Linux Journal: Building a Better Game

“During the course of researching Neverwinter Nights and Shadows
of Undrentide, I had the opportunity to speak with the creator of
Nordock, Marc Richter, and the gentleman who hosts the official
server, Doug Rhea. Nordock is a persistent world (PW) mod to
Neverwinter Nights. You can find more information about Nordock and
its official servers at www.nordock.net.

“Linux Journal: Can you tell me a little about
yourself and the persistent world you’ve created? Marc
Richter: Sure thing. I’m 36 going on 14, married, have
four kids and work as a computer support guy at Merck & Co.
Nordock was meant [to be] a simple little hack and slash mod. I
would host it on one box while not DMing mods for friends. Well, it
turned out that people actually liked the silly thing, so I ended
up building on it, much like a weed. Today, it runs on five
official severs and countless others as the public release. Anyway,
I’ve played computer games since 1979, and I’ve played on-line on
and off since the late 80s. I got sucked into EverQuest back in
2001. Neverwinter Nights was my chance to own the keys, as it were,
but many of the systems and other pieces definitely were inspired
by my time in EQ and other MMORPGs (massive multiplayer on-line
role playing games), such as Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online,
Diablo 2 and Gemstone on Genie…”

Complete
Story