Developers have no idea how much money they can milk by releasing a NWN1 style Toolset, DM Client, and 50+ multiplayer capable game. As has been said, NWN1 is 20 years old and still has a relatively large, albeit shrinking community of die-hards.
Think about that. 20 years of DLC. 20 years of small expansions.
Sell the Toolset and DM client as separate products. People will buy them. Sell DLC that is little more than new weapon models, clothing models, faces, placeables, tilesets, races, classes. People will buy them. For 20 years.
All that really needs to be considered is making sure that you don't release all of this in such a way that it breaks people's ability to play together on the same server. Make player options require player purchases to use, but not to participate with one another. Let builders buy all of the other stuff. They will.
Of course, I don't want to be gauged like that, so expansions are better, but hey: I'll spend thousands over 20 years.
Yeah, and they could rent out servers for people to make NWN-style persistent worlds, and probably make bank.
