kwerboom: Thank you Captainchicken84, Bookwyrm627, Lilura, and capricorn1971ad for replying to my post. After reading through your responses and the links provided, I think I have an understanding of the situation condensed to the following points:

* First, Beamdog is a legitimate company that takes over the licenses of older Bioware games. Beamdog does do 'enhancement' work and does offer support for newer operating systems. At the same time, Beamdog does push for the removal of the original game from sale on the storefront.

* Second, much of the hate for Beamdog seems to stem from Beamdog's handling of the Baldur's Gate Series. This seems to be their first big contract and they messed it up. BG:EE had questionable content added. BGII:EE was of questionable value. BG:SoD was an unnecessary bit of fanon with tastelessly added gender politics. In general, it's best to stay away from the Beamdog versions of the Baldur's Gate Series if the originals are already in your collection.

* Third, IWD:EE and PT:EE are characteristically better Beamdog products. There are still problems/bugs with both, but they don't suffer from the same level of problematic 'enhancement' that originally earned Beamdog so much hate.

Based on what I'm seeing, Beamdog sounds like a company trying to balance both making a quick buck off the classics while providing an updated and supported product that the fan base will love. It also sounds like they don't have very good talent when it comes to that balance.

I think I will purchase NWN:EE. I already have NWN:DE in my collection and I have had issues running it. Beamdog may not be the best company, but at least having an active company supporting the product means that there is a chance that there will be more compatibility patches in the future.

Lilura: Maybe I'm "special" in that I play, enjoy and commentate on both NWN and NWN2. And the Infinity Engine games such as BG, IWD and PS:T. Thus, I have no bias. But no, I'm not special and unique because I know a lot of people that play Infinity, Aurora and Electron. My readership, for example. I know there are also fanatics in each camp that attempt to devalue the other camps at every opportunity, and if there isn't one they attempt to create it. These people mostly wallow on the Beamdog forums, from which I was banned. Yes, I insulted them but what can you do, I'm a Codexer, and I've been banned from pretty much every RPG-related site, anyway. Someone who gets 1 mil views per year on their own platform is hardly gonna care about being banned from an insipid echo chamber like that.

Basically, anyone who shitcans the one or the other gets written off by me.