February 2001

Neverwinter Nights Team Chat
Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2001 - 10:16 CET by Mollusken

The NWN team will take a break in their development of the game and hear what the future NWN gamers have to say.
The chat will take place on Thursday, March 1st, 2001 6:00 p.m. PST (9:00 p.m. EST), and you can join the chat by following this link, and joining the channel #ignvault. You can also use whatever other IRC client you feel like, by concecting to the server host17.webmaster.com, and joining the same channel.

Baldur's Gate 2 Expansion Ad
Posted Tuesday, February 27, 2001 - 9:54 CET by Mollusken

Although Interplay keeps quiet about the official Baldur's Gate 2 expansion pack: Throne of Bhaal, an ad has appeared in April's Computer Gaming World magazine. Planet Baldur's Gate has a scan of the ad on their pages.

And by the way: A cool Heart of Winter Flash video has appeared at Interplay.com.

New BioFiles Column at GA-RPG
Posted Monday, February 26, 2001 - 23:24 CET by Sorcerer

James Ohlen from BioWare is back again with a new edition of his BioWare Column. James continues on with the fourth part of his look at just what he feels they could have done a better job on in Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and how that will translate itself into an improved product for their upcoming Star Wars RPG title and Neverwinter Nights. You can check out the latest edition of the column at GA-RPG.

Boo Tries Out New Career
Posted Monday, February 26, 2001 - 13:48 CET by Mollusken

Rumour has it that our lovable miniature giant space hamster is getting tired of the RPG business: He has recently been spotted in a cartoon! Does Minsc really know about this? Watch Boo's attempt at making some more money and become a more important actor here.

Another Heart of Winter preview
Posted Monday, February 26, 2001 - 8:31 CET by Mollusken

GameZNet has also done a preview of this expansion, and they feel rather disappointed. The price of it seems to bother them, but we all know that money is easy to spend on a great RPG experience. The game-story isn't too exciting for them either. But the music takes new heights, and the graphics shouldn't be to bad. Read more here.

Heart of Winter Review at RPGPlanet
Posted Sunday, February 25, 2001 - 21:47 CET by Sorcerer

For lack of any other relevant news, here's another review of HoW.
RPGPlanet's reviewer thoroughly explored the expansion and its new features, and liked it a lot. Even though I've played the beta I still wish those european distributors would hurry up a bit. It's probably going to take another week or two before the thing even gets here. Oh the joy of living on this side of the globe. Sigh.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Here's a short clip from the review:

Combat remains an intense hack 'n slash ordeal, rather than the smaller battles of Baldur's Gate II, they remind distinctly that Icewind Dale's focus is combat, and the expansion doesn't change this. The AI, however, has been improved, and anyone trying the old trick of attracting one creature through the fog of war and 'dividing and conquering' will find that the AI will call for help rather than sit there and let you hack them apart one by one.

This improvement raises the challenge of the expansion considerably, and forces players to use different strategies. The game also adds a number of new enemies, and older foes such as the frost giants benefit from the improved resolution boost. New enemies include formidable foes such as the drownded dead and the deadly wailing virgins of the burial isle, and polar menaces, such as remorhaz.

Read the rest here.

Site News - New Additions
Posted Sunday, February 25, 2001 - 21:06 CET by Sorcerer

Whew...
And I thought last week's update was a big one. There's probably more work in this one. Check out the new goods below. ;)

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 1

Best to start at the beginning, so here we go...
There's a lot more new stuff in this section than usual. I have been going through my old HD backups and found some nifty stuff. I made my old notes about the NPCs into one cool Baldur's Gate NPCs guide if I say so myself.
In it you will find detailed descriptions of all 25 NPCs available in the game, complete with their portraits, stats and histories. The guide is quite big, so give it time to load fully. ;)

Two new additions were also made to the Editors, Hacks & Cap Removers subsection. Look out for a new trainer and a permanent experience cap remover.

Finally, there are two new guides/walkthroughs in the main Baldur's Gate subsection. One is for Baldur's Gate, and the other for Tales of the Sword Coast expansion. My NPC guide mentioned above was also added to this subsection.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale

The amount of new additions here is a bit smaller. I have added another game guide to the main Icewind Dale subsection, and a support page for Heart of Winter expansion to the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection.
Coincidentally, if you have any questions or problems regarding the expansion, feel free to use our Icewind Dale & HoW forum.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Planescape: Torment

Only one addition here, namely a new game guide in the Walkthroughs & Guides subsection.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

I have also put together something special for this section in today's update. Remember my guide to kits I posted ages ago, before the game was even released?
It is about time I replaced it with an updated version, so I've gathered info about all the kits (and new classes) as they were actually implemented in the game and made it into a new guide to kits. The old version of the Sorcerer's Guide to Kits has been left in tact, and you may still refer to it if you wish, since it does have some additional info I left out in the new guide.
You can access both of them from the Walkthroughs & Guides subsection. You will also find another new game guide there.

A spell list (Excel spreadsheet) with all wizard & priest spells has been submitted to us, and has been added to the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Pool of Radiance: RoMD

It has been a while since I made any updates in this section, so I've got a couple of new things on display now.
The Miscellanea subsection has been updated with 3 new additions. First is the History of Myth Drannor which I compiled a while ago but totally forgot to include there.

The other two are Gods in Pool of Radiance and Major Adventure Sites in Pool of Radiance. Both are very interesting reads (MAS also packs 3 screenshots) and should give you a bit more info about the upcoming 3rd edition D&D CRPG.

Garrett Graham (PoR2) Interviewed at Mindless Games
Posted Saturday, February 24, 2001 - 21:56 CET by Sorcerer

A quite lengthy interview with the producer of SSI's upcoming CRPG Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor has been posted at Mindless Games.
Pool of Radiance is a continuation of SSI's original legendary series of CRPGs: Pool of Radiance(1988), Curse of the Azure Bonds(1989), Secret of the Silver Blades (1990), and Pool of Darkness(1991). Those titles were the first games to start the legendary Gold Box Series.

A snippet from the interview:

Q: Will this new version stay true to the original AD&D rules, in that will we have to build a character from the ground up, choosing the race, gender etc? Will we be able to modify our attributes as the original did, allowing us to max out all of the attributes or just leave it from the die roll we do?

Garrett: You will be able to create up to 4 characters from any combination of the following races (human, elf, dwarf, half-elf, halfling, half-orc) and classes (fighter, barbarian, ranger, paladin, monk, rogue, sorcerer, cleric). You can multi-class as well in the game, which can lead to some interesting combinations of skills and powers. Character generation is a little different than in the past, though, as we opted to use the new, alternative method for creating a character. You get to start with 25 points to spend on your 6 main attributes, which all begin at a score of 8. Therefore, you have complete control over how strong, dexterous, intelligent, or charismatic you character eventually becomes. Add onto that the new 3rd Edition rule of being able to increase an ability score by 1 point every 4 levels, and you have a very flexible system for players to explore.

See and read the rest here.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Friday, February 23, 2001 - 0:13 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which BG2 NPC has the best dialogue in your opinion?
(572 votes total)

Minsc (239) 42%
Jan Jansen (65) 11%
Viconia (48) 8%
Aerie (40) 7%
Jaheira (34) 6%
Korgan (33) 6%
Edwin (30) 5%
Yoshimo (20) 3%
Imoen (17) 3%
Haer'Dalis (13) 2%
Keldorn Firecam (12) 2%
Anomen (7) 1%
Mazzy Fentan (6) 1%
Valygar (3) 1%
Nalia (3) 1%
Cernd (2) 0%

As some users have noted in poll comments, this poll is far from fair, since no one has recruited all of the NPCs. This is merely a general indicator which NPC's dialogue the majority of people liked most.

First place naturally goes to Minsc. There was hardly a party without him since you can recruit him so early in the game, and after a while he really grows on you. Not to mention that he has some pretty funny lines that accompany his wacky character.

Far, far behind Minsc in popularity is Jan Jansen, the second most popular talker. His witty stories never fail to bring a chuckle to one's face. From the moment you meet him to the moment you decide to leave him behind, Jan always has something funny to say.

Third place goes to Viconia, the ever popular Drow hottie. Goes to show what a bit of dialogue and a romance option can do for a NPC.
She was one of the least favorite NPCs in the original BG, but players' attitude towards her has shifted a great deal in BG2.

Next is Aerie, the little winged elf you can't help but feel sorry for. Although my romance with her has permanently stopped in the Underdark, I must say that she has quite a lot of touching dialogue. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but it seems that many people liked her.

Jaheira stands proudly in sixth place. While she is a (somewhat) welcome addition to the party in the beginning and has a great deal to say as well, she was not exactly my favorite in BG2, although I had her in my party through entire BG1+TOSC.
It's probably a bit different if you decide to pursue a romance with her.

Korgan is close behind Jaheira with only one vote less. His wicked lines are well suited to those of evil alignment. He also has quite a lot to say, most of it very unpleasant. But hey, just what'd you expect from a foul, evil dwarf, right?

Edwin is the last of the most popular NPCs. (More than 5% of votes).
I found his continuos ranting and manifestations of the God complex that has only grown since BG1 highly amusing. Not to mention the whole Edwina incident, which is one of the funniest things in the entire game. Highly recommended.

Last 9 NPCs had very poor/uninteresting dialogue, or most people didn't have them in their parties so they could found out more about them.
Yoshimo, Imoen, Haer'Dalis, Keldorn Firecam, Anomen, Mazzy Fentan, Valygar, Nalia and Cernd combined only got a total of about 15% of all votes.

Heart of Winter Previews
Posted Thursday, February 22, 2001 - 22:29 CET by Sorcerer

With Heart of Winter in stores, previews have started popping up all over the net. Most of them are in favor of the expansion, although some note that what HoW has to offer is not enough to justify its price tag.
Blah, blah, blah. All Your Base Are Belong To Us.
Anyway, if you're a fan of the original game, go buy it. You can take it from me, it IS worth it when you weigh in everything the expansion adds to the original game, plus the new areas and stuff that come with HoW.

Heart of Winter Ships
Posted Tuesday, February 20, 2001 - 20:22 CET by Sorcerer

Black Isle Studios announced today that its expansion, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, has shipped to retail.

This expansion pack for the role-playing game Icewind Dale, was developed internally at Black Isle Studios and will offer more classic dungeon crawl using the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition rules under license from Wizards of the Coast, including new monsters, spells, and areas to explore within the Forgotten Realms campaign setting.
Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter also offer many new technological and gameplay enhancements to the original game including higher resolution support, larger monsters and new interface configuration options. The Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter expansion will require an installed copy of the original Icewind Dale in order to run.

In case you missed it, check out our own preview of HoW.

New Bio-Files Published at GA-RPG
Posted Monday, February 19, 2001 - 15:54 CET by Shad

Part 3 of the Bio-Files, over at GA-RPG has been published. This week James Ohlen of Bioware continues his discussion on what he felt went wrong with Baldur's Gate 2, and how Bioware are using their mistakes to benefit in their up and coming Star Wars RPG, and, of course, Neverwinter Nights. This week James talks about strongholds in BG2:

"Strongholds are the class specific base of operations given to a player as a reward for finishing his class specific sub-quest. Out of all the features that made it into Baldur’s Gate 2, the strongholds were the closest to being cut. There was so much more that we could have done with strongholds, but time considerations didn’t allow for this. The main faults that people found with the strongholds are listed below:

Rob Bartel (NWN) Interviewed at XGR
Posted Sunday, February 18, 2001 - 9:47 CET by Sorcerer

An interesting interview with Co-Lead Designer on the Neverwinter Nights project has been spotted at XGR:

How will the third dimension affect gameplay and combat?

The move to 3D hasn't changed the fundamentals of how we interpret the Dungeon & Dragons system but it sure has made combat in Neverwinter Nights look spectacular. Aside from all the flashy spell effects and the glint of reflective weapons and armor, 3D had allowed us to build a wonderfully fluid and interactive combat animation system. When you attack, you will actually be able to see your opponents parry and dodge your blows.

Read more at XGR.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter - Developer Diary #6
Posted Sunday, February 18, 2001 - 9:25 CET by Sorcerer

HoW just went gold, and in its honor J.E. Sawyer ends Black Isle's developer diary series at Gamespy with a satirical tribute to the Onion and gaming.

You will also find 3 new screenshots in this funny article.

Site News - Lots of New Additions
Posted Sunday, February 18, 2001 - 0:06 CET by Sorcerer

Changes, Updates, Additions... Tons of Each

Well, two months have passed since the last major update, so here we go again. This baby took way too much of my time to put together but since I'm known for being very sadistic when it comes to working on my site, I gave it my finest. ;)
I hope you will enjoy it!

Subsection Updates - Community

A small update was made here, namely to the Related links subsection. I have added another fansite, plus a news site with an animated banner.

Some rather important modifications were made to the About Us subsection as well. I have added bios of Erran and Blackthorne, latest members of the Sorcerer's Place Team and changed Syl's status to retired, since he won't be working with us anymore.

Subsection Updates - Fantasy Books

Thought the Other Recommended Books section was going to stay so poorly decorated forever? Wrong. I spent a few hours looking for some great books and added a bunch of new ones. A big thanks to the guy who recommended Gemmel's books to me.
By the way, those Harry Potter books aren't there for no reason. Just out of curiosity, I decided to read one and I must say I have been impressed. Rowling is an exceptional storyteller, and I highly recommend her books.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 1

I have come up with a surprising amount of new additions to this part of the site. For starters, four new walkthroughs and guides were added to the main subsection.
A significant addition was also made to the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection. I have updated the list of tricks there, added a huge list of all creatures from the game, plus an extensive guide dealing with NPCs. All that's missing is a spray paint can so I could make a colorful BG's NOT DEAD graffiti somewhere.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Planescape: Torment

Another huge chunk of NPC quotes were submitted to me by Rasmus, so I added them all to our Planescape: Torment NPC quotes list.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Icewind Dale

I have updated the Heart of Winter features list, plus added updated versions of all downloadable walkthroughs.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Baldur's Gate 2

As usual, the biggest bunch of new additions was made to this game section. Starting with the main Walkthroughs & Guides subsection, there you will be able to find an excellent new walkthrough, a very interesting class FAQ and an AD&D rules FAQ, explaining the ins and outs of 2nd edition D&D.
Moving on to the Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection where two old item lists were removed and replaced with a new, much better one. As per custom, I have also updated my Humongous List of Cheats and added a ton of monsters for your creating pleasure.

Next is the Editors, Hacks & Caps Removers subsection. I have added 5 new interesting custom kits you can use in your game. I still don't know who the author is, so if anyone has a clue, please drop me a note.

By popular demand (OK, in all this time, I got 1 request to put it up), I have also added Jon Irenicus' portrait you will definitely want to use in your game.
Yeah, right.

Valentine's is already behind us, but that doesn't mean you can't have some more lovin' fun in Baldur's Gate 2...
I have added another NPC romances hack similar to the old one, but this one should work with the patched game as well. Polygamy at it's finest.

Last new additions here are four new soundsets. I don't know when we started specializing in those, but the fact is, altogether we now have 34 voice packs available for download. It's nuts, especially since all of them are very good, so deciding which one to pick is becoming increasingly difficult.
Anyway, the 4 new soundset are: 2 of Guybrush Threepwood (cool), one of Murray, The Talking Demonic Skull (best soundset EVER), and a huge 19 MB file containing soundsets of all NPCs from Baldur's Gate 2, a highly requested item.
These were all obtained from FilePlanet, but I'm doing everyone here a big favor by offering them for download, since getting anything off FilePlanet is a nightmare. Honestly, FilePlanet gives the words "seriously overloaded servers" an entirely new meaning.

Subsection Updates - Games -> Neverwinter Nights

Erran has been busy working on our AORTA Guildpages, and it shows. The entire section has been made anew and I think it looks and feels much better than before.
Slowly, but surely, we're getting there.

More on Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
Posted Saturday, February 17, 2001 - 23:04 CET by Sorcerer

I was wondering whether I should even post this, but since Sorcerer's Place IS about everything-BG, I decided to do it anyway.
But first, let's get a few things straight. The only thing Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (being developed for PS2) has in common with the Baldur's Gate Games on PC is the name, the city where part of the action is going on, and some story parts. But not that it's in any way connected to the PC games, it only sounds like the story was compiled by throwing BG2's and BG1's story together.
It is also as much a role-playing game as Diablo is (0). Some people will like that, but personally, I don't.
As far as good points go... The game looks very nice, and is in 3D too (obviously). It also kinda reminds me of the Neverwinter Nights look. Hmm...

When I originally wanted to post this article it was much longer, but since then the server messed up twice and I lost the whole news post each time. So I'll just leave it to yourselves to make your own opinions about this new game.
A bunch of previews of it have popped up around the net, so it won't be too difficult:

Baldur's Gate II: The Best Game I'll Never Finish
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2001 - 22:08 CET by Sorcerer

Haha, no it's not my quote, even though if you asked me a month ago, I'd definitely agree! ;)

A short preview of the game has popped up at The Mushroom. Its writer is frustrated with the length of the game, but still awards it 9/10 mushrooms:

I have to say right up front that I didn't finish Baldur's Gate 2. I probably never will. That doesn't mean I didn't love the game, or enjoy the time I put into it. In fact, I think it's probably the best RPG ever made. Some may consider the primary flaw of Baldur's Gate 2 to be just how immense the world is. One thing's for certain though. The first time I popped this game in, it had me hooked.

I was lucky enough to have four days off from work, and they all went by in a blur. Four days, no moving, no eating, no talking, just playing. It was a pathetic sight. If my girlfriend came in the room, she would just get a glare. I'm very surprised she's still with me. It was only when the game reminded me to eat that I would take a break to grab some grub. Four straight days. I haven't done that since Final Fantasy 7, which single-handedly ruined my freshman year at college.

Read the rest at the Mushroom.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2001 - 21:45 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which monsters in Baldur's Gate 2 did you find the hardest to kill?
(553 votes total)

Dragons (181) 33%
Liches (135) 24%
Mind Flayers (130) 24%
Beholders (45) 8%
Golems (23) 4%
Other (13) 2%
Umber Hulks (9) 2%
Pit Fiends (9) 2%
Undead (all sorts) (8) 1%

Judging by the number of votes this poll received, I have come up with a pretty interesting poll question.

As it should be, dragons stand firmly in the first place as the toughest monsters in the game. We have been reading a lot of opinions on our message boards about the dragons, and this result confirms that they are still the hardest to beat for most people.
Of course, there are some lame ways to dispose of them (Cloudkill in the fog of war comes to mind), but if you take them on toe to toe, you won't get away lightly.

Liches, the undead terrors haunting 2x2x1m tombs (ok, I suppose the one in the Gate District is an exception) are second toughest opponents. With all the magic at their disposal, it's no wonder. One Time Stop is usually enough to wipe out an entire party if they are foolish enough to take on liches insufficiently prepared and experienced.
Now imagine how hard they would be if they were actually implemented by the book...

Mind Flayers are in the third place, with almost the same number of votes as liches. Personally, I think they are much more annoying and harder to beat than even dragons and liches. (I'm talking about groups of mind flayers, of course).
You can throw every single protective spell you've got on yourself, and you still face a chance that they'll stat drain some of your characters to death.
Nasty buggers, indeed.

After the dominant trio at the top of the list, beholders lag way behind in popularity. Only 8% of people deem them to be the hardest monsters in the game. I wonder if everyone was using the Shield of Balduran or Cloak of Mirrors against them.
When I fought them without those items, they were VERY hard to beat. I suppose it's Bioware's fault for putting such items in the game. You can't help but feel sorry for them when you simply stand around and watch them kill themselves in oh-so-many imaginative ways.
This, of course, is due to being equipped with the Shield of Balduran which reflects everything eye tyrants throw at you right back at them...

Next are golems, with half less votes than beholders. I certainly expected them to be placed higher in the list, judging by the amount of trouble people on our message boards were having with them. Adamantine ones are a force to be reckoned with, and even a high-level party may be in trouble when they come pounding mercilessly.

2% of people voted for the option "Other" than what I had in the list. The only tough monsters I left out that were mentioned in the poll comments are the balor the svirfneblin dug up, and various demons you encounter during the course of the game.

Last three "tough" monsters are umber hulks, pit fiends and various sorts of undead. Altogether they only scored 5% of all votes, so obviously people don't regard them as too tough.
Even though vampiric level drain certainly classifies as one of the most annoying "new additions" to Baldur's Gate II. ;)

Icewind Dale: Heart Of Winter (Beta?) Movie
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2001 - 21:41 CET by Sorcerer

An Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter movie can be seen today after being posted at Interplay's FTP site. It includes a combination of cinematic excerpts and gameplay scenes from Black Isle's expansion pack for its hit AD&D-based title of last year.

The curious thing is that the movie wasn't even posted at the HoW website. DB-Forge speculates that it's a beta, but hey...

Download it here.

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Announced For PS 2
Posted Thursday, February 15, 2001 - 21:36 CET by Sorcerer

This isn't exactly what people who don't own PS 2 want to hear, but fans of the Baldur's Gate series will be pleased to hear that Black Isle has announced an upcoming Playstation 2 game that will return players to the popular AD&D-based world. Here is the press release, minus the legal information:

Black Isle Studios Announces Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance; (New Action Adventure Game Will Enthrall PlayStation(R) 2 Gamers)

IRVINE, Calif., Feb. 15 -- Black Isle Studios, the award-winning RPG (role-playing game) division of Interplay Entertainment Corp. (Nasdaq: IPLY) and leading console game developer Snowblind Studios
announced today their plan to bring the award-winning Baldur's Gate(TM) franchise to the PlayStation(R) 2 computer entertainment system. The innovative game entitled Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance(TM) features a distinctive blend of action and adventure set in the most popular Dungeons & Dragons(R) campaign setting: The Forgotten Realms(R).

"We recognize the tremendous demand for a Baldur's Gate game on
PlayStation 2," stated Feargus Urquhart, Black Isle Studios Division Director.
"We're totally committed to making Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance a completely original experience that both console gamers and RPG fans will enjoy."
While maintaining the flair of the original games, Baldur's Gate: Dark
Alliance will be an entirely new action adventure experience opening the Baldur's Gate franchise to a much wider gaming community. Faithful adaptation of the new Dungeons & Dragons rules set, customizable player characters and character development allows for an engrossing gameplay experience new to console gamers. Dramatic new spell effects and powerful new abilities have been included to add to the flavor of the action-packed game and assist the player in combat against the terrifying monsters found in the adventure.
"We are developing the game from the ground up to take full advantage of the sophisticated PlayStation 2 technology," stated Ryan Geithman, Director of Snowblind Studios. "Our goal is to push the hardware to its limits thus creating stunning environmental effects and highly detailed characters never before seen on the console."
Played from a third person perspective Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance
immerses players in the port town of Baldur's Gate. Darkness has fallen upon the town and rumors of a Thieves' Guild civil war brew beneath the streets of the city. Entering this desperate situation, the player finds himself fresh to the city of Baldur's Gate and new to the world of adventuring. He soon learns that he stands in the way of one of the greatest threats ever to strike the town of Baldur's Gate and The Sword Coast.

Debuting in 1998, the Baldur's Gate franchise redefined the role-playing genre and has since dominated the PC Game charts generating sales of over 3.5 million units worldwide. The franchise continues to receive accolades from press and pundits around the world. In fact, Black Isle Studios has been presented the RPG of the Year award from Computer Gaming World and PC Gamer for the last three years running. Top computer gaming magazines, Computer Gaming World and PC Gamer have also offered RPG of the Year nods for Baldur's Gate in 1998 and BG II in 2000 as have the popular computer gaming-oriented online sites GameSpot and IGN. Additionally, Computer Games, Computer Games
Online, Imagine Games Network and Vault Network named Baldur's Gate Game of the Year for 1998, while leading websites MSNBC.com and Gamespot named Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Game of the Year for 2000, an honor rarely bestowed upon role-playing games.
Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance is due to ship fall of 2001 for PlayStation 2. More comprehensive information can be found on the official Black Isle web site, located at http://www.blackisle.com.

Obviously it was only a matter of time before Interplay smelled gold in PS 2 as well. -Ed.

Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter Designer Diary Updated
Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2001 - 23:57 CET by Sorcerer

RPGVault posted the (presumably) last part of the HoW designer diary. As you can read in the post below, HoW has gone gold and will be coming to a store near you pretty soon.
Anyway, in this edition of DD, Josh Sawyer recounts about his feelings at the completion of the Icewind Dale expansion:

So, we're done with the game. It's gold, and being mass-produced as we speak. Final candidate 9 was the winner this time. We initially believed that FC4 was going to turn gold, but a number of bizarre multiplayer bugs continued to pop up with each passing rev.

Of course, many of the bug fixes yielded new bugs in a cycle of Sisyphusian hilarity. For the designers and artists, it was a sleepy end to the dev cycle. We mostly just sat around and periodically asked Darren if he had any bugs for us. The answer was usually "no."

Heart of Winter Goes Gold!
Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2001 - 8:25 CET by Mollusken

These words come from GameSpyDaily :

Word from Interplay is that the Heart of Winter, the expansion pack to Icewind Dale, has gone gold! No official shelf date, although the target is within the next two weeks.

And here is the official press release from Heather Greer, Public Relations at Interplay:

Black Isle Studios, the role-playing game division of Interplay Entertainment Corp., announced today that the highly anticipated expansion, Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter, has GONE GOLD! Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter will be available at retail stores nationwide soon!

This expansion pack for the popular role-playing game Icewind Dale, was developed internally at Black Isle Studios and will offer more classic dungeon crawl using the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition rules under license from Wizards of the Coast, including new monsters, spells, and areas to explore within the Forgotten Realms campaign setting. Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter will also offer many new technological and gameplay enhancements to the original game including higher resolution support, larger monsters and new interface configuration options.

The Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter expansion will require an installed copy of the original Icewind Dale in order to run. Complete information on Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter can be found at http://www.interplay.com/icewind

New BioFiles Column at GA-RPG
Posted Monday, February 12, 2001 - 20:11 CET by Sorcerer

Today on GA-RPG, BioWare's James Ohlen has updated his BioFiles
Column. This week James continues his discussion on what he feels
they did wrong on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and how they are going to use that to improve on their upcoming Star Wars RPG & Neverwinter Nights.

Check out the column here.

GA-RPG have also updated their release date section.

Brent Knowles Interviewed
Posted Friday, February 9, 2001 - 15:50 CET by Shad

PlanetNeverwinter have interviewed Brent Knowles, co-Lead Designer. The interview covers several interesting topics such as alignment based spells, death, banking and player scripting.

"PlanetNeverwinter: For those planning on using NWN to make a persistent world, or even a campaign, banking or storing of items is a hot topic. There was a suggestion it might be part of the Character Vault, but would that be the best solution? What are the current plans for banking in the game?

Brent: Adventurers don't bank - everyone knows that plundering is better than interest. ;) That said, an ambitious module creator may write a custom script to tracks the amount of money and items that a player has deposited into a bank. As long as that information doesn't need to transfer between modules, it shouldn't be too difficult."

Neverwinter Nights - What's New
Posted Thursday, February 8, 2001 - 19:00 CET by Sorcerer

Here's the latest info, right from the developers:

Neverwinter Nights Project Update for December and January

The hallowed halls of BioWare were a happy place for the month of December. We worked up to the holidays making a lot of solid progress. As a result, we set some very ambitious goals for ourselves for January and we worked hard to meet them.

Programming
The programmers spent most of December and January tightening up the code, making sure that the end user will have not only an enjoyable gaming experience but also a stable one. We've also been making some important revisions to the combat system and the many Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) throughout the game. One of the surprises in Neverwinter's development was the sheer amount of GUIs that needed to be constructed. We've developed a good, standardized system to handle many of them but it still takes a lot of man-hours to complete such a large volume of screens with different functionality. In addition, we spent a lot of January in "crunch" mode, trying to broaden the functionality available to the Design team as they begin the most important phase of their work. Our Tools Group worked especially hard and their effort really shows in the new features now coming available in the toolset.

Art
Art-side, the project is moving forward very aggressively. New content is being completed on a daily basis. The artists are working even faster and to higher quality than we had scheduled for, so that helps us a great deal. The Tileset Modeling Group is doing a great job and the visual mesh is nearing completion for almost all of the tilesets. Once the visual mesh is created, the modelers will go back and generate a "walk mesh" for the various tiles. The walk mesh is used by the engine to determine pathfinding, collision detection, and sound effect information (footsteps on a leafy forest floor sound very different than those on the hard cobbles of the city, for instance). After the walk mesh is created, the tileset is ready to be tested and any extra variant tiles can be added at that time. In short, creating a tileset is an involved process and our modelers have put a lot of time and effort into making sure that you have a beautiful-looking game. Meanwhile, the rest of the art team has been pumping out portraits, icons, textures, and models with gusto. It's hard to fathom the sheer volume of content we have already created for Neverwinter. One of our artists has created no fewer than 1,720 different in-game weapon icons, all by himself.

Design
Armed with the increasingly functional scripting language, the designers have been experimenting and testing the limits of what can be accomplished in Neverwinter. Some advance dialog is being written for Chapter 1 and the final magic item planning for the official campaign is nearing completion. On the more technical side, NWScript has been showing signs of both the power and the flexibility that it had been originally designed for. As the old adage goes, if absolute power corrupts absolutely, then we are going to have some very demented scripters by the end of our development cycle. Some quick attempts at scripting have yielded a pack of insecure wererats who avoid players until they have enough members in the pack to assure victory. Once a critical number of wererats are present, they swarm the character from all sides, quickly overwhelming any opposition. While complete obliteration of the player characters is quite possible, it's not really going to endear us to our players, so the final scripts will have to be a little less fatal when we ship the game

Overall
2000 was a busy year for the Neverwinter team. We hit an all-time high of 41 personnel and we generated a ton of content, code and documentation. The original vision we had for Neverwinter Nights is moving closer to completion and it is an amazing sight to behold. When this game emerges from our offices it will be a truly monstrous accomplishment. It is the sheer talent of the people I get to work with on a day-to-day basis that makes a project of this scale possible and I'm very grateful to be a part of the magic here at BioWare.

Thanks,

Trent Oster
Producer
Neverwinter Nights
BioWare Corp.

Neverwinter Nights Engine Update at VE
Posted Thursday, February 8, 2001 - 18:29 CET by Sorcerer

A few days ago Voodoo Extreme posted this report about the goings on at the Bioware team in charge of NWN development.

Scott Greig (Lead Programmer) - Neverwinter Nights:

So, what stage is Neverwinter Nights in? Well, like all projects, various parts are in various stages. The artists, in general, are getting very close to the spit and polish stage, while the designers are still in the prototyping stage. This is due to the fact that the designers really can’t start implementation until the programmers and the artists have the bulk of the features and art content already complete. Within the programming team, different sub-departments are in different phases. The graphic programmers are putting the final touches on the graphics library, but are still working through some prototyping issues with some of the user interfaces, for instance. On the whole, though, I would have to say that the engine itself is finally in the ‘all the pieces are coming together' stage.

Site News - New Additions
Posted Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 22:06 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates - Games

A slightly smaller update today. Rasmus Wichmann has been busy hunting for more Planescape: Torment NPC quotes, so the list has been updated with some more fresh ones.
We have also received a submission to the Baldur's Gate 1 - Editors, Hacks & Cap Removers section. Chris has sent us Ajantis, who is normally an in-game NPC but in this case he has been recreated to be playable as your main character. Ajantis also comes with a soundset, so check him out.

And now for the big one...
Rhys Hess, whom some of you will recognize from his excellent work on the Planescape: Torment stories, has been kind enough to provide us with his newest piece of work - a Baldur's Gate 2 (Good Side) Story.

This is the first part of his work (he is also compiling a story based on the dark side, i.e. evil path through the game). He thought it would be worthwhile to recreate the game's story in written form, in the game's own words. All of the dialogue was taken almost unchanged directly from the game itself, as well as some of the other material. In order to create a full story, he did have to invent a lead character, as well as pick a particular path through the game.
He is assuming you have already played the game itself, but you might want to read this to experience the story again, or to hear from characters you chose not to include in your party.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 21:37 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: Which of the Infinity Engine games has the best musical score in your opinion?
(360 votes total)

Icewind Dale (140) 39%
Baldur's Gate 2 (115) 32%
Planescape: Torment (88) 24%
Baldur's Gate (17) 5%

It comes as no big surprise that Icewind Dale's musical score rocked the poll with almost 40% of all votes. IWD's soundtrack hasn't won so many awards without good reason, for its music is truly excellent.

The second place is much more surprising however. Baldur's Gate 2 is close behind with 32% of votes. Now I wouldn't go as far as to say that its music wasn't good, but most of it just didn't do anything for me.
Planescape: Torment should definitely appear in this place, but since a much smaller part of the visitors to Sorcerer's Place have also played Torment, I'm quite sure it missed this spot only because its fan base here is much smaller than the one of BG2.

In third place is (obviously) Planescape: Torment's music, to me the best of the bunch. So filled with emotions, sometimes sadness and grief, that is pulls you into the game and really makes you feel that you are in Nameless One's skin. It is a real shame that an official soundtrack of it was never produced.

Last place belongs to the original Baldur's Gate, which for most people happened a long time ago, and not everyone played it either. Therein I suppose lies the reason for the low percentage of votes it received, since the musical score was quite good.

This poll also produced quite a big amount of fan comments, so I'm posting a few here:

- It's a tough call between Planescape and Icewind, but the battle music in Icewind is just too good!
- IWD's score is awesome! You get the impression you're in the frozen wastes right from the beginning!
- There's nothing better than BG2 romance musics!
- P:T had the best score by far... especially in the Fortress in the Negative Material Plane
- The song played when you meet Annah (Planescape: Torment) is the best I have heard in any game ever
- The music in BG2 is o.k. but Torment has the best music by far. The most memorable song though is the theme song from BG, it has been 2 years since I played the game and yet it stays in my head

Pool of Radiance: Info from the Producer
Posted Wednesday, February 7, 2001 - 11:21 CET by Nazgul

Garrett Graham (Producer, SSI) visited the official Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor message boards and answered a couple questions and interjected some comments:

Hi,
I'm going to try to address most of the points brought up here - hopefully this will be seen as help and won't end up being "gas thrown on the fire." Let me start by saying that, although this is my first post here, I have read every post on this board since late November (when I came on as Producer).

1) "Why aren't Wizards, Bards, Druids or Gnomes in the game?" This has actully been addressed many times on this board over the last year and a half. To recap: adding in those races would have cost a lot of money and made the game ship later. I've noticed that a lot of people seem skeptical of this, but really, first and foremost, we are a business and we don't have unlimited funds. Originally, the game didn't have Paladins, Monks or Halfling (models) either. When we made the decision to add them, it came with a hefty price tag and pushed back the release date. I can assure all of you, we are not deliberately trying to piss anyone off. We are simply trying to make the best game that we can, with a finite budget and timeline. With this in mind, Wizards were dropped because they are only minimally different than Sorcerers and we were trying to highlight the new 3E rules. Bards are are very similar to rogues, with some magical abilities and lots of people based skills (which don't get used much in a wilderness based adventure). A druid's specialities are summoning animals and shapechanging, both of which are very art intensive (art = $$$). We left these out because putting them in would have meant dropping something else from the game. None of these were easy decisions for the team and they knew at the time that there would be some negative reactions, but again, that was the reality they had to deal with. If Pool of Radiance does well, then we'll have lots more cash for any future titles that we do *cough* *hint* *hint*

2) "Do the Producers at SSI (Learning Company, Mattel Interactive, Game Studios) listen to what we're saying?" You betcha! I sit next to Chuck and Jon (when Jon was still here) and in the early days, they were on the board all the time answering questions and getting feedback - some of which they were able to act on. At this point, we can't make any major changes to the game. In fact, we are just about at the point where we lock down all the features and do nothing but bug-fixes. Still, I read everything that gets said here (both positive and negative) and I'll keep it in mind while I work on whatever game I end up on after Pool. Everything that gets said here matters to me and I do everything in my (limited) power to act on it.

3) "The Producers don't seem to spend much time on the boards..." Like I said, Chuck and I read everything that goes up here. When a question comes up that only we can answer, we do. But we don't get too many new questions, instead we get a lot of old ones: "What? no Wizard?!?!" I think the old-timers on the board do a great job of answering those questions (thanks guys!). I understand the pain of looking through old posts for answers, so from now on, when a newcomer asks some of the more common questions, and insists on an answer from the Producer (instead of using one of the excellent FAQs that you guys have made) I will bump this post to the top.

4) "Do you guys even play DnD?" Yep. I play twice a week in campaigns run by Chuck. I'll be starting my own campaign soon. In fact, we hired Chuck specifically to work on this game because of his DnD knowlege.

5) "The graphics in this game suck!" What?!? OK, maybe I'm biased, but IMHO our graphics blow the doors off of BGII (and Diablo II for that matter). This question left me dumbfounded.

In fact, let me say this: I think we are making a damned fine game. Stormfront has done a great job of capturing the feel of the PnP game, the graphics are top notch and I love the turn-based combat. We have a great story and a great setting. I don't believe for a second that we're putting out an inferior game. In case you were wondering, I've played BG, BGII and Icewind Dale and thoroughly enjoyed them all. Pool of Radiance will play differently than those games, but be just as good in my mind.

Nothing that I've written here should be taken in any way, shape or form as a flame or a direct insult to anyone.

Thanks,
Garrett Graham
Producer, Pool of Radiance

RidzerNews does J.E. Sawyer Interview
Posted Tuesday, February 6, 2001 - 9:21 CET by Mollusken

RidzerNews has done an interview with the popular Black Isle Studios designer J.E. Sawyer:

What special features does the expansion add to the game?

Whew... a lot. 800x600 resolution, drop-away interface panels, hotkey for displaying containers, items, and doors, more spells, more class features, more items... all that good stuff. Oh, and better enemy AI and level of difficulty scaling.

Is that five you said for the insanity question?

Yes, five. I think all people are capable, at some level, of killing their co-workers in a murderous rage.

Read more here.

The Locus Inn Redesigned
Posted Monday, February 5, 2001 - 21:11 CET by Sorcerer

Our buds at The Locus Inn, another great resource site with lots of original content, have sent us a note that they've redesigned their site. Not everything has been transferred to the new look yet, but they'll continue to update gradually.

Check them out here.

BioFiles at GA-RPG Updated
Posted Monday, February 5, 2001 - 21:05 CET by Sorcerer

Today on GA-RPG, BioWare's James Ohlen has updated his BioFiles
Column. This week James begins to talk about what he feels they did
wrong on Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, and how they are going to use that to improve on their upcoming Star Wars RPG & Neverwinter Nights.

Read more about it at the BioFiles column.

Site Downtime Report
Posted Sunday, February 4, 2001 - 20:57 CET by Sorcerer

In case you tried to access Sorcerer's Place earlier today, you must have noticed that the whole server was down so neither the website, nor the message boards were accessible. (This lasted for about 8 hours).
It seems to have been fixed, although the reason for this fade-out is not yet known.
Therefor I've decided to let the poll run for another day to compensate for all the missing votes, so anyone that hasn't voted yet, this is your last chance!

Gamespy Interviews Soule Brothers
Posted Sunday, February 4, 2001 - 11:32 CET by Sorcerer

While on the subject of music (in our poll), you might be interested in reading this lengthy interview of the Soule brothers. (Jeremy Soule did the music for Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter among other things).
Soules (heh) write about their involvement in the gaming industry, their current & future projects and just about anything else you can think of.

There's also 5.6 MB of Jeremy's music from Heart of Winter and Giants available for download. For your convenience, I've extracted it from FilePlanet's godawful download pages, so those of you using dial-up can resume the download if it gets broken. Click here to download the music.

Baldur's Gate II Review at WomenGamers
Posted Saturday, February 3, 2001 - 21:29 CET by Sorcerer

It is a bit late, but WomenGamers decided to post an extra long look at the collector's edition of BG2. There you'll find just about everything you need to know about the game before purchasing it in case you haven't already.

Read the whole story here.

Site News - New Additions
Posted Saturday, February 3, 2001 - 15:26 CET by Sorcerer

Subsection Updates - Fantasy Books

I've been working on this part of the site for a few hours and I managed to add a pile of new books to our lists. As an added bonus there are now a couple of sample chapters (pdf) for books in most subsections.
New books were added to the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Dragonlance, Manuals and Other book subsections.

Subsection Updates - Community

The Related Links list has been updated. A dead link was removed and a new customization website was added to the Fansites part of the page.

Subsection Updates - Games

Starting with Baldur's Gate II: The Big Cheats List has been updated with a couple of new items and The Ultimate Cheater's Weapon. Only the most perverted cheater and powergamer would use it, but hey, I bet there are some reading this just now. ;)

I've added a cool little Icewind Dale: Heart of winter Flash game the folks at Interplay have released to the Icewind Dale - Miscellanea subsection.

Believe it or not, there are few new additions to the Planescape: Torment - Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection. Namely, a bunch of new NPC quotes have been submitted to us, so check out the updated Quotes list and send us some more, if you have them. We've got enough of Morte for a while, so a couple more from other NPCs would be welcome.

Not to forget the Neverwinter Nights subsection, there is something new there as well. I've added the NWMap, a mapping and module design utility which should help out all DMs-to-be to plan ahead some of their NWN campaigns. Head over to Neverwinter Nights - Miscellanea page to download it.

Neverwinter Nights Q&A with Rob Bartel
Posted Saturday, February 3, 2001 - 12:11 CET by Sorcerer

GA-RPG has scored a short series of questions with the designer Rob Bartel about the upcoming 3rd edition D&D game, Neverwinter Nights.
You can find all the info here.

Q: Since Neverwinter Nights seems to be the current focus for BioWare, are the odds pretty slim for an expansion pack being made for Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn? Especially considering your company has their hands on a very lucrative Star Wars license, and we do expect that one to be very big.

A: Between MDK2: Armageddon, the Star Wars RPG, and Neverwinter Nights, we’re definitely keeping ourselves busy here at BioWare. That said, Tales of the Sword Coast, the expansion to the original Baldur’s Gate, was very well received. I’ll have to ask you to draw your own conclusions.

Heh, that might as well have said pre-order it now! ;)

GAME Studios rises from Learning Company ashes
Posted Friday, February 2, 2001 - 9:17 CET by Nazgul

The Gores Technology Group announced that The Learning Company's Entertainment Division will now be known as GAME Studios.

The newly-named unit will be both an internal developer and a third-party publisher for both PC and console games, according to a press release from The Learning Company. GAMES Studios will focus on PlayStation 2, X-Box, and PC entertainment products.

Explaining the move, General Manager Jeff Hoff notes that "While The Learning Company name carries a lot of weight in the educational and productivity marketplaces, there has been a great deal of confusion as to our identity in the gaming community." People never fail to recognize our strong franchise lines, such as Myst and Chessmaster, but as an overall brand, we've been referred to as The Learning Company, Broderbund, Mindscape, SSI, Red Orb; you name it, we've heard it. So, we felt it was time to come up with a name that left no doubt in anyone's mind. Simply put, GAME Studios is what we do; it's who we are."

All games published by the company will appear under the GAMES Studios imprimatur, and the company reaffirmed its commitment to existing PC projects such as Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, Silent Hunter II, and Harpoon 4.

The press release offered the following schedule of PC game releases for 2001:

The Moon Project (Windows) April
Myst III: Exile (Windows /Macintosh) April
Destroyer Command (Windows) May
Silent Hunter II (Windows) May
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (Windows) May
Larry Bond's Harpoon4 (Windows) July
Flanker Attack (Windows) July
Solar (Windows) September
Warlords IV (Windows) September

Pool of Radiance: Why Sorcerers and no Wizards
Posted Thursday, February 1, 2001 - 10:05 CET by Nazgul

From Chuck Yager (Associate Producer):

Here's the official reply as to why sorcerers and no wizards:

It has already been explained across these boards numerous times that we made a design decision to go with sorcerers over wizards early on because it was the "new" 3E class and in the early days there wasn't that much difference. I won't bore you further with more explanations about this which I am sure you have read. The main reason we don't institute wizards now is because of the difference in how spells are used and the seperate interface screens that would need to be generated for memorizing spells. This is art and programming time that we frankly don't have left. We are looking to finish up the last of the minor programming in February and then it's on to just bug fixing until ship.

In a nutshell, that's where we stand and why. We agree that in an ideal world wizards would be included but given the way we shaped PoR:RoMD and the differences we made from the look and feel of a BG or BG2 (e.g. 3D models, enhanced graphics, 3D particle spell effects) it just is not feasible to add more in the game which might disrupt the systems we have in place.