Why BioWare's Neverwinter Nights still has thousands of active players

What happened

Ars Technica's gaming team wrote a personal look back at Neverwinter Nights. The article is part of a series that picks games from a GOG.com store page. The writer says the game still has a tight-knit and surprisingly active community, even though most gamers do not remember it as well as other BioWare games.

A different kind of BioWare game

BioWare is known for story-driven role-playing games, often with a single player leading a small group of characters. Neverwinter Nights was different. It came with a toolset that let players build their own content, and it put multiplayer almost as high as solo play. The game was made from a love of tabletop role-playing, like Dungeons and Dragons, and the team wanted to bring that feeling to video games.

Key facts

• The game was made by BioWare, the studio behind Baldur's Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age.
• It sold well and got strong reviews when it came out.
• More than two decades later, it still has an active fan community.
• GOG.com sells a DRM-free version, which means no copy protection gets in the way of playing it.

The MMO idea that was dropped

The BioWare team said Neverwinter Nights was a test for a massively multiplayer online game (MMO), where thousands of players share one world. At the time, MMOs were seen as a big business chance. The team later found that making an MMO was harder than they had thought, so they dropped that plan before the game came out.

Why it matters

The game shows that a classic can keep its players alive without modern tricks like paid extras or subscriptions. Its focus on player-made content and group play helped it build a loyal community that many newer games would like to have.