A lot of thought went into it before picking NWN (Neverwinter Nights) as the platform for this project. I thought about and or took a look at Unreal, Unity, Skyrim, NWN1, NWN2, and a few other games. However NWN2 and NWN1 won out really quickly.
Both NWN1 and NWN2 already support and have D&D rules, classes, races, spells, combat, and so on. They have toolsets making it easy for area creators/story tellers to setup adventures. They allow for you to create modules, servers, worlds, and host them for others to play. Then there is the fact that they are D&D games which Wizards of the Coast have a hand in. So since you have to buy NWN to play our project WotC is making money off it. There for, you don’t have the licensing problems that you would have when creating your own game.
Now why NWN1 over NWN2? Well NWN1 is once again fully supported with server listing, bug fixes and updates. It also has even more of its code opened up to the community then ever before making it easier to convert the Forgotten realms content to Dark Sun.
Long story short after looking into everything it was a no brainer. NWN1 was the way to go for a team of fans who wanted to recreate the world of Athas (Dark Sun) in their free time after work, school, and or family time.
Dark Sun Sands of Time 