But what made me angry at the time is that neither during its long development nor at the time of its release was it advertised as being merely, as you put it, a "modder's tool". It was sold as if it was already a perfectly finished and polished single-player RPG, which it certainly wasn't. Well okay then it was "perfectly finished" but it was rubbish. I don't know why it was rubbish and have only been able to guess. My guesses are that it either had something to do with a lack of creativity after the departure of Black Isle Studios or else Bioware had just suddenly decided to stop producing great games and to start mugging people. Either way, Neverwinter Nights was a very disappointing game to those of us who had loved the IE games. I just don't trust Bioware these days. Look at what they did with Dragon Age for instance : the sequel was "dumbed down". The original IE games collaboration (Bioware+Black Isle) would never have done that because they had both talent and artistic pride.

I think it was more a new engine running the game and had a little more learning curve to produce a good game for. The camera angles were awful. I still have not played more than a few hours worth of NWN, and still miss the wonderful 2D of BG1 & 2. NWN was so ungratifying for me, that I never purchased NWN2 until recently here on GOG (still very low on my backlog of games to play).
BG1 & 2 are next up after I finally finish System Shock 2, so my pick for the OP would be BG1 and 2.

No, I don't just praise it for what modders turned it into, but for the fact that it was explicitly made for modders, with the idea that everyone could become a modder and tell their own stories. That's an integral part of NWN's concept and apparantly Bioware failed to communicate that to the masses.

So I fully agree that Bioware's advertising was misleading and I can relate to the disappointment of Day One purchasers who were looking for a compelling single player experience when there was no custom content around yet, or who were not interested in modding at all. I just don't agree that NWN is a shitty product. I think it's an awesome concept and a great title for everyone interested in designing or playing creative and original custom-built stories or roleplaying online with their friends instead of relying on the creativity of the game industry, almost a gift from Bioware to make Bioware obsolete. ;) I think it's perfectly okay and actually very cool for developers to release powerful game editors and roleplaying tools like this, but I agree that marketing them solely as a single player campaign when that's only a tiny fraction of the concept (and the weakest on top of it) can only lead to disappointment.

I thought you didn't play Dragon Age? Are you just basing your opinions on what other people say without making up your own mind? And if you didn't think Dragon Age was a game worth playing in the first place, why does it bother you that the sequel was supposedly "dumbed down"? I think it's fine that you express your disappointment and anger with NWN, which you bought and disliked, or that you're not interested in Bioware's more recent games because of that disappointment, but bashing them for something you didn't even try yourself is just silly ...

I purchased DA:O and played it a little more than the original NWN. It was okay, but I never finished it or even felt like finishing it. I don't think the party size had any thing to do with it, and Morrowind (which I enjoyed) didn't use D&D rule set so that wasn't a problem either. It must have been the gameplay and story. NWN was a better game, but I just couldn't get past the awful camera angles, plus of course it was 7 years older. DA:O had the same reaction to me that NWN had, I never purchased the expansion or the sequel.
I canceled my PC Gamer sub probably shortly after DA:O, I didn't do that because of the game or review, but felt that the magazine quality went downhill. I recently tried it again last year, and the quality has gone even further downhill, perhaps that is just because of my age. They have the problem of reporting on too much of the stuff I don't care about. There are fewer PC game reviews, than I remember, and the ones that they do have are either for Consoles (which I don't understand why they would be in a magazine called PC Gamer) or older games and mod reviews. I wish they would just settle on reviewing new PC Games, leave the mods for fan sites, and drop the Console reviews. Before I canceled my sub again, they started to let you know how bad of a console port a game was, so that was a little refreshing, but they did say they wouldn't knock off points for even a bad console port (which irked me).

I slightly regret having laid into NWN now, especially when this (necro) thread began so positively. I'm sure it is a very good game with mods and Leroux was defending it as such, having enjoyed playing it for a long time. We weren't really disagreeing over much as far as I can see but only adopting different attitudes : Leroux was defending the modded game while admitting that Bioware had misled customers initially, while I was attacking the original campaign - we all seem to agree that it is a bit flat and bland - and also Bioware for being lazy and a bit cheeky by selling the public a "DIY RPG". I think Bioware was "economical with the truth" and that is a good way to start alienating your fanbase. I'd had high hopes for NWN and bought it in good faith in anticipation that it would be - out of the box - another epic single-player RPG a la Baldur's Gate et al. The realisation that it was not such a product after I had played quite far into the OC changed my feelings towards Bioware. But I would consider playing NWN now that it has been improved. My argument still stands I think but perhaps I went a bit OTT and ought to have been less aggressive.

The reason why I mentioned PC Gamer magazine (I also used to buy PC Zone) is that I used to buy it regularly and for a long time enjoyed and trusted its reviews. Then at about the same time as NWN came out - and not merely because the mag gave this game a 90% rating - I began to notice that people started complaining about their reviews in the letters section, and I also found that I usually agreed with the letter writers. Something in the PC games industry as a whole changed at about this time and professional reviews no longer seemed as independent or trustworthy. Whereas back in, say,1998-2002 (I couldn't say which year is the exact cut off point) games mags were still publishing honest, impartial and independent reviews, it now seemed to me and a large number of others that every big budget AAA title was getting an 80%+ score from mags even when gamers themselves thought it was a poor game. I think this trend is still current too. Just like most other gamers I depend partly on reviews when I'm deciding whether to buy a game, but since I feel I can't trust PC gaming mags I no longer bother with them in either paper or digital form.

P.S. As a result of our discussion about printers and game manuals and your mention of ereaders, jjimp, I found an app for my iPad called GoodReader for iPad - a pdf reader - and it has turned out to be the perfect solution for me, so many thanks for pointing me in the right direction :)

This thread is now totally derailed, sorry folks. To the poster who started the thread back up I'd say it doesn't matter much which IE game you play next after BG1, though IWD2 makes the least sense if you haven't played IWD1. I personally played the IE games in the order in which they were released, so IWD and Planescape : Torment after BG1 and before BG2.