Icewind Dale II Release Woes

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(Originally posted by Sorcerer)

Though I usually don't post official messages board posts (and we seem to have lost our only reporter who would post them, anyone else interested in doing it?), I'll post a compilation/excerpt of J.E. Sawyer's (Lead Designer) replies to a post started by a disgruntled (ex?) fan. It sums up the whole release date situation pretty well:

IWD2 is the only PC title that is scheduled for release before the last quarter of this year. I don't think many of us were exactly confident that IWD2 was going to ship in late May, but we didn't receive any new information about a projected release date until mid-to-late June. And then that date shifted around a bit. It's "supposedly" been settled, but again, there hasn't been an official announcement about it. In May, Interplay and Vivendi were having negotiations with each other about a) when the game would actually be ready to ship and b) based off of that, when the game would ship. Considering those conversations were ongoing at the time of Herve's "special meeting", why would he commit to something that could slip between quarters in the very near future?

We went to great pains to make the game better on a number of levels. These improvements range from the massive overhaul of the engine to accept 3E rules (which you ignore as irrelevant) to the revision of the entire interface graphically and mechanically. On top of engine changes, the designers spent a great deal of time making the dialogues deeper, more varied, and more reactive to the characters speaking. A large number of interesting puzzles and quests, interactive environment elements, and varied ways to solve problems have all been put in the game to make it better than Icewind Dale on a number of levels.

When we announced Icewind Dale II it certainly did have a May 29th release date. It also still had kits, 2nd Ed. rules, the Icewind Dale interface, and an estimated 30-40 hours of gameplay.

If you don't believe us, check out the previews of the game. These are some of the same people who slammed Heart of Winter. They definitely criticize the aged look of the Infinity Engine, but they almost all have good things to say about the improvements we made to the underlying ruleset and overall changes to gameplay focus.

We made mistakes, changed our minds on some things, debated back and forth with our consumers and each other. But very little was left to the imagination. I will go out on a limb to suggest that the Icewind Dale II community knows more about the development process of this title than any other game I've heard of. We've addressed almost every single question about rules implementation, game focus, engine structure, and related issues that players have brought up.

In May, it seemed unlikely (but still possible) to release IWD2 at the end of the month. However, there was no new release date forthcoming. None. Feargus gave estimates for the end the product's testing to the IPLY people that deal with Vivendi. These figures went back and forth and were debated and compared to the release dates of NWN and Warcraft III by Vivendi. Through all of June, I don't think I ever heard a new release date from anyone. In early July, I believe we were told Vivendi's current release date. I then heard that number change sometime in mid-July, then go back to the previous date. That's the date that should "really for reals" be the actual ship date. I could tell you that date, but it wouldn't really accomplish anything.

If it winds up actually being the release date, big deal -- it has no effect. However, if it doesn't wind up being the release date, I could get yelled at by fans and other people in my company. There's absolutely no point to announcing a release date through anything but Vivendi/Interplay PR.

The game wasn't done at the end of May. There's no denying that fact. We weren't done with it. Our fault. But the release date -- it's not even a matter of assigning "fault". Vivendi isn't at fault for shifting dates around. That's their business, literally and figuratively. They wanted a May release, that didn't happen, so it took Interplay and Vivendi a while to determine exactly when it should ship. Hopefully those dates will be forthcoming. There's no Machiavellian reason for a release date not being announced other than two large, sprawling groups of people going, "Hey, is this going to be done by N?" "Yeah." "Really? That's not what I heard from B." "Definitely. A says so." "Okay, well we have to deal with X, Y, Z. So, blah, blah, blah."

I would also like to point out a precedent for Interplay releasing titles in close proximity to direct competition: Icewind Dale. The original Icewind Dale was shipped on the same day as Diablo II. More than NWN and Warcraft III are to Icewind Dale II, Diablo II was a direct competitor to Icewind Dale. We had absolutely no problem releasing it on the same day. Icewind Dale has sold well over 300,000 units to date.

"HAW, HAW! THAT'S NOTHING COMPARED TO BALDUR'S GATE!" That's absolutely correct. It also took a year to make with a smaller development team and had a very high wholesale price. If you think Icewind Dale is nothing compared to Baldur's Gate or BG:II, rock on, brother -- but the fact is that it did make a lot of money for Interplay.

Even Heart of Winter, the ill-fated expansion to IWD, made a load of money for IPLY. Unfortunately, it did it in a kind of crummy way. Did you know that Sacrifice and Heart of Winter sold roughly the same number of units? That's right -- the Heart of Winter expansion, on one disk, with a very short development time and low cost of goods, sold at a high wholesale (too high, by many reviewer and fan estimates), got fair to bad reviews, but still sold about as much as Sacrifice. Sacrifice was in development for years, got excellent reviews, had a great looking engine, and was very high-concept. It just didn't sell very well. You may believe that Sacrifice is a much better game than HoW. If so -- that's perfectly fine. It doesn't change the facts of how profitable both titles were. Hey -- I think MDK2 is the best game BioWare's made to date. It also happens to be one of their lowest selling titles.

I suppose it is possible that everyone in Black Isle is incompetent, but our products still continue to sell. There's no reason for us to expect that IWD2 would bomb if it were released today or next week. If the original IWD could sell head-to-head with Diablo II (a more direct competitor to IWD than NWN and WCIII are to IWDII), why would we (IPLY) have any reservations about shipping IWDII as soon as reasonably possible?

In short, the release date is still "soon", and that's as close as it gets at this point. In case you haven't yet, read our preview while we wait for the game to be released.

 

(Originally posted by Sir Belisarius)

As far as I'm concerned, they can hold off until they've got the game ready and perfect!!! I'm still having fun with NWN - so I am in no rush to get IWD 2 right now...

 

(Originally posted by Mart)

I can wait a few weeks to get a near perfect game. I am very plaesed with the way this particular project is going and I think I speak for a lot of dedicated fans. The overall result on the market will prove me right or wrong of course, but my little finger tells me That IWD2 will be a moderate blast, largely due to its huge fan base. We'll see...