The answer to your last question is "Yes". The forum is a place for feedback, and a place to blow off steam, which is also a form of feedback.
I want very much to love this game. It's not because it's Larian, don't get me wrong Larian folks, if you see this, you do make very good games, but you're not specifically why I'm here. I'm here for that intangible "soul" of the game. I'm here because prior to BG, I played things like Doom and Mortal Kombat almost exclusively. On PC anyway. I have something like 110+ completions on the original BG. It's way up there on BG 2 as well, so I am here looking for that soul to be here. In so far as it being EA, I'm not a stranger to this type of situation, so I'm not going to be unforgiving about the bugs I encounter, on the contrary, I'm going to expect them, and provide feedback on them as I encounter them.
I'm not expecting it to be a direct sequel to the originals either. I thought they wrapped up their arc rather well. But I am looking to get drawn in. I'm looking to find that experience that pulls me in so deeply that I look up and realize that the sun's come up, and I should have been in bed hours ago. I'm looking to find out if the cast of characters I'm going to be interacting with for what I hope will be thousands of hours over time are going to not only keep me interested, but make me miss them when I'm not playing. Some of what I'm looking for is also intangible. Is it something that I feel will have me inviting some friends in to play sessions in MP. NWN did that very well, to the point where I played it for 5 years, but the last three were tied directly to the MP aspects, either through playing player produced modules, or contributing storylines and scripts or simply building my own. We had a running "joke" that playing NWN online was like having a table top session w/out the need to clean up afterwards.
These are the things that it is important, to me, that this game brings to the table. While I haven't found all of this so far, there are aspects of it that I'm willing to ignore, so long as some of the criteria towards what's going to make this a spiritual successor to BG/BG 2 are met. These are the things that I would be looking for in gameplay videos/reviews even if I hadn't decided to go ahead and find out for myself, and reading through these forums isn't just providing potential for Larian to see it, but potential for me to see it, and find things that I may have missed in the game, and that may tilt those scales one way or the other. Some players may find this kind of feedback a waste of bandwidth, but for me, this kind of feedback is invaluable, and has already at least tipped the scales enough that I decided to buy in now, instead of waiting for later.
