wanna have a private nwn party but can’t afford to buy more copies of nwn, sou, or hotu? already running your own linux server? accidentally upgraded to 1.66 and have no way of turning back?
[edited]
i originally wanted to put in the exact solution to this scenario, but i don’t want to be too much of a bad guy. 🙂 instead, i’ll just let some observations loose.
if you do a google search on ‘nwmaster’, you’ll find many sites talking about how to stop nwn from contacting the bioware master server.
however, every circumvention will lead to breakthrough in prevention, hence version 1.66. now, you can’t avoid contact with the master server, because the game server you’re connecting to will be your middle man. ie. the game server will send them your cd key.
can’t block the server you want to play on, can you? if you want to play on most public servers or persistent worlds, too bad, go buy the game. me? i bought bf2. ha.
but if you just want to have a private party with some buddies, you can still bypass the check if you’re running a linux server with a stateful firewall like ipfw. all you need to do is just accept and maintain incoming connections to your server, and deny fresh outgoing connections via the game port.
if you have no clue what i’m talking about, then you’re probably not interested in this particular post. or if you are, then go buy the game. 😛 it’s old, but it’s expanding with all the custom modules and whatnot. you can wait for neverwinter nights 2 to come out and buy that. nwn 1 would be cheaper too. 😀