Neverwinter Nights 1 lives on: an NWN EE persistent world with its own setting

BioWare released Neverwinter Nights 1 on 18 June 2002 in North America. It ran on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition rules and was set in the Forgotten Realms.

The campaign opens in the city of Neverwinter, with a cursed plague ravaging the city and its people. You are sent to find a cure. The trail runs through dangerous cities, monster-filled dungeons and deep crypts full of things that should have stayed buried.

The campaign was only half the point. The game shipped with the Aurora Toolset and a Dungeon Master client. Players could build their own modules and run them live for friends.

That is why the game is still played today. It turned an RPG into a kit for world building, and it gave rise to persistent worlds: servers that stay online around the clock, with their own maps and their own staff.

BioWare later sold premium modules such as Kingmaker and Wyvern Crown of Cormyr. The community still made more content than any studio could.

Two expansions followed in 2003. In Shadows of Undrentide, your character is an apprentice of the dwarf Drogan, charged with recovering four ancient artifacts stolen from his school.

The search crosses the desert to Undrentide, a city of the Netherese. They were a long-dead magical civilization, and their ruins are still dangerous. The expansion also added prestige classes and henchmen with real personalities.

Hordes of the Underdark arrived in December 2003. It continues the adventure started in Shadows and drops you into the hostile depths of Undermountain beneath Waterdeep.

From there it goes further down, into the Underdark itself. It raised the level cap to 40 and added epic feats and epic spells. Plenty of players still call it the best of the three campaigns.

In 2005 Atari bundled the base game, both expansions and several premium modules as Neverwinter Nights Diamond. For the next decade that was the copy most people owned.

Yes. In 2018 Beamdog released Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition, a modern version of Neverwinter Nights 1 with all its campaigns. It runs on current Windows, Mac and Linux machines, and it has since come to consoles and phones.

For multiplayer, two things changed. The server browser works again. And NWSync downloads a server’s custom content for you when you connect, so nobody hunts for hak packs on forums that died in 2009.

Open the multiplayer menu on any evening and you will find dozens of servers. They range from loot grinds to strict roleplay, with most somewhere in between.

The community is smaller than it was in 2004, but it is active.

Neverwinter Nights 1 has eleven base classes: barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer and wizard. The expansions added about a dozen prestige classes, from Arcane Archer and Assassin to Pale Master and Weapon Master.

You can multiclass across three classes, which is why build planning became a hobby of its own. A pure level 20 wizard and a fighter/rogue hybrid feel like two different games.

Every server sets its own rules. On Auldwyn, all base classes and all alignments are open. Most prestige classes are allowed. The exceptions are Champion of Torm, Dwarven Defender, Purple Dragon Knight, Red Dragon Disciple and Shadowdancer, and custom prestige classes are planned.

Want to test an idea first? IronWaffle’s Auldwyn character builder lets you plan a build level by level.

A good Neverwinter Nights 1 RP server feels closer to a tabletop group than an MMO. Your character is saved on the server. People remember what you did last week.

Dungeon Masters run events and voice the villains. When players push on the world, it moves. Lose a fight on Auldwyn and you might wake up robbed, or in a cell.

Roleplay is encouraged here but never forced. Players come for the stories or the dungeons. Many stay because someone at the inn asked their name.

Most persistent worlds borrow the Forgotten Realms. Auldwyn does not. It is a fictional world written from scratch for NWN EE, with its own creation myth, thirty gods and powers, six playable peoples and ten regions.

The story starts with a silence. Amara, goddess of memory, has gone missing from the divine order. Where memory thins, something old and rotten gets in.

The dead do not stay down. Crops fail. Rituals stop working. In the far north the Pride-sworn elves still carry the grudge of their exile. Out on the Blackwater, the Reedborn keep their history alive in song.

New characters usually begin in Aucklorn Vale, a small walled settlement that bars its gates at sundown. Where your character goes from there is up to you.

If fantasy worldbuilding is your thing, the full Lore Archive is open to read. You can also learn it in play, from the people you meet in game.

1. 01Buy Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition on Steam, GOG or Beamdog. The old Diamond edition will not connect.
2. 02Launch the game and choose Multiplayer.
3. 03Search for "Auldwyn" in the server browser, or direct connect to play.auldwyn.net.
4. 04Let NWSync download the custom content. It happens once, with nothing to install by hand.
5. 05Create your character and step into Aucklorn Vale.

Auldwyn is free. The server runs 24/7 and the staff are volunteers. Questions? The Discord is the fastest place to ask.