Rogue Dao Studios - Purgatorio Update

For those of you who may have tried to access the old Rogue Dao site, it appears to be in the process of being revamped. The developers forums are still up and active here, and Prime Junta has helpfully located some recent information posted there concerning the status of their NWN2 Planescape Trilogy project, the first module of which is entitled Purgatorio.
In this thread,(you'll have to scroll down) developer Monty Markland, recently hired by Obsidian but still active on the project, has this to say about where things stand at the moment:

We're polishing up lots of stuff. We took a look at the Hive Ward in December and we were not satisfied with the Planar visual quality of the hubs. They certainly looked very Planescape, but we wanted them to be quintessentially Planescape…

The other component we wanted to revise was the critical path. The original did not involve the Sigil Factions enough in our estimation. So the critical path and companions are undergoing a complete redo.

We will be, without a shadow of a doubt, starting the public closed beta no later than March 31st, 2008. We will be starting with either the Gatehouse or the Hiverunner's Road Hub. It will be open to everyone who has already joined the RDS Beta Tester team. It will also be open to any new folks who want to take part.

What the PCB will consist of will be one hub of the Hive Ward section of the game, and possibly one Outer Planar location. The hub and associated locations, quests and critical path will be polished to beta quality.

We'll be looking for bug reports and feedback from the beta testers and then, once we do it once, we should be able to relatively quickly move from hub-to-hub.

I've been refraining from estimating release dates for a long time and I'm going to get back into the futurecasting business today.

Purgatorio will officially and finally be released on September 12, 2008. This date is firm. It will never change. We're to the point where we can accept a hard deadline.

This release date also coincides with the two-year anniversary of forming Rogue Dao Studios.

24 months of part-time development equates to 12 months of full time development, which will be an appropriate amount of time for the roughly 15-20 hour gameplay that Purgatorio will provide.

There are also some excellent screen shots here in threads like this in the Developer's Journal section, and also in the Gallery.

Thanks for the heads up, Prime Junta.
More information.

In this thread,(you'll have to scroll down)

You can directly link to the post like this

Thanks for the status update! Damned nice screens.

Well, the beta should be underway shortly, so we might hear more then!!

I'm glad folks dug through the site and found things … and am glad the project is still alive!

Originally Posted by Brother None
You can directly link to the post like this

I looked for that option--thanks for finding it for me.

Thanks for the status update! Damned nice screens.

Yeah, the artwork is outstanding I thought. Credit goes to Prime Junta for the info---he did all the work. I'm glad, too, because this is a project I wouldn't want to lose sight of--I'm looking forward to revisiting the Hive.

Mags, could I suggest you get in contact with someone there personally and set up a regular update with them. I do this with some of the small indies I keep a close watch on, such as the U6 Project.

I'll certainly try. The lead designer has only recently started with Obsidian, so I imagine he's pretty busy atm. Now that I have the forums link, that will also help.

I'll let Maggotmaster, Courtney and MikeDee know you would like to speak with one of them. They are probably the three best candidates for getting daily updates from -- Maggotmaster is the lead artist on Purgatorio, Courtney is the lead creative designer and MikeDee is the lead level designer.

You can email me a way to contact you and I'll forward it to them. My email is mlmarkland@roguedao.com

Thanks very much. I've sent an email just a few moments ago to the devteam contact at your forum site. I'll also email you my contact info.

yo yo yo,

yuppers, we've done that…. thanks Monty, see ya soon maggs

Hey, thanks for checking in on the boards, maggs. Look forward to seeing the latest from the project.

KK, new update sent, see ya around Maggs!

Respect to the scene!

OK, so which one of you is Maggs?

Both of us. He's maggs(maggotmaster)--I'm mags(magerette). But I think he spells me maggs, too.

Hope that cleared things up.

I'll stop that haha, so from now on you're Mags and I'm Maggs…..

Is it less confusing? I think not, but it's fun tho