The Vault is Down. But Vault 2.0 is up!

Edit: And...the Old Vault is back up.  Apparently, this was a false alarm...but it's also a sign of times to come.  The Old Vault is basically done, and chances are that it will not be around much longer.  The future of the Neverwinter Nights modding community lies with Neverwintervault.org and Neverwinter2.nexus.com.  It's time to migrate and say goodbye to the old vault.  The good news is that this gives the crew at Vault 2 a bit more time.

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It finally happened.

Without warning, IGN finally pulled the plug on nwvault.ign.com, shutting down the site around which the entire Neverwinter community revolved.  It really can't be undersold what a blow this is.  The Vault contained a near-complete archive of all content ever created for the two Neverwinter Nights games.

It's not all doom and gloom, however.  Rolo Kipp and his cohort have, over the past year, copied every single file off of the old Vault and onto their hard drives.  They've created a new site, Neverwintervault.org, which will serve as a new place for the community to share files.  The old files aren't yet available, and it seems like there are all kinds of logistics to work out...but still, there's hope!  Kudos to those guys for making this happen, and many thanks to Rolo for also simultaneously maintaining the Vault for the past while.

The new Vault site has potential.  It has all of the old categories, and appears quite flexible in terms of handling new content.  It has project pages for modules, and a 1-10 voting system (I'd prefer 1-5, but this might allow them to import the old votes).  It doesn't seem quite as "slick" as the old vault, at least not yet, but that might get better...and changing skins to "Garland" (register and then choose the skin on the left-hand side) helped a lot, in my opinion.

For the time being, until the old archives reappear, this dramatically reduces my choices in terms of modules to download and play.  There are currently a total of five NWN2 modules available at neverwintervault.org, plus another 48 over at Neverwinter 2 Nexus.

The Nexus has really been improving a lot lately, and it's much easier now to find ways to sort based on module quality than it used to be.  I do wish there was a bit more nuance to a vote than simply endorsing it.  For example, I rated Shaar Moan as a "7" on the old Vault2 rating system.  So, do I give Shaar Moan an endorsement?  Probably.  But what if it was instead a 6, "qualified recommendation?"

Also, does anyone know what the "Vote" button does at Nexus?

Sicko

Tonight, my wife and I went out and had our first dinner & movie date since before our daughter was born well over a year ago.

We saw Sicko. This is the third Michael Moore film I've seen, and it was the best of the three.

I'm going to be brief about this: I feel disappointed in and embarrassed for my country right now. Yes, like all Moore films that I've seen, it is one-sided, and prone to oversimplification and hyperbole. But also like all of his films that I've seen, there is enough substance to his argument to be both compelling and impossible to ignore.

I can't pretend to know the best solution for health care in this country. I'm going to wager that it will probably not be exactly the same as what works for other countries. But I am certain of two things. One, there is a very real and very serious problem here, and it is completely unacceptable. And two, we as a country have a moral obligation to fix it.

...I won't let my politics become a regular intrusion on my postings here, as I know that's not why you folks come here. But at the same time, part of the reason I have this blog is so that I can have a voice about things I care about. So I'm going to go ahead and be off topic this time. Future posts will be back to focusing on hacking and slashing. Mostly.

Banned!

So, I got banned from the Bioware Forums today for the first time! Here's proof:
I was responding to this thread. Here, as best as I'm able to recreate it, is the message I was trying to post:

Yeah, I can certainly understand not want to give a low vote. My general rule of thumb is that I only vote on modules that I complete. And if I'm not enjoying a module, I will generally not complete it.

Nevertheless, I wanted to echo Childhood's suggestion to at least try to leave constructive feedback. Most builders are very happy to receive feedback, even when critical, as long as it is written in a constructive tone. One thing I always try to do (in addition to being sure to highlight the good as well as the bad) is to accompany any criticisms I have with suggestions for how the problem might be addressed. This helps me to emphasize how an author might improve his or her work, and to keep the tone positive and encouraging.
-B

Let's see here. No obvious swears. No words that I see that could contain a bad word, like "cumbersome," "shittake mushrooms," or even "craptacular." Heck, I don't even think I was saying anything that could be construed as controversial! Anyone have any ideas? I haven't gotten a response from Bioware yet as to what the heck is going on, though I certainly hope I will. :)