NWN 2: Thieves Guild Interview

One of the fastest growing fan sites for Neverwinter Nights 2 is Thieves Guild. Not only is the site a fine repository of information, walk throughs, crafting recipes, etc., but they have now entered into the "modding" business with the recent merger with NWN 2 Mods.

Because of their explosive growth, the folks behind Thieves Guild were natural targets for an interview by WarCry. Without further ado, here's our interview:

If you would, start with a paragraph or two about yourselves, the site, etc.

Thieves-Guild.net is a fan site dedicated exclusively to NWN2 including the Mask of the Betrayer expansion and the soon to be released Mysteries of Westgate adventure pack. There is vast amount of information on the site ranging from character creation (including base and prestige classes, feats, clerical domains), maps and walkthroughs, crafting guides, a Crossroad Keep guide, influence guides, item codes, cheat codes, and lots more. The site also has it's own dedicated forums where people can ask questions on a wide variety of topics. We like to think it is one of the most comprehensive NWN2 sites on the web.

The site is currently staffed by the site administrator, forum moderators and content staff including me. I guess I should probably introduce myself. I'm Dwight Kubach, better known as kgambit on the Thieves Guild and Bioware forums. I'm currently the content editor for the Thieves guild website and part time forum moderator (when I'm not busy building more content).

Where did the idea of Thieves' Guild come from? What is the significance of the name?

The name of the site came from the huge RPG hit Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The webmaster of Thieves-Guild.Net is a big fan and registered the domain for future use. After creating an Oblivion fan page he decided to change it to a Neverwinter Nights 2 fan site back in October 2006. The Thieves Guild NWN2 site went live shortly thereafter.

What was your involvement in the community before Thieves' Guild debuted?

VERY limited actually. In the beginning, I was primarily a forum resident (or lurker if you prefer). My only real foray in the community (prior to joining Thieves Guild) was in late 2002 / early 2003, shortly after NWN1 was released. A friend and I created a web site with custom portraits for BG, IWD and NWN1. The site went offline (permanently) when my friend's Army unit was deployed overseas. It wasn't until late 2006, when I was offered a position as a moderator at the Thieves Guild forums that I truly got involved in the community. Forum lurker makes good I guess. :D

How is the site content "agenda" set?

Since the staff is entirely comprised of devoted CRPg players ourselves, we simply ask ourselves "What information about the game would I want to be able to find if I came to Thieves Guild?" That generates a fairly health list of ideas, which gets culled down to what we consider the "core" content. We sort out the content that can be started pre-release and begin work on that immediately, even though we know it will likely have to be revised post release. The content that can't be started until after the game's release has site space reserved and the work on it begins immediately after the release.

With the NWN2 OC, the amount of pre-release game content was minimal. The post release list however was extremely and it simply wasn't possible with the limited staff on hand to do everything we wanted to do immediately. Some things were added with the expectation that they would undergo revisions later. Others were left out entirely with the hope that they might be added later when time permitted. It's not always an easy call as to what goes in and when, and what doesn't make the cut. It was a lot easier with MotB, as Rob McGinnis' blog and the designers' diaries gave us a huge head start on getting the MotB content ready. That and the amount of new content we had to deal with was significantly smaller. Aside from correcting some minor errors and adding a few tweaks here and there, the MotB content has been finished for some time now, even though we are still working on finishing the OC content.

One thing we are always trying to do is to add content which we think will make the site unique and that no-one else offers. The Crossroad Keep guide and the in-depth OC and MotB Crafting guides are great examples of those.

We've also received some great ideas for new additions or upgrades from our members. In fact, one of our members, mivanc, actually did all of the research for the item locations in our OC item database. An awesome contribution to be sure. Feedback from other members for improvements they would like to see is also extremely important to us. Peter Rhovan from the Bioware forums in particular has given us some great ideas for updates.

How has TG changed since it first started?

Aside from its sheer size? LOL Probably the biggest change has been in the amount of content available and its focus. Although the intended focus of the site has always been on the NWN2 game content, the initial content was very heavily weighted with general Forgotten Realms info. That's no longer the case. NWN2 game content now significantly outweighs the FR content.

The content itself has become more graphic intensive, with new artwork, images, icons added throughout the site. Many of the pages needed some dressing up, so we've been sprucing things up as time permits.

What precipitated the partnership with NWN 2 Mods?

The webmaster (Mike Weimholt) of NWN2Mods.com was about to shut down his fantastic website: he simply didn't have the time to devote to maintaining the site any longer. The Neverwinter Nights Community has always been a very friendly and a strong company based Community. When Mike posted a request for assistance on his site, we didn't want the incredible work of NWN2Mods.com to die and vanish. So Thieves-Guild contacted Mike and started a dialogue over what Mike needed and how we might help. Eventually we agreed to host all of the great Pre-Fabs that had been done by NWN2Mods over on our site and establish a new set of forums devoted to the pre-fabs. The community is the real winner as Mike's work is still available and the new forums give people a venue to continue discussing it.

What are the long-term goals of this partnership?

In short: to continue to provide a download venue for the incredible Pre-Fabs that Mike and NWN2 Mods have generated for the community and to provide a platform for custom content creators to discuss them on our forums. Should Mike decide to venture back into the modding community we would love to add any new pre-fabs that he generates to our site.

Have you received any feedback from developers about TG and/or NWN 2 Mods?

We've been working at building stronger ties with the developers for the future, but that takes a little time. We think we have made some progress though. We just recently added an interview with Ossian for their upcoming release of Mysteries of Westgate.

How has the community responded to Thieves' Guild and the news about the NWN 2 Mods merger?

A couple of very large NWN2 fan sites (including WarCry) have mentioned the merger in their news and the NWN2 pre-fabs have already been downloaded a few hundred times, so the news is spreading. We're pleased that people are responding to the change.

Right now a huge variety of topics are covered on the site. What are the more immediate content updates on the way?

There are two large updates in the works. We have just finished an expanded Feat section that we added to character creation section. A number of people have commented on the lack of a feat list for the OC in the character creation section (beyond the code lists that we already had). Truthfully, it was simply the sheer size that put us off before. The new Feat section will include feat descriptions, icons, codes, prerequisites and usage and will be merged with (and have the same type of page format as) the existing Epic Feat section for MotB. We're not planning on including all 2000+ feats however, but the new section will cover a substantial number of them. All that remains is to proof it for typos and check the internal links. (Note: This is finished and will be "live" when this interview appears on WarCry.)

The second update is a 4th and what we hope (did I just jinx this?) will be final rewrite of the walkthrough for the Original campaign. The existing walkthrough has some gaps in it that need to be addressed. The rewrite is underway and should solve both of those issues. In addition, we plan to link the walkthrough to the map section which was just overhauled about 6 weeks ago. This should make it easier to pull up a map at the places you actually need one. Or you can go straight to the maps if that's all you need. Act 1 is almost finished, but I would rather not speculate on when the entire walkthrough will be finished.

Aside from the major updates such as the two above, it seems like we are always making small changes to pages here and there: adding or updating the artwork, changing formats or layout of various pages.

Anything you can tell us about future updates and long term plans?

Our immediate plans are to continue to cover future expansions and any official adventure packs for NWN2, starting with Mysteries of Westgate. We already have some limited content up for the Mysteries of Westgate Adventure Pack with additional space reserved for a walkthrough and maps after it is released. An influence guide of some fashion is a distinct possibility as well, although that will depend on the game itself. The existing MoW sections will be updated as needed after the game is released. Beyond that, it is difficult to forecast because the content is dependent on what is released with the game.

We are looking at trying to expand our content into other areas of the NWN2 community - particularly on the modding side, but not solely restricted to that. We're going to add some things which will allow our members to keep an eye on the modding community thru a series of blog links. We're also planning a very limited expansion of the download section to try to provide some of the best and most used community mods and custom content. We are not trying to compete with the Vault - the sheer scope of what they provide makes that impossible. The proposed additions are simply an attempt to provide an alternate download location for our members for the things we like the most.

We're also planning on revamping the look of the site. I received some excellent feedback on the site layout not too long ago, and we've incorporated some minor changes already. We're still trying out a number of different things at the moment, but you can expect a cleaner look when the changes are implemented. We will have a new banner and the background image will be removed entirely. Getting everything to come together is taking a little longer than we hoped for because we are testing a lot of different options. I think people will like the new look when it's fully implemented.

Please include any other comments and/or topics you'd like to have covered in the article.

Thanks!

Thanks to Thieves Guild for taking the time with this. If you have yet to visit their site, please do by CLICKING HERE.