Dear bg community, dear visitors,

the entire bg2 team wishes you all a happy and joyous 4th of July.

As has become customary, we also have some news on the development of bg2 to go along with this.

Most importantly, you can look forward to a much more comprehensive news post in the near future, that will outline our plans for the next major bg2 release, currently titled bg2 2.0b, with which we hope to get a big step closer to our goal of recreating the small-scale skirmish warfare that made up much of the AWI, in a manner that combines historical accuracy, an immersive atmosphere, and competitive multiplayer gameplay; and that will show you some of the content already done, or currently in the works, for that release.

We have somewhat recently added a new member to our team - Dain, who will be helping us mostly with skins, and also with some animation work, and whom some of you might know from his modding work on mount and blade. Please give him a warm welcome, and you can expect us to showcase some of his work fairly soon.

Also, while not part of the offical bg2 development team effort, I'd also like to use this post to express our thanks and gratitude to HairyPotter, creator of bg2ALT (http://bg2alt.ath.cx/), who has recently come forward and offered to help us in porting bg2 over to the orange box SDK. This assistance, and his other contributions to bg2, including his popular bg2ALT modification, are greatly appreciated.

Finally, I'd like to make you all aware that BGL, the long-time league for bg1, has just started up again for bg2, with the American division scheduled to play their first matches this coming sunday, July 6th. A big thank you to Slash and the BGL crew for bringing the BGL back. Head over to their site (http://www.battlegroundsleague.com) or their forums (http://forums.bgmod.com/index.php?showforum=50) to find out more.

Posted July 4, 2008