Three expansion packs were subsequently released for the game: Shadows of Undrentide in June 2003; Hordes of the Underdark in December 2003; and Kingmaker in November 2004.

The PC is tasked with defeating a powerful cult, collecting four reagents required to stop a plague, and thwarting an attack on the city of Neverwinter, located along the Sword Coast of Faerûn, in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons.

[15] This process grants significant allowance for customization; one can be, for example, an outdoorsman (ranger) or a healer (cleric), then choose skills and feats that would work well with that class in the game.

Depending on the specific quests completed, and the unique items kept, some storylines are continued throughout the entire game, such as the Henchman's or Aribeth's tales.

The game's mechanics are based on the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rule set;[16] the outcome of most actions, such as combat and skills usage, are randomly determined by dice rolls.

[21] Previous games such as Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, based on the printed gamebooks by White Wolf Publishing, utilized this feature to a limited extent.

[23] These modules may take the form of online multiplayer worlds,[24] single player adventures, character trainers or technology demos.

[25] Third party utilities allow builders to create custom content for most aspects of the game, ranging from new playable races and character classes to new tilesets, monsters and equipment.

[16] The Waterdhavian creatures are needed to make a cure for the Wailing Death, a plague that is sweeping the city of Neverwinter and forcing a quarantine.

The PC retrieves the diaries of dead cultists and letters from a person named Maugrim Korothir, which convince Aribeth that the cult's headquarters are in Luskan.

The hero discovers that the Words open a portal to a pocket world inside the Source Stone, where Morag and the other Old Ones sealed themselves long ago to avoid extinction during a primordial ice age.

For the launch of Neverwinter Nights, publisher Infogrames shipped 1 million copies to stores, with half allocated to North America and the rest to international markets.

[28] It debuted at #1 on The NPD Group's computer game sales chart during the June 16–22 period,[30] and held the position for two weeks, before being displaced by Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

[43] GameSpot referred to it as "one of those exceedingly rare games that has a lot to offer virtually everyone, even if they aren't already into RPGs", and praised it for its campaign, its Aurora toolset, and its graphics.

[17] GamePro noted the game's graphics as being "gorgeous" and its sound as "untouchable",[46] and GameZone likewise praised its visuals, specifically mentioning its combat animation and spell effects as being well done.

[16] Peter Suciu of Newsweek magazine called Neverwinter Nights "possibly the richest fantasy PC experience ever created.

[66][63][67][68] The editors of Computer Gaming World wrote that Neverwinter Nights "gave gamers a fabulous toolset for creating their own adventures—too bad the single-player campaign prompted a staffwide shrugging of shoulders.

BioWare used Neverwinter Nights and its toolset to develop prototypes and mock-ups of various areas and scenarios for Dragon Age: Origins.

Atari and BioWare helped to promote and release free downloadable hakpaks, models, and tileset expansion packs, which greatly expanded the possibilities of mod-making.

[citation needed] The Players Resource Consortium (PRC) was released in early December 2003, and is a group of hakpaks adding classes, races, skills, and spells to the game.

[77] In late 2004, BioWare launched its online store and started selling what it called "premium modules" as part of its digital distribution program.

These smaller-scale adventures introduced new storylines and gameplay, and include new music and art that BioWare integrated into later patches to the core game.

According to BioWare, the revenue generated by sales of the premium modules would be used to support their fan community and provide ongoing updates and improvements to the game.

The story was a mix of fantasy and science fiction and involved the protagonist dealing with the machinations of a multinational corporation called Cathedral.

In August 2006, Ossian Studios Inc., headed up by Alan Miranda, a former producer at BioWare, released the second canceled premium module to the Vault: Darkness over Daggerford.

Darkness over Daggerford's status as a quasi-official expansion pack was supported by the next release of the team, this time a fully official one: Mysteries of Westgate for Neverwinter Nights 2.

On August 23, 2010, Atari announced Cryptic Studios would be developing Neverwinter, an online role-playing game based on the book series of the same name by R.A.

It has been used at West Nottinghamshire College in the United Kingdom as a means of delivering key skills and of showing IT designers how to understand the coding in the game.

[85] The University of Alberta has offered a video game design course which uses Neverwinter Nights and the Aurora Toolset as the platform for teaching and course projects.

This version includes fixes made by the community since the last release, graphic improvements, premium modules, and the return of a multiplayer server list that was lost when GameSpy shut down.