BioWare used to participate in the Baldur's Gate forums quite a bit. I can recall many posts by David Gaider, Derek French, an occasional note from Greg Zeschuk, Mark Darrah, Ben Smedsted, and even crotchety but wonderful John Winski who hated online forums and posted only to complain about them, ha ha. I appreciated all of them for making the online community integral to the product development, even if only in small ways. I know many ideas discussed on the 'boards did end up as features (inventory management!), incidents, or even characters in the first BG games. Maybe that community spirit was an element of what made Baldur's Gate so special compared to the other excellent titles at that time?
I too would love to meet some of the Larian people here in the forums and hear what they think, but I understand that they probably would have to post on their own time, and who wants to talk about work on their own nickel, eh? Certainly not me. I think of the old Aesop fable, the North Wind and the Sun. The Wind was claiming he was more powerful than the Sun, so the Sun said, OK, see that man down there wearing the cloak? Let's have a contest, and whoever gets the man to remove his cloak wins. The Wind agreed and blew furiously and even knocked the man over, but the man just clutched his cloak even tighter. Eventually the Wind gave up. The Sun then softly shone warm light down upon the man, and kept shining for a length of time. Eventually the man relaxed, and started to feel a little too warm, and so he took off his cloak. Some say the moral of the story is "Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail." That's a pleasant and practical thought, but I sometimes wonder whether some might derive from this fable that the trick is to set up the game so that you can win.
This is not a fair criticism. Different times.
