I'm looking forward to the game. I lurk on their boards from time to time and read the summary BIOWARE boards posts on the Neverwinter Vault site. Here is what I've gatherd from the post of BIOWARE employees on the official boards
They have not settled on point buy yet... they said they would set it on play testing. I think they have most of the tool set completed (tiles, monsters, items are done) and the scripting language. My understanding is there are touching up the DM client, creating the content for the official adventure, and have started putting things together... but are not yet at even a complete alpha much less an "internal beta". I think they will release in March... they have a lot of people working on the project and they say that things are coming together pretty nicely since they did a whole lot of design work, plannning and processing work ahead of time.
Hopefully we'll see the final game in the very early spring.
Solarc