Icewind Dale (and Heart of Winter) was developed by Black Isle Studios, not Bioware.
And yes, there is a difference.
Checking in from E3 -- First look at Neverwinter N
I spent about an hour yesterday putting this game through its paces and asking a barage of questions on everything I could think of about the game's future and potential. I got too much information to put it up in a quick update like this, so expect a detailed preview next week. In the meantime, I'll go over the basics and give some preliminary impressions for those who have not yet heard a lot about this amazing game.
Neverwinter Nights is a Dungeons and Dragons based multiplayer role playing game brought to you by the same folks who did Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale. The whole concept of the game is unique and somewhat revolutionary, assuming that they can pull it out. Basically, they want to take the old concept of D&D onto the web, where a dungeon master creates and oversees a campaign that can be played by groups of people. This is not a massive multiplayer game like Everquest, where thousands of players play on a small number of servers. The vision of Neverwinter Nights is that there will be thousands of servers, hosted by thousands of potential DM's who will create and host multiple campaigns that you can access and play over the internet.
To accomplish this, they put together a pretty impressive interface. In 10 minutes as I sat there, a bioware representative put together a dungeon complete with monsters, treasures, NPC encounters and a quest. He then created a character and set it in the dungeon, and the graphics that were created in those 10 minutes were absolutely amazing. Just by selecting certain tile sets, he was able to create a dungeon full of stone walls, cobwebs, archways and a multitude of other effects. The look was pretty impressive considering the time involved, and an advanced DM can populate the dungeon (both inside and outside) with a multitude of looks and effects.
The rules of the game are set through the AD&D Third Edition, and cannot be changed, but there is a lot of flexibility within the rules. You can create your own items and quests and basically populate your dungeon any way you can. Players can choose which dungeons they can try and build up their character in all of the ways allowed by the D&D rule set. It is pretty broad.
There are many aspects of this which I just can't go into in this review. There are supposedly filters that can protect a DM from grief players and players whose equipment is too high for their level. There are also ways that the players can protect themselves from killer DM's. You can create characters in a central, protected database which can move from server to server, or create them on the individual servers or even your own server. It is the implementation of these filters and protections that, in my opinion, will dictate whether this becomes a great game or a game that never reached its potential.
All in all, I was really impressed with this game. The whole thought of being able to create and control your own campaign or to play in small groups like we used to do with paper and pencil is incredibly cool. The graphics and gameplay are excellent, and basically seem to follow the Baldurs Gate model, which was one of the better single player RPG's I've played in a while. I am just crossing my fingers and hoping that somehow they can fullfill the promise they are showing. It will be quite a feat if they do.