Like it feels sort of backwards, but if only they had been able to marry the simple campaign design tools of NWN1 with the functionality of NWN2 for party and scripting, and then give that an iso rts style combat option of the infinity games, it would just live forever on my hard drive lol.
I always just wanted NWN to follow the gameplay style of the Baldurs Gates and the Icewind Dales, but with an Unlimited Adventures style toolset. A modern map maker, dungeon designer, char creator, sound suite, cinema direction and all the rest.
I still much prefer a starter set with modular expansions rather than a monthly subsciption model like the mmos. I just don't think mmo is the way to do D&D at all. But honestly if it was cool enough I might swing a subscription thing for content, like D&D netflix. But I don't like the idea of everything server side or online only, where they can just pull the plug and it falls apart like a house or cards.
A proper NWN successor even more than BG needs to have like 5-10 year long support commitment and a focus on user created stuff to build community. Cause it takes about that long for the user created content to fill in the necessary gaps for artists to link up with writers and for enough enthusiast to meet and collaborate. When I bashed the shitty combat of neverwinter above I was thinking mainly of the first game. The launch campaign for it was really lackluster too, compared to everything else Bioware had made up to that point. It was sort of their first big miss for me I think. SoU and HotU felt pretty meh as well. NWN2 didn't come into its own till Mask of the Betrayer, which was also a really long period of downtime for a game to build itself out. The toolset was better, but just much harder to learn on the fly, with fewer users cause of the overlap between the two games and the kinda Bioware/Obsidian split, both laying claim to BG inheritance in different ways and both kinda dropping the ball with their opening salvos for an intro campaign hehe.
I hope they revive the basic idea though. I think if they don't, then Pathfinder will just probably nix the idea and make the NWN version of WotR, but I know I won't dig it as much as the Forgotten Realms on a wizard's style budget.
