But the customer - whose money eventually pays the wages (or doesn't....) - pays a similar price for a game from the big guys like Bioware or Blizzard. So they feel entitled to compare them. I don't know how much people paid in other countries but we paid about 10% less for BD here than we did for most full price titles. And as far as the content and production went it certainly didn't deliver 90% of our expectations of a front line game.
I can't recall what I paid for BD exactly, but it wasn't much cheaper than, say, KotOR. Incidentally, where I live, it's pat-easy to get pirated copies. Ah, hindsight. (I'll tell you a secret: I bought a pirated copy of KotOR first, because I was very leery of a Bioware product at that point and the legitimate copies took a long time shipping where I live. I finished the game. Then I went out and bought a legitimate copy.)
I think that Bioware would have been a little taken aback by some very strong criticism of the first NWN release. Many fans thought that the campaign was rubbish, and a lot of BG fans didn't like the Aurora engine either. Comments like "generic fantasy drivel" appeared in some independent reviews, and on the forums the visuals were compared with chipboard veneer furniture and "Barbie Goes Fantasy", etc. But Bioware could have easily just dismissed it as whining, pointed to a lot of good reviews and huge sales, and ignored it.
Oh, yes. I was pretty disgusted with the NWN OC ("OMG Bioware u suck!11!!" -- you know, that kind of rabid outcry), and it took a lot of convincing and reading the opinions of people I generally trust for me to buy KotOR. (A purchase that is, I think, worth every cent and more.)
