Today we have an interview with Stratovarius, from the Player Resource Cornsortium. The PRC scooped the 2006 NWN Golden Dragon Award for ‘Community Contribution’, one of the most prestigious rewards awarded by AME & NWVault. He tells us of some of the trials faced by the PRC, where they are going from here, as well as his views on the Golden Dragons and working with DLA.

To read the interview and discuss it, go here.

The last category in NWN2 has just closed for nominations. We’ll be releasing the names of the finalists very shortly…

Well the tallying continues and we’ll soon be able to let a little bit of news on the finalists out. We’ve had a lot of nominations this year, and in most categories only 3 of those get to the finals. Quite a lot of ‘big name’ nominations have bitten the dust along the way in several categories, so it promises to be an interesting set of finalists…

Our hectic period of testing is coming to an end, the nominations for most categories in NWN2 have now been completed, with just a few stragglers leftover…

So what does that mean? It means that the finalists will start being announced fairly soon…

For those who just love statistics, the AME voting panel reached 50 nominations for the 2007 award cycle yesterday. Yes, you read it correctly, 50 nominations (excluding disqualified ones). This probably gives you some idea of just how many works the members of AME have tested over the last 3 months.

And finally, the end is coming into sight…

As some parts of the world settle in to celebrate Easter, we’re looking forward to celebrating the release of the NWN2 Finalists. Keep an eye on the site – finalists will be announced within a month…

The Community Contribution award is perhaps one of the most sought after of the Golden Dragon awards, perhaps because it is one of the hardest to win, but also because it covers such a diversity of content. In order to make the rules clearer, we have added an additional guideline so that you can tell if you are elligible for this category, based on whether you have provided a tool or a service to the community.

What is the qualifying date for a submission:

A hard submission date for a single tool. This will be the upload date to the Vault. Such submissions include tutorials, plugins, tools, utilities, etc

An ongoing eligibility for a service. The service must be continually kept up to date. Such submissions include websites and other community services.

Note that module authors are not eligible for this award for their module contributions, as the Veteran and Debut Author awards cover them.

Today we have an interview with David John, who won the Golden Dragon for Best Sound/Music for NWN for 2006. He talks about his inspirations, how he got into NWN, how he composes work and the Mysteries of Westgate adventure pack…

You can read and discuss the interview here.

In Greece we have a traddition of wishing ‘Good X’ or ‘Happy X’ for nearly every occasion – Happy 1st day of the month, Happy journey, Good appetite, Happy Winter etc. Since Leap years don’t come up often (for Gregorian calendar users, every 4 years except when it lands on the turn of the century that is not divisible by 400) – we thought we’d take the opportunity to wish everyone a Happy Leap Year!

…oh and by the way, it’s already the 29th where I’m writing this…

The Vault has posted information for this year’s NWN and NWN2 MotY competitions, for which voting starts on the 3rd of March. The MotY is a popular contest that allows all members of the community to vote on their favourite module. This prestigious award has been running for several years, and it was to supplement this award that the Golden Dragons were conceived and endorsed by NWVault.

There are plenty of great mods in both competitions – you can check out the shortlists here: NWN and NWN2.

Note: the MotY is totally seperate from the Golden Dragon Awards and neither effects the other in any way.