So far, around 100 people, with a core of about 30, have volunteered their time and -- just as important -- their money to establish and maintain the new Faerun's servers. "Right now we are putting together a script and a graphical layout based on the original NwN. There are about half a dozen of us working on the graphical maps right now, and we're a third of the way through the 31 zones of the old game," says Snake. BioWare's Aurora Toolset will be released with the game in mid-2001, though Trent Oster says that they may announce some kind of open beta as the tools take shape. Then the NWC can get down to the technical side of recreating the original Neverwinter Nights; Snake hopes to be able to launch soon after the game's release.

The original Neverwinter Nights gave birth to a special community with heroic figures and firebrands, people out to have a good time and people spoiling for a fight -- just like real life. Can Snake and the Neverwinter Consortium bring that lost world back to life? Let's hope so. As Snake signs his posts, "Keep the faith!"

Postscript: "AOhelL"
AOL seems to have forgotten all about oNwN. A search of their press releases since January 1996 doesn't turn up a single entry for "Neverwinter Nights," and my requests for an interview were ignored. America Online's Games Channel still exists, with an "Xtreme" (their word) area where subscribers are given the luxury of paying $1.99 an hour to play text-based RPGs and low-tech flight sims -- games far behind the industry's technology and design curve. Another area charges 99¢ an hour for hearts, chess and backgammon, all of which are available free at a dozen sites across the 'Net. But with 23,000,000 subscribers and their recent megamerger with Time-Warner, they don't seem to be hurting. Is the AOL Games Channel a case of Xtreme greed? It sure seems like it.

Just think, for the price of BioWare's Neverwinter Nights, you could play 50 hours of bingo. What a deal.