So I've gotten back into playing Neverwinter Nights recently and I roped a couple friends into playing. However there's been some less-than-stellar experiences. The main campaign for Neverwinter is solid, but it's a massive endeavor. Shadows of Undrentide (at least in my experience) gets flat-out ridiculous in difficulty and Hordes of the Underdark just doesn't play too well with multiple players.

I wanted to try some of the other premium modules with my friends and I (Most notably the Infinite Dungeons module, as it works better in just a raw hack and slash-y way) but I seem to keep finding conflicting information. I hear that the modules (Infinite Dungeons, Wyvern Crown of Cormyr, and Pirates of the Sword Coast) are no longer available for play since all the relevant servers are down...but I also hear that because those servers are down you CAN play them.

I legitimately purchased these modules way back when they were still available directly from Bioware and I cannot play them at all. Can someone please clarify for me whether or not it actually IS possible to play these modules and, if they are, help me figure out why it just hangs on the authentication for me when I attempt to play one.

The official servers have been closed, so you will not be able to play multiplayer on official servers. However, the modules still work. They will just pause for a moment while trying to authenticate. Need convincing? Attached image is from a game of Pirates of the Sword Coast started just a few minutes ago.

That still doesn't explain why it won't launch them for me. It gets hung up where it's trying to authenticate and just sits there.

Have you allowed them access through your firewall?

I haven't explicitly created exceptions for it but there shouldn't be anything blocking them.

edit: Well alright. For literally no reason I can discern I tried again and got in. This makes no sense as I had tried just a few minutes prior and it sat there attempting to authenticate for 5 minutes and nothing.

They do that sometimes. If the module/s won't authenticate, either go away and have a coffee or try again later. I don't know why they do that, but they do.

Glad you've got it working :)

You just have to be online, so maybe it was something with your connection at the time which caused it not to work temporarily?

Anyway, all those discussions here about whether the servers will be up or done after the end of July were hypothetical, now it's confirmed they didn't shut the PM authentication server down.

Well, I've managed to get the modules to work, but I suppose the real question is this: Can my friends, who only have Diamond Edition copies bought off of GoG, potentially play these modules? I keep seeing mixed reports that you need to have purchased them in the past but also you can just play them for free now.

I get that you can't play on official servers, but my friends just directly connect when we play online. So is this a thing we could do or am I tilting at windmills?

If you purchased the modules when they were being sold, you can re-download them from the following links. Note that is is no longer possible to register them, so if you never bought them you are out of luck and the links are useless.

Kingmaker
Shadowguard plus Witches Wake
Pirates of the Sword Coast
Infinite Dungeons
Wyvern Crown of Cormyr

They CAN be downloaded if you haven't purchased them previously, but you are saying that they simply will not run if you didn't purchase them in the past, right?

When you purchased them your NWN login details were used to authenticate and register them. That's not possible now. I don't have first-hand knowledge of what would happen if you tried to install them now, if you haven't previously purchased and registered them. My understanding is that they won't install.

There is no authentication. Anyone can play them now, which irritates former purchasers who laid out their cash for the "priviledge". The pause that you experience when starting one of the premiums not included in the Diamond edition is only running the module load and trying to make the connection with the authenticator's server. It just skips the authentication after the connection is established. But it is still subject to latency just like any other server. Those attempts can stall just like the one trying to run the applicable Premiums if the server can't send packets fast enough.

I don't know where the module load interface server is located, but that could be part of the problem. Check your ping as the connection is trying to establish and traceroute to identify how many routers it must traverse from your IP.

Bottom line: keep trying. There's nothing preventing the module load. If you don't have any CD keys at all, there are generators around where you can get a dummy good enough to play, though they would most likely not work on PWs with their own authentication software.