I'm definitely glad I got the Diamond version. I can't believe all the extra stuff I get on it for just $4 more .someone asked if that includes the premium modules and the answer is yes it does. I read up on some of the modules at neverwinter vault and saw that just one of them was about 20 hours long. awesome.
I installed it just to check it out, but I'm not gonna spend much time with yet because I've just started playing Baldur's Gate 2 this past week.

However, the *really good ones* tend to differentiate themselves with great narration and storytelling. Think about it, what part of your life doesn't involve fedex quests anyway?
Mop the floor = fedex quest involving retrieving mop and strafing left right.
Go to school = fedex quest to faculty to retrieve knowledge before coming home to rest/heal.
Sex = grinding for xp
But Neverwinter Nights shamelessly and blatantly mocks at it's audience with bad storywriting and horrible level designs. It's nary even a shoddy attempt to cover up for its obvious misgivings, that's why it's horrid design stands out. I think someone called this a Diablo 2 clone earlier in this thread - well that's what it is, a Diablo 2 clone with D&D rules and a little more story to it

Ahh so THATS why I've not gone up a level yet!

According to this movie (dunno if there was ever an English translation of it), you level up by killing random people in the subway.

whats better for SP, NWN 1 or 2? I heard one of the expansion packs is pretty good...

NWN = Great Single-Player Mods, not so much for the default Single-Player (minus HotU)
NWN 2 = Not as many Mods, better default Single-Player (mainly Mask of the Betrayer)

I really liked the SP for NWN1, and played it multiple times.
I couldn't bring myself to play through the NWN2 campaign again, I find it filled with annoyances.
However, the NWN2 expansions Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir were both good (I favour SoZ though, which will put me in a minority I expect).

I favor the SoZ mechanics myself; those who liked Icewind Dale will probably feel more at home with SoZ. It's just a shame the Aurora engine is very bad with loading times in moving from area to area. The official plot is pretty weak, but the side stories are fairly interesting. The focus in SoZ is squarely on you developing your own tight-knit party of characters with complementary abilities (because you'll need to use every skill), as opposed to just "main PC and a few tagalongs go beat on things".

It's definitely the worst RPG I've ever played. And that includes some pretty awful action-rpgs.
I have the main game and the SoU and HotU expansions. Having already bought them I tried to force myself to finish them, but I couldn't get myself to even finish the main game. It was that awful.
None of the characters are at all realistic. The dialogue is so forced, you feel like just pressing '1' in response to whatever pops up. Seriously, it's as though they completely outsourced the plot, character and dialogue to some pre-teen girl. And the combat isn't fun at all. It's Bioware's first attempt at an Action-RPG. If it wasn't for multiplayer content developed by FANS, they'd have gone bankrupt with such a shoddy 'game'.

I disliked the NWN SP campaign. It didn't feel like a roleplaying experience, at all, given that you have close to no actual impact on what's happening. The story will process pretty much exactly the same way, everytime, regardless of what character you use. I.e. there's close to no "role" you play, just slightly different approaches to battles and looting. Plus - the story was drab, the writing bad, and playing felt like a chore.
I DO have, however, a NWN bundle sitting around that I picked up for £2 in a second hand shop. I never really got into wading through all the mods out there. I am only really interested in Single Player mods. Any recommendations?

I haven't played any singleplayer mods yet, but you should try multiplayer. Seriously, your NWN experience isn't complete if you don't play multiplayer.

You can influence the campaign, but in very... very ... minor ways. IIRC, you can "convert" a certain person so the end fight is slightly easier.
and that's about it.
great mp tho, too bad none of my friends play it anymore ... (so if anyone wants to play some MP, maybe we can set something up?)

I've never had the chance to play it in multiplayer, the only friend who might be interested thinks it's too blocky. I'd like being part of a real D&D session through NwN though, given the powers the GM have it should be very much possible (I believe that was its primary advertised strength, no? D&D over the net, with a real DM behind it), but even cutting through the original campaign with a few decent people should amount to a fair bit of fun.

Yeah, the original campaign doesn't require a DM, but a well-done user campaign controlled by a good DM would be awesome.