The biggest issue with NWN and NWN2 which I believe may be why we do not get more games like them is the inability to monetize additional content. Both communities, while small are still very much alive and active with Persistent Worlds, but the simple fact is that all of this free content is just giving consumers of the medium a reason not to buy the next thing that comes out. I wonder if the prevalence of games like Fortnite whereby Epic Games has monetized contributions of private "content creators" gives Larian the ability to provide a platform to allow for content creation (single player mods, persistent worlds, and simpler stuff like UI changes, tactical/strategic (aka difficulty) mods, etc.)? If Larian were to find a way to have some kind of money sharing with folks that create custom mods then perhaps having a full on modding community for this and other RPG's would be a more popular gaming offer.
I think they didn't monetize a bunch of stuff with NWN just because back then, microtransactions was not really a part of gaming. Now though, with microtransactions being the Status Quo, they could monetize the crap out of additional chunks of content. Even if modders are making content for free, the developers could make better-looking, shinier, more polished stuff and it would sell. Just calling something an "official" add-on or module would automatically make it more appealing to a lot of people than just amateur mods. They could sell asset packs, new races/classes/subclasses, their own "official" adventures, cosmetic options for characters, and like I mentioned before, rent out servers for persistent worlds. With how huge D&D is right now, if a true, modern, user-friendly, graphically attractive version of the NWN toolset and DM client came out, it would probably be even more popular than the original NWN was.
