Neverwinter book part of game announcement

I received an email that announced a book, Gauntigrym by R.A. Salvatore, published on Oct. 5. It was sent to me because I subscribe to the Neverwinter newsletter after I played Neverwinter Nights from Bioware for years. I never played Neverwinter Nights 2 by Atari, but I still had an interest in the game after playing the original version. I never purchased NWN2 because it didn't seem to live up to the hype and would not improve on many of the features of the original. I continued to play around with Neverwinter Nights and used some of the development tools to see if I could design my own game. I did learn how hard it is to develop a game.

Anyway, I don't remember receiving any notice of the game Neverwinter, which was announced in August and is being developed by Cryptic Studios, maker of Champions Online and other titles. It is expected to be released by the end of 2011.

Announcing a book before the game is a strategy similar to what Blizzard did when announcing Cataclysm books before the expansion is out for World of Warcraft. The book could help players get into the lore, which can be intriguing for some audiences, especially role-players.

Neverwinter does sound like an interesting game, especially because there is supposed to be a persistent world multiplayer environment, rather than an instanced environment like Dungeons & Dragons Online.