TL;DR
Neverwinter Nights continues to attract thousands of active players due to its multiplayer and modding tools, despite a single-player experience that players describe as just okay.
Neverwinter Nights · official art via IGDBNeverwinter Nights maintains a tight-knit and active community more than two decades after its release. While the single-player campaign is described by players as just okay, the game remains popular because of its emphasis on multiplayer and its toolset for content creation.
BioWare's Ray Muzyka previously told IGN that the game was built on four pillars: single player, multiplayer, DMing tools, and module making tools. He stated the studio aimed to make all four pillars equivalently high quality, with a goal for the single-player experience to be better than previous BioWare titles like Baldur's Gate.
The game was originally intended to be a trial run for a massively multiplayer game. However, BioWare abandoned those ambitions before the game shipped because an MMO was more difficult to develop than the studio expected. Instead, the game functions as a platform for small communities and includes a toolset that allows virtual dungeon masters to run live sessions on servers.