Neverwinter Nights (2002 video game)

Neverwinter Nights
North American PC cover art
Developer(s)	BioWare
Publisher(s)	Infogrames[a]
Director(s)	Trent Oster
Producer(s)	Trent Oster
Designer(s)	Brent Knowles James Ohlen
Programmer(s)	Scott Greig
Artist(s)	Marc Holmes David Hibbeln
Writer(s)	David Gaider Drew Karpyshyn Lukas Kristjanson Kevin Martens
Composer(s)	Jeremy Soule Inon Zur (additional music)
Series	Neverwinter Nights
Engine	Aurora
Platform(s)	Windows Linux Mac OS X Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 Xbox One
Release	June 18, 2002 Windows NA: June 18, 2002 EU: June 28, 2002 AU: July 3, 2002 Linux WW: June 19, 2003 Mac OS X NA: July 30, 2003 EU: 2003 Switch, PS4, Xbox One WW: December 3, 2019
Genre(s)	Role-playing
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Neverwinter Nights is a role-playing video game developed by BioWare. Interplay Entertainment was originally set to publish the game, but financial difficulties led to it being taken over by Infogrames, who released the game under their Atari range of titles. It is the first installment in the Neverwinter Nights series and was released for Microsoft Windows on June 18, 2002. BioWare later released a Linux client in June 2003, requiring a purchased copy of the game to play.^[1] MacSoft released a Mac OS X port in August 2003.

Neverwinter Nights is set in the fantasy world of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, with the game mechanics based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rules. The game engine was designed around an Internet-based model for running a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG), which would allow end users to host game servers. Up to 64 players could connect to a single server.^[2] The intent was to create a potentially infinite massively multiplayer game framework. This game was named after the original Neverwinter Nights online game, the first graphical massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG),^[3] which operated from 1991 to 1997 on AOL.

The original release of Neverwinter Nights includes the game engine, a game campaign that can be played as single player or in multiplayer mode, and on Windows releases, the Aurora toolset used for creating custom content that would run in the same engine. Three expansion packs were subsequently released for the game: Shadows of Undrentide in June 2003; Hordes of the Underdark in December 2003; and Kingmaker in November 2004. BioWare began selling premium modules through an online store in late 2004. The game's success led to a sequel, Neverwinter Nights 2, released on October 31, 2006.

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