100 Nights of Neverwinter – Day One

BioWare issued the following press release earlier today, announcing some very nice prizes (including a brand new Pentium 4 computer system) they are awarding to leaders of the Neverwinter Nights community. Here are the details and a list of the community leaders they chose:

EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada September 26th, 2002 BioWare Corp. today announced that Neverwinter Nights, the revolutionary Dungeons & Dragons computer role-playing game has been available for 100 days Neverwinter Nights was released June 18th, 2002.

To celebrate this milestone over the next five days, Atari, BioWare, Creative, Intel, Nvidia, and XFX have banded together to reward leading members of the Neverwinter Nights Community with recognition and some very cool gifts.

These people are leaders in their own right, be it as conduits to the Neverwinter Nights Community, as resources for other fans, as calm and understanding community moderators, as technical experts in a particular area, or simply as very friendly supporters of everything Neverwinter. These people are the cream of the Neverwinter Nights Community.

(Selecting these leaders was quite the challenge. The selection panel did not find the task easy, as there are so many incredibly talented and creative people within this very special community of Neverwinter Nights fans,) said Jay Watamaniuk, BioWare’s Community Manager. (It’s our privilege to be able to work with them, in the community, every single day,) he concluded.

Community Profiles by Jay Watamaniuk BioWare’s Community Manager Today’s Profiled Neverwinter Nights Community Leader is: Maximus Neverwinter Vault IGN (http://nwvault.ign.com) Maximus is the tireless site administrator of Neverwinter Vault and we figure he never really sleeps anymore which can be bad for your health (are you listening Max?). The NW Vault has risen to be a leader among websites devoted to the NWN community. Maximus took over the NW Vault from Valen in April of 2001 and, I believe, has not left his desk since that time. We try to get him to do other things like see the sun and eat but he just waves us away, via email, and gets back to work. We are hoping that he blacks out from exhaustion at some point so that his family can spend quality time with him by surgically removing the keyboard from his clawed hands.

BioWare has had the great pleasure to work with, and sometimes for, Maximus to further enhance the NWN community as a whole. It is impossible to list all the work he has done for RPG gamers everywhere and BioWare is proud to work with him on a daily basis. He has conducted interviews with most of us, kept us informed when we get distracted by the day-to-day work required, spearheaded getting the viewlette tutorials created on helping NWN users become acquainted with various aspects of NWN and he was the first website we had direct links to bring the best modules to the community and has been invaluable for his contributions to the success of NWN as a whole. Maximus is the man, and I have told him so.

Other community leaders for September 26, 2002 include:
Urthpaw- One of the original Moderators for Neverwinter Nights and an invaluable resource for ideas, advice and keeping the Live Team in touch and aware. BioWare thanks Urthpaw for his amazing patience, endless help, thoughful insights and diligence in supervising our community.

Urza- The very first Moderator to join Urthpaw in the long stretch before Neverwinter Nights become available. He as well has been a longtime source of councel, ideas and our take-no-crap-man-of-action in the field. BioWare thanks Urza for his work in keeping us sane and supervising our vast community.

Archaegeo Neosophy- The man responsible for creating the single most used Neverwinter Nights modification to date- The Hard Core Ruleset (HCR). This modification has changed the face of NWN in a sweeping and foundamental way that will effect the course and evolution of this community in the future. He has received advice and help from the community to support this enormously ambitious project but is considered the man in charge at setting the standard for quality modifications.

More information about the profiled community leaders, gift packages, and sponsors of the 100 Nights of Neverwinter can be found at the official Neverwinter Nights Community site (http://neverwinternights.com).