I think BG and D&D's basic concept of experience and levelling has become pretty antiquated in the era of computer and video games, since it really doesn't fit that well with the kind of granular expectations of char progression adopted and bequeathed to us by most other non-D&D cRPGs. You know, where hitting lvl 50 there is on par with hitting lvl10 in D&D, and the player is being constantly rewarded with level ups.
In D&D the near exponential levelling curve is supposed to be supplemented by other intermediate forms of character progress, like gear progression, or spellbook progression, or party/follower progression. So the player can remain engaged with a sense of "progress," even when there's no chance of hitting the next level anytime soon. Or better yet, where the story and character reveals are so engaging, that you don't even care if its not giving you xp or gold, because the story is just that good lol
One of the issues with D&D is that rewards and reward scaling are left largely up to the DM's discretion, so how quickly a character is meant to grow (growth along whatever dimension) is pretty divergent and largely up to the gamemaster.
I think a starter campaign that jumps you from lvl1 to beyond lvl10 is probably a pretty poorly designed low level campaign. It means that the DM couldn't find more creative ways to scale their player characters' sense of progress and had to resort to treasure or xp overloads for the hurry up.
Then again many people gripe about D&D being painfully boring at lower levels, and that has been going on forever. So not too surprising that people aren't satisfied with the idea of a game capping at say lvl4 or even lvl10, because it doesn't feel like that's going to be enough room to make the thing fun. I see that as more a problem in how they've crafted their treasure/gear/story progression to fit D&D's draconian and rather dusty levelling scheme.
The sweet spot for this one should probably be the same as BG1, basically where you hit lvl 7-9 at the tail end (2e had separate XP tables by class but lvl9 still a good cut off point). That way the follow up campaign can take you from lvl 10-16. After which point you are into epic level territory, where everything has to scale up for demigod type characters to even make sense in the traditional D&D scheme.
A good low level D&D campaign is a unique challenge, where the trick is to make it seem novel, even though its been done a hundred times before and kind of ubiquitous by now.
A good epic high level campaign, weirdly has to address similar problems at the other end of the spectrum. Just subsituting "kill the rats" with "kill the dragon," but still a similar challenge not to have it feel all tired and played out.
Mid-level D&D campaigns are the sweet spot. Simpler and more adaptive for a whole host of reasons that tend to make them more memorable. Though I think they work much better in a serial or modular format, rather than in a massive connected campaign. BG is one of the few games to pull off a connected campaign for all those tiers in a way that felt largely satisfying for at least most of the ride. I'm not sure it can really be replicated without just being rebooted. Its hard to know where they want to go with it. If this is going to be a Saga game with an obvious expansion/sequel, or if the Tav vs tadpole campaign ends in some other way.
The gold boxes and BG and Neverwinter teased an overarching concept of serial/modular continuing adventures, where the Character was independent of any specific Game... but then failed to deliver on it long term. Instead we got a bunch of reduxed game engines and sequels which, for lack of a better word, didn't have backwards compatability. Then they just abandoned the idea altogether to pursue MMOs. And of course in those we need 100 lvls, because that's just how those games work I guess hehe.
I wish Wizards could find a way to commit to like a 10 year plan and multiple games for the Realms under one roof. To actually bring Faerun to the computer in a serial way. One that is integrated with their PnP products for a more timely release... You know, so we could just have one edition of the rules at once, instead of these games always coming out on the cusp of a transition from one edition to the next or .5 of whatever. Instead of doing stand alone big ticket entries with different developers, or MMO pay to play models, to do an actual continuing series for the single player/small party. I'd like that.
NWN tried for it, but then they had to up and change studios and lost all momentum. Ditching backwards engine compatibility, balkanizing the content creating community they had just set up, and stalling out so we could have a NWN2 that was better looking at the time but harder to use, and sort of defeating the initial purpose. You can't really do a serial presentation without some fairly serious comittment to continuity.
I don't know why, but its like they couldn't figure out that D&D would obviously make a better show than a movie. So instead of a Game of Thrones on HBO that holds the world in its iron grip for half a decade, we end up getting some quick trash cash in like...
Summon Trailer is hella deadly magic, not to be used by low level mages without exercising extreme caution.
