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

Neverwinter Nights was made by the studio that produced seminal RPGs Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age. It sold well and was critically acclaimed at launch. Yet, somehow, it has not been canonized in most gamers’ minds over the decades the same way the games that came before and after it were. Nonetheless, more than two decades later, it still has a tight-knit and surprisingly active community that none of those other games can rival.

《无冬之夜》是由制作了《博德之门》、《星球大战：旧共和国武士》、《质量效应》和《龙腾世纪》等开创性角色扮演游戏的工作室开发的。该游戏在发布时销量不俗，并获得了评论界的好评。然而，不知何故，在过去的几十年里，它并没有像其前作和后续作品那样在大多数玩家心中获得经典地位。尽管如此，二十多年过去了，它依然拥有一个其他游戏无法比拟的、紧密且活跃度惊人的社区。

I think that’s partly because it was a completely different beast. BioWare is known for making multi-character, story-driven role-playing games that focused primarily on single-player story campaigns, though some supported co-op play in those campaigns. With Neverwinter Nights, BioWare instead made a game that was as focused on a modding toolset for content creation as it was on giving players a pre-packaged story, and that emphasized multiplayer at least as much as solo play.

我认为这在一定程度上是因为它是一个完全不同的“怪物”。BioWare 以制作多角色、以故事驱动的角色扮演游戏而闻名，这些游戏主要专注于单人剧情战役，尽管其中一些支持合作模式。而《无冬之夜》则不同，BioWare 制作这款游戏时，既注重为玩家提供预设的故事，也同样注重用于内容创作的模组工具集，并且它对多人游戏的强调程度至少与单人游戏相当。

Today you would expect this to be a calculated attempt to bring more long-term, always-on, multiplayer-as-a-service to an RPG franchise that has mostly appealed to solo players. You might imagine it would be about selling cosmetics, a subscription, or a battle pass, or maybe you would think it was about nabbing appealing engagement numbers. But it’s clear from playing it today that Neverwinter Nights wasn’t primarily made for those reasons.

在今天，你可能会认为这是一种经过深思熟虑的尝试，旨在为主要吸引单人玩家的 RPG 系列引入更多长期、全天候在线的“多人游戏即服务”模式。你可能会想象这与销售外观道具、订阅服务或战斗通行证有关，或者你可能会认为这是为了获取诱人的参与度数据。但从今天游玩的体验来看，很明显《无冬之夜》的制作初衷并非主要出于这些原因。

Instead, it came from a passion for tabletop role-playing and a desire to get closer to that in video game form than ever before. Yes, the BioWare team noted in some interviews that they saw this as a trial run for exploring the idea of making a massively multiplayer game (MMO)—something that, in the year 2000, was seen by many as the hot new business opportunity in gaming, and which was in many ways the precursor to the games-as-a-service we see today.

相反，它源于对桌面角色扮演游戏的热情，以及渴望在电子游戏形式中比以往任何时候都更接近那种体验的愿望。是的，BioWare 团队在一些采访中提到，他们将此视为探索制作大型多人在线游戏（MMO）理念的试运行——在 2000 年，这被许多人视为游戏界热门的新商业机会，并且在许多方面，它也是我们今天所见“游戏即服务”模式的前身。

They then indicated they realized that an MMO was harder to make than they had assumed and abandoned that ambition well before Neverwinter Nights shipped. Neverwinter Nights is not exactly an MMO. Instead, it’s designed for small communities of people to inhabit and create with, and it features a powerful toolset for virtual dungeon masters to use to subject regular players to challenges in an improvisational way on a live server.

随后他们表示，意识到 MMO 的制作难度超出了预期，并在《无冬之夜》发售前就放弃了这一雄心。《无冬之夜》并不完全是一款 MMO。相反，它是为小规模社区设计，供人们居住和创作，并配备了强大的工具集，让虚拟地下城主（DM）能够在实时服务器上以即兴方式向普通玩家发起挑战。

“We always envisioned it as a table with four legs—the single player, the multiplayer, the DMing tools and the toolset (the module making tools),” BioWare’s Ray Muzyka told IGN around the time the game was released. “They all appeal to different groups, and we’ve tried to make them all equivalently high quality.”

“我们一直将其设想为一张四条腿的桌子——单人游戏、多人游戏、地下城主工具和工具集（模块制作工具），”BioWare 的 Ray Muzyka 在游戏发布前后告诉 IGN。“它们各自吸引不同的群体，我们努力使它们都达到同样的高质量。”

Over the past month, I’ve been replaying Neverwinter Nights‘ main story campaign, The Wailing Death, as a solo player, for the first time in 20 years. The nostalgia has been strong in this replay, but I have also found that BioWare didn’t quite nail “equivalently high quality” for all the pillars. Still, it doesn’t matter, because as we’ll see when we check in with the game’s community, the campaign is not the point.

在过去的一个月里，我以单人玩家的身份重玩了《无冬之夜》的主线战役《哀伤之死》，这是 20 年来的第一次。这次重玩带来了强烈的怀旧感，但我也发现 BioWare 并未完全实现所有支柱“同样高质量”的目标。不过，这并不重要，因为正如我们稍后在了解该游戏社区时所看到的那样，战役本身并不是重点。

The single-player experience is… fine. “The single player experience has to be as good as anything we’ve ever done in [Baldur’s Gate], [Baldur’s Gate 2], or Throne of Bhaal and hopefully better,” Muzyka told IGN. “Our goal here at BioWare is that each game we do has to be better than the previous one.”

单人游戏体验……还行。“单人游戏体验必须和我们在《博德之门》、《博德之门 2》或《巴尔的王座》中所做的任何作品一样好，甚至希望更好，”Muzyka 告诉 IGN。“我们在 BioWare 的目标是，我们制作的每一款游戏都必须比上一款更好。”

If single-player is one of the legs, it might be fair to call Neverwinter Nights‘ table a little wobbly. It still stands, but you know how irritating it can be. For example, Neverwinter Nights leaves behind Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale‘s party-based systems, and instead has the player controlling just one character directly. It makes sense for a multiplayer game, but doesn’t work as well for a single-player experience in this case—at least with the Dungeons & Dragons rules of the time.

如果单人游戏是其中一条腿，那么说《无冬之夜》这张桌子有点摇晃或许是公平的。它依然立得住，但你知道它有多令人恼火。例如，《无冬之夜》抛弃了《博德之门》或《冰风谷》的队伍制系统，转而让玩家直接控制一个角色。这对于多人游戏来说是有意义的，但在这种情况下，对于单人游戏体验来说效果并不理想——至少在当时《龙与地下城》的规则下是这样。

I chose to play a monk, a martial arts specialist, simply because I’ve always been drawn to that particular fantasy identity, and because I’d never played one in a D&D game. I regretted that decision after a while. For many of the character levels covered in The Wailing Death, the monk basically just picks between two fighting modes: one that misses more but attacks more frequently, and one that’s just normal.

我选择扮演一名武僧（武术专家），仅仅是因为我一直被那种特定的奇幻身份所吸引，而且我从未在 D&D 游戏中玩过这个职业。过了一段时间，我后悔了这个决定。在《哀伤之死》涵盖的许多角色等级中，武僧基本上只能在两种战斗模式之间选择：一种是命中率较低但攻击频率较高，另一种则是普通模式。

That, along with some intense restrictions on which weapons or armor can be used while keeping all their benefits, and a couple of knockdown and stun attacks that often don’t work, make up the whole kit for many hours of playtime, particularly in the first act. (It does get better later on, though.)

再加上对武器或护甲使用的一些严格限制（以保持其全部增益），以及几个经常失效的击倒和眩晕攻击，构成了许多游戏时间里的全部技能组合，特别是在第一幕中。（不过，后期确实会有所改善。）

A kit like this makes sense in a pen-and-paper RPG with a live dungeon master (DM), because the player and DM can work together to invent creative expressions of their abilities, and it works in a party in a video game because it’s just one of multiple complementary characters with a wide range of skills and spells.

这样的技能组合在有真人地下城主（DM）的纸笔 RPG 中是有意义的，因为玩家和 DM 可以共同协作，创造性地发挥他们的能力；而在电子游戏的队伍中，它也能发挥作用，因为它只是众多互补角色中拥有广泛技能和法术的一个。

But for a game that is about 80 percent battling enemies without controlling any other characters, it gets monotonous quickly. There aren’t as many meaningful character builds, gearing, or tactical choices as you’re used to in some other RPGs until quite a ways into the campaign. Often, you just run in and watch the dice roll until either you die or the enemy dies, while sometimes drinking potions.

但对于一款约 80% 的时间都在战斗且无法控制其他角色的游戏来说，它很快就会变得单调。在战役进行到相当长一段时间之前，你不会拥有像在其他一些 RPG 中习惯的那样多的有意义的角色构建、装备或战术选择。通常，你只是冲进去，看着骰子滚动，直到你或敌人死亡，期间偶尔喝点药水。

This problem is less severe with some other classes, but the tension is usually there to some degree. Whereas Baldur’s Gate 2, for example, had a partial authored background for your character that then played into the narrative, Neverwinter Nights leaves you as an Elder Scrolls-like blank slate. I normally love that! It’s good for role-playing with friends, but…

这个问题在其他一些职业中没那么严重，但这种紧张感通常在某种程度上是存在的。例如，《博德之门 2》为你的角色提供了一个部分预设的背景，并将其融入叙事中，而《无冬之夜》则让你像《上古卷轴》一样成为一张白纸。我通常很喜欢这样！这对于和朋友一起角色扮演很有好处，但是……