chevalier
Fri, 8th Sep '06, 2:24pm
Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights, collected by NWVault (http://nwvault.ign.com). Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Derek French, Live Team Producer</font>
Premium modules check (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=487274&post=4302685&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />Authenticate on module load is just an accident of savegame design I'll bet, since each savegame contains the module itself already, which encrypts (and therefore, de-crypts) differently when you add the saved game state info in to the mix. An accident that could theoretically be remedied, but would take a lot more work on Bio's part.<hr />Not be belabour this whole thing, but...
QFT.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance</font>
Premium modules check (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=487274&post=4302694&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />By what standard could you possibly be gauging "effectiveness"? <hr />By the standards of tens of thousands of sales with relatively few errors or problems and a predominance of customer satisfaction. http://forums.bioware.com/_commonext/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
NWN Rated as 26th on NextGen (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=495901&post=4302087&forum=42&highlight=)
<hr />Those are US sales only, the expansion packs are included in the franchise sales number. Sounds plausible to me that there were 500k sales in the US and 2500k sales in the rest of the world. The numbers are from NPD, they normally have good sources.<hr />NPD does not include areas outside of North America (which are very significant for RPGS) and, to my knowledge, does not have access to Walmart ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/40/11 ) and specialized online retailer sales data.
More: We have explained this over and over again.
The system the premium modules use for copy protection is the same system that NWN used for multiplayer authentification for 4 years now, it is tested, qa'd and proven to work and therefore the cheapest way of protecting the modules. It has also proven to be extremely effective so far.
Since it is the same system used for multiplayer, it's kind of overreacting to get worked up about it, because it already has been there for 4 years now.
We're not going to do much more with NWN, so don't expect this to change.
More: <hr />... long post ...<hr />Actually, we are quite pleased how well the system has performed, given its experimental nature (piggybacking of multiplayer auth) which is reflected in a very low number of complaints compared to the number of complaints about the copy protection on the original NWN disk or to the general reception systems like SecuRom or Starforce have received.
That is not to say that we would employ this system in the future (almost certainly not, as said, it was experimental), but we will certainly make use of the things we have learned from this experiment in future products in one shape or another.
An opportunity I could see emerging from this is allowing players to chose between disk and online verification. People who prefer keeping their physical disks in a secure location could pick online while people worried about the requirement of the online connection could still live with the copy protection on the disk.
Personally, I would prefer such a system over the annoying keep disk in drive method most publishers require these days and that seem to interfere with disk drives or ther computer components.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for copy protection, but everyone who wants a reality check on why copy protection makes sense for such low price products as our premium modules can easily get that information by looking at the number of illegal downloads for Oblivion DLC moduleson various 'distribution sites'.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Brian Chung, Technical Artist</font>
CEP 1.68 Patch Trouble (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=495862&post=4303351&forum=83&highlight=)
Actually every cloak in 1.68 is set to cover the wings, for the whole realism bit. It's really easy however, to extract the cloakmodel.2da and set it so wings, tails, and shoulders are toggled however you want.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Derek French, Live Team Producer</font>
Premium modules check (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=487274&post=4302685&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />Authenticate on module load is just an accident of savegame design I'll bet, since each savegame contains the module itself already, which encrypts (and therefore, de-crypts) differently when you add the saved game state info in to the mix. An accident that could theoretically be remedied, but would take a lot more work on Bio's part.<hr />Not be belabour this whole thing, but...
QFT.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Chris Priestly, Quality Assurance</font>
Premium modules check (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=487274&post=4302694&forum=86&highlight=)
<hr />By what standard could you possibly be gauging "effectiveness"? <hr />By the standards of tens of thousands of sales with relatively few errors or problems and a predominance of customer satisfaction. http://forums.bioware.com/_commonext/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Georg Zoeller, Designer</font>
NWN Rated as 26th on NextGen (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=495901&post=4302087&forum=42&highlight=)
<hr />Those are US sales only, the expansion packs are included in the franchise sales number. Sounds plausible to me that there were 500k sales in the US and 2500k sales in the rest of the world. The numbers are from NPD, they normally have good sources.<hr />NPD does not include areas outside of North America (which are very significant for RPGS) and, to my knowledge, does not have access to Walmart ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/40/11 ) and specialized online retailer sales data.
More: We have explained this over and over again.
The system the premium modules use for copy protection is the same system that NWN used for multiplayer authentification for 4 years now, it is tested, qa'd and proven to work and therefore the cheapest way of protecting the modules. It has also proven to be extremely effective so far.
Since it is the same system used for multiplayer, it's kind of overreacting to get worked up about it, because it already has been there for 4 years now.
We're not going to do much more with NWN, so don't expect this to change.
More: <hr />... long post ...<hr />Actually, we are quite pleased how well the system has performed, given its experimental nature (piggybacking of multiplayer auth) which is reflected in a very low number of complaints compared to the number of complaints about the copy protection on the original NWN disk or to the general reception systems like SecuRom or Starforce have received.
That is not to say that we would employ this system in the future (almost certainly not, as said, it was experimental), but we will certainly make use of the things we have learned from this experiment in future products in one shape or another.
An opportunity I could see emerging from this is allowing players to chose between disk and online verification. People who prefer keeping their physical disks in a secure location could pick online while people worried about the requirement of the online connection could still live with the copy protection on the disk.
Personally, I would prefer such a system over the annoying keep disk in drive method most publishers require these days and that seem to interfere with disk drives or ther computer components.
In an ideal world, there would be no need for copy protection, but everyone who wants a reality check on why copy protection makes sense for such low price products as our premium modules can easily get that information by looking at the number of illegal downloads for Oblivion DLC moduleson various 'distribution sites'.
<font size="3" face="Verdana, Arial" color="#cc6600">Brian Chung, Technical Artist</font>
CEP 1.68 Patch Trouble (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=495862&post=4303351&forum=83&highlight=)
Actually every cloak in 1.68 is set to cover the wings, for the whole realism bit. It's really easy however, to extract the cloakmodel.2da and set it so wings, tails, and shoulders are toggled however you want.