October 2000

D&D movie trailer
Posted Friday, October 27, 2000 - 21:49 CET by Maverick

Here it is, what we've all been waiting for: the trailer to the Dungeons & Dragons movie!
75 fans were invited to the premiere, and they were stunned. Very impressive special effects of spell castings and dragon fights made everybody even more curious about the movie as well as the classic D&D monsters.
So, do not hesitate to download it on seednd.com. Even the page is worth a look.

Baldur's Gate II Chat Log
Posted Friday, October 27, 2000 - 21:11 CET by Brandubh

Games Domain has posted the log from their 12 October live chat with the developers of Baldur's Gate II. It's really interesting if you want to get an insight into the minds of the developers...

Our Baldur's Gate II Solution Updated
Posted Friday, October 27, 2000 - 20:30 CET by Sorcerer

Yep, it's time again. We missed one update last week (Sylvus has been enjoying himself instead of slaving in the BG II Solution Writing Pit), but now we're back on course.
Windspear Hills area has been added to the Solution, and a bunch of other tweaks and fixes you probably won't notice, but I'm letting you know they've been added anyway. ;)
Without further ado, check our solution here.

By the way, did I mention that monks rock yet? (Thanks to Draco Vlasavius, a regular on our Boards O' Magick for sending in the pic.

Icewind Dale: The Heart of Winter preview
Posted Friday, October 27, 2000 - 17:33 CET by Brandubh

Computer Games Online has a preview for The Heart of Winter, the expansion for Icewind Dale. Contains information and, of course, nifty screen shots.

Neverwinter Nights Preview
Posted Thursday, October 26, 2000 - 22:14 CET by Maverick

For all those who are interested in “Neverwinter Nights”: there is a preview on RPGPlanet with very good information about the game and, of course, there are screenshots there as well. Check it out and have fun!

New Adventurer
Posted Wednesday, October 25, 2000 - 22:11 CET by Maverick

Greetings, dear Adventurers

I'd like to introduce... myself. I'm Maverick, a new news poster. I will do my best to improve information flow on sorcerers.net (if this is possible at all!!).

For now, I wish you a good dwelling in the Forgotten Realms. I'll post some fresh news soon.

Gamecenter.com news on Pool of Radiance
Posted Wednesday, October 25, 2000 - 14:24 CET by Nazgul

Mattel Interactive on Monday confirmed that Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, the highly anticipated RPG currently being developed by SSI, will not be released in December, as had been previously reported.

Instead, Pool of Radiance is now scheduled to ship sometime during the first quarter of 2001. A Mattel Interactive spokesperson cited internal business issues as part of the reason for the delay, but also said that the game's developers will "use this opportunity to take some extra time to make Pool [of Radiance] top-drawer."

Update on Pools of Radiance
Posted Wednesday, October 25, 2000 - 14:21 CET by Nazgul

From Jon Kromrey, Producer, SSI/Mattel Interactive

With the recent acquisition of our division by Gores Technology Group there are many changes that are occurring company-wide; among the decisions that are yet-to-be-made is a new name of our company as well as branding and sales strategies.

Because of these changes the decision has been made to move Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor to a new release date in 2001. An exact code and ship date is currently being evaluated and will be announced as soon as possible.

I know this may disappoint players who were eagerly awaiting this title for Christmas, but both SSI and Stormfront Studios feel that this extension will allow us to make the game as good as we possibly can.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Monday, October 23, 2000 - 23:11 CET by Sorcerer

A bit short on votes, but then again anything that doesn't have to do with BG II nowadays is. What we asked:

Q: Will you buy Heart of Winter, the Icewind Dale expansion?
(471 votes total)

Of course (326) 69%
Not sure (94) 20%
No way (51) 11%

Well it seems that Black Isle don't need to worry about whether their addon will sell... it's quite obvious it will. Almost 70% of people are certain they'll buy it, a very good sign.

20% aren't sure yet, but let's say that half of them buy it and we get a nice round figure of 80% of people buying the expansion. A figure software developers can usually only dream of...

About 11% of people are certain that they will not buy it, a figure that doesn't inspire much concern. If this poll is any indicator, Black Isle is going to make another best seller with IWD: Heart of Winter.

Post your thoughts about the upcoming Icewind Dale expansion on our message boards!

Issues with Baldur's Gate II and an interview with Minsc
Posted Monday, October 23, 2000 - 17:58 CET by Brandubh

If you've had some trouble with, among other things, installing, uninstalling, 3D, or sound in Baldur's Gate II, check out Bioware's "Known Issues" page.

On a lighter note, Gamespy this month has an interview with Minsc.

Pool of Radiance:RoMD at Game Spot
Posted Monday, October 23, 2000 - 15:35 CET by Nazgul

The latest build of Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor shows that the game's creators have made a great deal of progress on an already solid foundation for the game. Despite the fact that Ruins of Myth Drannor will feature detailed 3D graphics and TSR's new 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, it will be a traditional computer role-playing game that's the spiritual successor to a true role-playing classic: the original Pool of Radiance. That's not just because the two games share the same title, either; both the original and the new Pool of Radiance games are developed by Stormfront Studios and published by SSI.

The current release date is still showing for 4th Quarter 2000, even though Mattel did get bought out over a month ago.

You can read the full story here.

Greetings! (new news poster)
Posted Sunday, October 22, 2000 - 22:09 CET by Brandubh

Greetings, fellow adventurers. I'm Brandubh, a new news poster here. I'll be handling mostly computer gaming information, but if I find a juicy tidbit about something else, I'll be sure to post that as well.

With that said, good luck in your campaigns, and I'll have some actual news posted shortly! -Brandubh

Site News
Posted Sunday, October 22, 2000 - 20:06 CET by Sorcerer

A rather smallish update today so I didn't bother to add it to Site News section.
Another walkthrough has been added to the Games/BG2 subsection and the Baldur's Gate II Known Issues page in the Games/BG2/Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection has been updated with a new bug.

Now to crown this update we have a very cool, exclusive even, poster of Baldur's Gate II that was graciously submitted to us by the leading Slovenian gaming magazine, Joker.
It appeared in the October issue of the mag along with a VERY positive review of the game.
You can find the poster in the BG2 Miscellanea subsection.

Brave Adventurers Needed! (i.e. Help Wanted)
Posted Sunday, October 22, 2000 - 16:45 CET by Sorcerer

As you might have noticed if you keep track of the news over here, I've been kind of overwhelmed with other work to do any real daily gaming news updating, and our so called News Posters haven't been doing their job either, so I'm looking for a few new dedicated news posters.
If you're able to stay on top of any news regarding Icewind Dale/Baldur's Gate II/Neverwinter Nights/Pool of Radiance, have a few spare minutes every day to make the newsposts and most of all, love the games as much as I (we) do, I would be glad to have you on our team.

Positions that need to be filled:

Daily News Editor (covers all the reviews/previews/screenshots etc. that show up on other sites)

Message Boards News Poster (covers the tidbits and postings that game developers post on official (and that unofficial IWD) message boards

All of the positions can be filled on a one-game-coverage basis, so if you're only interested in one game and want to cover it in detail, that's fine as well.

If you think you've got what it takes and want to be a part of a great team, drop me a note in e-mail or contact me via ICQ (1508832) and we'll work out the details.

Icewind Dale soundtrack CD available soon
Posted Sunday, October 22, 2000 - 16:34 CET by Calis

That's right, you can now pre-order a soundtrack CD with tunes from Icewind Dale, everybody's favorite dungeon crawl! The interplaygames.com website also has some sample music from the game.

Neverwinter Nights interview at Daily Radar
Posted Sunday, October 22, 2000 - 12:00 CET by Calis

Daily Radar has interviewed Trent Oster, the producer for Bioware's upcoming third edition D&D-based RPG, Neverwinter Nights, which will feature a pen&paper-like DM mode. They also offer the NWN promo movie from the Baldur's Gate 2 CD's for download. A little quote from the interview to get dem juices flowing:

DR: Will characters from pen and paper be importable if the DM allows it? Will NWN characters be exportable for pen and paper, such as printing out character sheets from the game?

TO: It will be possible to recreate a character from pen and paper in NWN, but it will require the use of the DM client if the character has attribute scores which are impossible with the point buy system. We are quite interested in offering support to print out character sheets from NWN, but we don't have anything working at this time.

New Baldur's Gate 2 reviews
Posted Sunday, October 22, 2000 - 11:57 CET by Calis

Yep, every site and their mother is still posting reviews of Bioware's smash hit. Here's a list of brand-spanking-new ones:

• Game Revolution (A- score)
  
• Barrysworld (no score yet)
  
• 3DRage (96% score)
  

XL Gaming.com BG II Giveaway
Posted Friday, October 20, 2000 - 21:12 CET by Sorcerer

Don't have BG II yet in spite the fact that everyone else does? Well now is your chance to get it for free!
XLGaming.com is giving a copy of Baldur's Gate 2 away for free. That is of course if you win...
Go test your luck here.

Oh no! Even More Site News ;)
Posted Monday, October 16, 2000 - 23:39 CET by Sorcerer

Fear not, 'tis not as vast a update as yesterday's, but quite an undertaking nontheless. I've added a handy little table of familiars to the BG II Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection, just in case someone doesn't know yet what type of familiar your main character can get. Furthermore, a BG II known issues page has been added to the same subsection as listed above. If you're having trouble with the game be sure to give it a look.

As for IWD, after a long time there's a new addition to the main IWD subsection. I've compiled a large list of all known facts & features about the upcoming expansion, Heart of Winter. Give it a thorough read if you liked the original game. It might persuade you into buying the expansion in case you are having second thoughts about it.

As always, for direct links to recently added stuff go to the main Site News section.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Monday, October 16, 2000 - 23:28 CET by Sorcerer

What we asked:

Q: On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate Baldur's Gate II?
(1053 votes total)

9 (492) 47%
10 (363) 34%
8 (124) 12%
7 (35) 3%
6 (17) 2%
1 (9) 1%
5 (7) 1%
2 (5) 0%
3 (1) 0%
4 (0) 0%

How's that for an independent review of a game? More than 1000 people were given the option of choosing how much they liked Baldur's Gate II, and a vast majority obviously loves it.

If we combine the top two results we can see that 81% of people rated Baldur's Gate II Excellent (10) or Very Good (9).

12% gave it 8/10 points, the last big amount of percents in the whole poll. All other scores combined (from 1-7/10) yield about 8% more.

There is no doubt about it left in mind. (Not that there was any to being with). Baldur's Gate II is the best CRPG of the year for me, and for thousands of people around the world. Just wait till all the big magazines dare to bestow that title upon it. The end of the year is near, so the wait should be fairly short indeed.

Baldur's Gate II review at GA-RPG
Posted Monday, October 16, 2000 - 22:51 CET by Calis

Chris Johnson, Most Esteemed Editor of GA-RPG, has posted his review of Baldur's Gate II. It's quotes like this that make me think he liked the game:

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn offers up the familiar 2D isometric 640 x 480 resolution of past Black Isle efforts, but also adds the much talked about support for 800 x 600 resolution. Higher resolutions are available with a program called BGConfig; basically this program allows you to adjust many facets of the game including the graphics. At 800 x 600 the higher resolutions show off the artwork better, but the character avatars seem a bit too small for my tastes. At higher resolutions than 800 x 600 the game looks odd, so I wouldn't suspect many will try them more than once. As was the case with Icewind, the addition of 3D lighting effects using the OpenGL API is a welcome addition for a little extra eye candy, primarily for spells. The artwork is attractive, as would be expected for any BioWare / Black Isle Studios title, and there is an increase in dynamic backgrounds over past Infinity Engine games. The interface from Baldur's Gate has been given a new look, but the most part is almost identical to the original. A nice variety of attractive looking character portraits simply put the bow on a package that is sure to please most any gamer in this regard.

Site News + Problem Report
Posted Monday, October 16, 2000 - 20:20 CET by Sorcerer

Site Problems Report

Ah, it seems that Boards O' Magick, our most excellent message boards are back up & running!
Hopefully they will stay like that for good. ;)

Now for the site news (you can always check direct links to all stuff listed here in the Site News section:

We have a ton of new stuff for you this week and practically all of it BG II material. (What else?).

Let's start with the Cheats List. It's been updated with an enormous items list covering all weapons, scrolls, armor and a bunch of other items and is now REALLY huge. I've placed links to the top of the page in it periodically so hopefully none of you will get lost while plodding through it.

Now for some brand new additions.
In the main BG II subsection two new walkthroughs have been added. One is in early stages of development and more of a general reference than a fully fledged solution, while the other goes a bit further and is also more detailed. Don't forget to check up on our own BG II Solution that is coming along nicely.

Next, in the BG II Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection is a new guide to the treasures of Amn, something anyone playing BG II should read. It was originally posted at CGO, but I converted it to our site layout and corrected it in several places.

BG II Misc subsection has also been updated, with a pretty cool wallpaper made out of all NPC portraits from the game. You can preview the whole thing in the above mentioned section.

As for the BG II Editors subsection, a level 50 patch/cap remover has been submitted to us by Karl Hunt, to whom go our thanks. More details about it are available at the file listing.

Last but not least, two new books have been added to the Fantasy Books/Manuals subsection.

How to Win at Diablo II
Posted Monday, October 16, 2000 - 20:11 CET by Sorcerer

Now all of you Diablo lovers will probably hate me for posting this (or not, depends on how seriously you take a joke), but whenever I see something this funny I just HAVE to post it.
Read this gem at Something Awful. (Where else?).
Thanks for the tip Z! ;)

Boards O' Magick - problem report
Posted Friday, October 13, 2000 - 17:00 CET by Sorcerer

As you probably noticed if you're one of the regulars on our message boards - Boards O' Magick, we've had a bit of a situation there for the past two days.
The boards were down majority of the time, and so were all other scripts running on the site (including this news script) and I wasn't even able to put up a notice about it.
My sincere apologies for this. It was really out of my hands and when problems like these arise I can only notify GA (my host) to fix them.
If and when it gets done is another thing...
Well hopefully it's been fixed now and the boards SHOULD be working without any problems. (If not, please be patient, we'll get them fixed).
Be ye in need of information regarding Baldur's Gate (I and II), Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights and more, be sure to check them out.

Baldur's Gate II known problems
Posted Thursday, October 12, 2000 - 12:46 CET by Calis

Bioware posted a page with known issues with Baldur's Gate II. It includes info on a number of problems, including problems with VIA chipsets and the dreaded problem of the installer stopping at 95%. If you're having problems getting this awesome game to run, I suggest you check out this page.

Baldur's Gate II reviews
Posted Wednesday, October 11, 2000 - 20:08 CET by Calis

Yep, a couple more reviews of the game we're all playing.
The boys at Gamepro.com liked it a lot.
And so did Checkout.com, giving it a solid 10 out of 10 score.

All in all, BG2 continues to get rave reviews and it's just screaming for the RPG of the Year award.

Site News
Posted Sunday, October 8, 2000 - 21:02 CET by Sorcerer

Site Changes

Because very few people bothered to read the Site News here or wade even deeper into the site to the Archives section where the poll results are usually published, I decided that from now on they'll be displayed among the more-or-less-daily news at the root of the site. (But also in the Poll Archives, of course).
Also the poll comments will be shorter now because most of the polls I do these days are so self-explanatory I really have no idea what more to say about the results. I guess you'll just have to live without my short poll essays every week. Don't mourn too much. ;)

In the interest of introducing this vital section of the site to more people I decided to start announcing when Site News get updated. This way you'll be able to keep track of things that get changed around here. So from now any changes to Site News will be displayed on the main index as well.

Subsection Updates

After a while the Icewind Dale FAQ (Unofficial) has been updated and the newest version is available in the main Icewind Dale subsection. Also, a thorough spelling check has been performed on our own Icewind Dale Solution which should be a bit easier to read now. ;)

There are some new things on the BGII front as well. Brent Knowles' BG2Script utility has been added to the BGII/Editors subsection and is available to all of you who wish to edit your custom scripts in Baldur's Gate II.

The biggest new addition however, is the BGII/Tips, Tricks & Hints subsection which has finally been opened. For starters I compiled a giant Cheats list, plus a link to another big one at IGN.

Finally, there's been an addition the main BGII subsection in the form of a link to the short BGII guide Daily Radar is putting together. As always, our dedicated walkthrough scribe Sylvus is constantly updating his excellent BGII Solution as well.

Check the Site News section for direct links to all new stuff.

Last Week's Poll Results
Posted Sunday, October 8, 2000 - 20:57 CET by Sorcerer

At the time of the writing still this week's, but not for long. What we asked:

Q: How far in Baldur's Gate II are you?
(1278 votes total)

In Chapter 2 (396) 31%
In Chapter 3 (192) 15%
In Chapter 1 (182) 14%
It hasn't been released yet where I live (154) 12%
Haven't started playing yet (153) 12%
Finished the game (76) 6%
In Chapter 4 (52) 4%
In Chapter 5 (41) 3%
In Chapter 6 (21) 2%
In Chapter 7 (11) 1%

It seems that most people who already play have barely scratched the surface of Baldurs' Gate II yet, with 60% of them (combined) still in the first three chapters.

12% of people are probably quite angry because they can't buy BGII yet where they live, and another 12% have the game but haven't started playing it yet.

The big surprise awaits at the 6th place though. 6% of people claim that they have already finished it!

Whether they buzzed through the game very quickly or spent 200+ hours on it remains a mystery. But the good thing is that most people on our message boards think the replayability value is very high so I'm sure most of them will go through the game at least twice. Talking about those Road Runners of course.
I'll probably play it for 300 hours to explore every nook and cranny and I doubt I'll have the time to do it more than once. It'll probably take me a year anyway, since I have so little time to play. :p

Infinity Explorer 0.7 Released
Posted Wednesday, October 4, 2000 - 22:02 CET by Sorcerer

Infinity Explorer is a very useful tool for viewing the data files of the Infinity Engine games, which you may already have heard of. The latest version of Infinity Explorer, version 0.7, has been updated with Baldur's Gate 2 support!

Check out the homepage of Infinity Explorer at Source Forge and download yours now.

More info on Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
Posted Wednesday, October 4, 2000 - 14:33 CET by Nazgul

From Jon Kromrey, Producer, SSI/Mattel Interactive

I don't have all of the answers handy right now but here goes:

1) Will we be seeing any more media for the game such as new .mp3's, movies, monster animations, etc anytime soon:
Yes! We're getting in a build of the game today and are planning on releasing game footage as an exclusive online deal...

2) Has the collector's edition content been finalized yet and if so care to share the details:
The international collector's edition pacakages are still being decided upon, but it looks like the domestic Collector's Edition will have the following:
* Core game (2 cds)
* Core Poster (map of MD with Monsters on back)
* The Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor novel by Carrie Bebris
* Leather Dice Bag
* Dice
* Attack on Myth Drannor D&D adventure module
* Soundtrack CD from the Game
* 3rd Edition miniature
* and... if you pre-order we're working on a special deal with WotC...

3) What about a game status update? Does it still look good for a late Nov / early Dec release or are we facing the possibility of another push back, especially with the selling of SSI to GTG:
I cannot answer this question at this time.

4) Has anything about the game changed (i.e. added / removed / changed): I.E. the last list of skills / feats, game starting in Phlan, classes / races, content, etc:
We're constantly in discussion with Stormfront on a variety of issues ranging from game-play to multiplayer balancing and random dungeon testing. There are no annoucements of content that we have at this time.