Preview of Icewind Dale II

It seems that this highly anticipated RPG from Black Isle Studios gets more and more attractive upon drawing near to its release date. This time a new preview has been posted over at GameSpy which among other things talks about the implementation of 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules, new classes, skills, feats and more…
Here is a fragment:

Instead of rolling your ability scores, you’ll start with ten points and then have sixteen points to spread between the six abilities. Each point increases an ability score by one, unlike the pen-and-paper third edition rules where higher scores require you to spend extra points. Josh indicated that this was done to permit players to create their characters faster and to make balancing of the game easier. The number of portraits you can select from have been at least doubled and new character voice sets include Drow ones featuring some lines in their language.