 6th spot yesterday for a few hours. Not sure how far we can take it, top spot on the server rankings would be a wonderful result, but if we can regularly make it into the top 3-4 i would be well satisfied.

@Sartharina & GoblinArchmage - actually there is a single cat head available for female humans. I've used it to create a couple of NPC Rakashka quest givers in the Astral plane, Divinity Leech (see Guide to the Astral Plane sourcebook). No idea who included that in the list of models. However, as far as i know, i'm the only person to use it on a character, a character i based off the Trans race from Robert E. Vardeman's - The Keys to Paradise (highly recommend reading).

Nothing wrong with people RPing any race really (as long as it isn't silly or immersion breaking), its Planescape after all. What annoys me more is people coming from RP based on Fearun and out-of-character (OOC) complaining about things not matching the restricted lore of a backwater prime. In-character (IC), i wholeheartedly approve of players playing clueless primers though with their biases and prejudices.

"So, you think you go to the Fugue plane when you die do you berk? Ha! That's what happens when you worship some ass-end prime deity. When I die, i'm off to Valhalla to drink myself stupid and cavort with Valkyries. Keep your dumb religion to yourself!"

- A clued up basher speaking to a new arrival in Sigil.

OR

"Its a devil! Kill it! Burn it!"

- Clueless primer upon seeing a Baatezu in the Bazaar.

"Huh? Stop rattling yer bone box! That's old X'thaghaatan! Best damn lawyer in this part of the Cage! Try any funny business with him and the hardheads will have you before the Guvners for bobbing him! Now, why don't you follow me down this alley, and i show you some of the sights of the Hive?"

- a nearby Knight of the Post.

:D

[Sartharina]

...how am I supposed to connect to the server, since Gamespy is dead?

[Agony_Aunt]

By the way, perhaps worth mentioning that since Bioware took the authentication servers down you now can log in with any ID and password and also have to sit through a timeout while the client tries to authenticate.

We have instructions on our forums about editing your hosts file so the timeout is instant and you can jump straight in. Most NWN2 PWs have now implemented server side protection to stop players logging into other players accounts.

In other words, Gamespy is just bypassed these days.

A brilliant guy called Skywing also made his own mini gamespy listing here: http://www.nwnlist.com/

And if you download his client extenstion from here: http://nwvault.ign.com/fms/Download.php?id=169006 i understand it contains its own connection system as well - many people swear by it, although personally i don't use it as in my case it causes severe lag when running the game full screen.

[INDYSTAR188]

1. Due to similarities in facial structure and range of expressions, cats and humans are easy to blend anatomically to create a good-looking results that are distinctly nonhuman. The cat-person form also allows high fidelity without dipping as far into the uncanny valley.
2. Everybody wants to be a cat.
3. Catgirls are the universal standard of hotness

I think it's awesome you mention the uncanny valley. That is a research area at my university and I think it's pretty fascinating. I would give you a +1 if I could for that.

[Sartharina]

I think it's awesome you mention the uncanny valley. That is a research area at my university and I think it's pretty fascinating. I would give you a +1 if I could for that.

That said, it's possible to screw up a cat and get VERY far into the uncanny valley with it. Fortunately, people associate and can empathise with cats almost as much as they can with each other.

[JohnnyCancer]

Aw I used to play on a Planescape roleplaying server in the original Neverwinter Nights for several years. How nostalgic this makes me feel

[Agony_Aunt]

Aw I used to play on a Planescape roleplaying server in the original Neverwinter Nights for several years. How nostalgic this makes me feel

You mean how old? :P

[GoblinArchmage]

I reinstalled NWN2 today so I could play on this server, but, as a computer-ignorant moron, I ran into some issues. Is it completely necessary to download a third party client to play online? I ask because when I tried to look at all of the multiplayer servers I just got an error and nothing showed up. I impulsively uninstalled the game in frustration, but I would be willing to try again if I could figure this out. Also, since the authentication servers are down, what do I do if I forgot my password?

Edit: Oh, and one more thing. The reason I uninstalled the game in the first place was because the mods were taking up too much room on my C drive, which I didn't understand, because I installed the game on my D drive. Does anybody know how I can get the online servers to download mods to the proper drive?

Edit2: I may have found the answer to my first question. I guess there is a direct connect option that you can use to type in the IP address, which I can find here.

[Agony_Aunt]

Hi,

Yes, i listed the direct connect address in one of my earlier posts. I also do not use skywing's client extender because it can cause issues with lag when running full screen.

So just direct connect to scod.game-server.cc

As you noted, you can go to the nwlist site to see all active servers.

As for it taking up too much room there are a couple of tricks you can use to relocate the files, and i have used both in the past.

The easiest version is to move your whole My Documents or Documents folder to a different drive. How to do this depends on which system you have.

For win7: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/w...#1TC=windows-7

If you have xp its pretty similar, no idea about win 8 - its an abomination - but you can google it im sure.

There is a more technical way whereby you can move just the Documents\Neverwinter Nights 2 folder using the command like and the subst command (its a bit like using symbolic links in unix/linux), although only attempt this if you really know what you are doing.

As for authentication - i also mentioned this in an earlier post. With the servers gone you just ignore the password. Just use whatever name you had (or use a new one, although you can now conflict with other users if you select the same - we have server side protection to stop players accessing each others characters based on CD-keys).

You can also pop on to our forums for more info and assistance.

[Archaos]

I am necromancing (kinda) this thread to support this server.

I am playing on it and it's REALLY fun. There are also a ton of whacky races added from vampires, to undead, to eladrin (the 3E versions), Djinn, Half-Fiend/Celestials, goblins, ogres, dragonkin, constructs, devils, demons and the list goes on.

Many of them give amazing stats and immunities but have a LA. But the way the LA was adjusted there is by capping your max level which is 30.
So a Vampire has been adjusted to have LA +6 with it's immunities and turning into mist, bat etc. So they can only reach level 24 instead of 30.

This is a very smart way to handle LA races because new people don't have to spend an eternity to get to level 2 and then be totally broken at level 30 compared to humans and at a severe advantage.

Most of the races are also there for the RP of it, so who cares really for power?
If you want maximum caster levels for example just play a Human, the option is there.

It's the only server that you can play all sorts of races and have fun. And stuff keeps getting added. Plus the various areas that work as portals as fits the setting.

About Skywing's Client Extension, it's a necessary evil. It's a fanmade workaround to restore it's previous functionality.
You can just direct connect to the server if you don't want to use it. But it makes everything more convenient.

Really fun server, if you are fans of the setting and strange races, go check it out.

[Agony_Aunt]

Thanks for the thumbs up Archaos. We do our best to make the server fun to play on.

And since i'm here I will just note some of our latest additions:

Areas:

Mechanus
Elemental Plane of Fire
Quasi-Elemental Plane of Salt
Limbo

Classes:

Samurai
Kensai
Ronin

And in the pipleline, plenty of other stuff including more classes, next two are going to be the Drunken Master and Tattooed Monk. Hopefully some Bard PrCs later, but those are going to be tricky to say the least.

And next year i have planned a major enchanting/crafting/economic overhaul mapped out, although that is going to take months of work.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: Closed due to Necromancy.