I'm curious as how you feel about Skyrim ( as the most recent Elder Scrolls Solo game ). Skyrim was a nice experience out of the box, but the modding community added so many, many, MANY things, ranging from graphical improvements to gameplay improvements, to pure additions and total conversions, that the core game feels ... Kinda weak, now.
I believe in modding communities, even if, sometimes, the devs make it feel like they entirely rely on the communities doing their work. Neverwinter was an exception, as it actually relied a lot on the modding community from the start. Starbound is starting to feel like they are waiting for people to make mods so that they can add them to the game.
Something I quickly wondered was why, in a land as cold as Skyrim, there was no "survival" aspect to the game. Cold, especially. Makes no sense to be able to sustain terrible temperatures and weather wearing only a bikini, does it ? The answer is quite logic : it's just plain annoying. Some will like the features, some will hate it. It's just best not to put it into the game and let someone else mod it, so that people that want the feature will get the mod and play with it.
So, I won't be mad at Larian as long as the adventure will be long enough to keep my buddy and me busy for several hours, fun enough to keep us entertained all along, challenging enough to keep us focused. I won't hold them a grudge for not being "deep" enough or anything. D:OS has been advertising the modding tools all along, meaning they also plan on players keeping the game alive and well. They will probably throw some new campaigns here and there themselves.
And, really, when they said they wanted to go back to the roots, I fully expect them to mean Baldur's gate and such games, not the pen and paper RPGs. BG was a good game but extremely limited in what you could do. D:OS already has more depth to the gameplay and story than NG, imho...
