It was unnecessary and self-inserted. I don't care if it was 2 seconds of game play; I call garbage what it is.

Really? Because there's some seriously garbage writing in Baldur's Gate...

Note: I love Baldur's Gate - it's probably my favorite video game ever. I have more time in Baldur's Gate than probably all other video games combined, but there's still some garbage writing in there

[Edit] And to keep it on topic, most people seem to think the campaign in NWN is pretty garbage too

You're absolutely right. I'd forgotten that. I remember that they didn't manage to get the same actress for the voice, but I forgot that the changed some of the lines.

Regardless of how garbage some people think some of the source material was it doesn't change the fact you don't take a revered piece of art and alter it because you think it would be better that way and not expect to get backlash; ultimately the majority of the community, as well as the majority of the original developers, agreed the games didn't need that type of modernization and should be left as close to source as possible. Most original developers became critical of changes Beamdog made, even if they thought the project ended up being good overall. Josh Sawyer from Icewind Dale was quoted by PCWorld as saying:

"I thought the Enhanced Editions were really nice updates for the old games. It was really cool they came to tablets. As one of the main designers on Icewind Dale, seeing the BG2 kits in there destroy all the balance kind of made me a little sad. The BG2 kits are really powerful and Icewind Dale was kind of balanced around one thing."

I've maintained that Beamdog is ultimately doing good for the industry by attempting to keep these games updated and efficient, as well as close to source as possible, while removing DRM and updating multiplayer capabilities. I see the majority of the work they do as a great gain for the industry, and am glad they learned from their mistakes. Trent Oster proved he agrees with that sentiment when he told PCGamesN:

“When we did make some changes, they were very comfortable for the original design. There are some big things that we looked at and went, ‘This would make it better but we’re basically going in and repainting the smile on the Mona Lisa here.’”

Beamdog has taken the route of preserving games rather than changing them to fit new social standards; it's about maintaining the source of the original to fit new computer standards so more people can experience why they were popular in the first place.

I really appreciate your posts and almost entirely agree. I'm more forgiving towards Beamdog's mistakes if they later recant them (and they mostly have as you pointed out), and if the games run well with respect to performance and stability. Ironically, I'm not even close to being their most ardent supporter and I'm distressed about their approach to NWN:EE. I believe that launching on mobile so soon could be a grave mistake and could easily kill this chance to revive the game's community. I'm concerned NWN may be out of their league. Frugality and cost cutting will work against them when dealing with this particular gem from BioWare.

However, I'm an absolute fanatic about CRPGs, custom-made content and games with robust toolsets and- as in your last point- Beamdog is the best we've got for reviving NWN. There is no one else. No game developer will touch this series and we know because it's been 10+ years since Neverwinter Nights 2; categorically, this series was already dead and rotting before EE's release. On a good day, NWN Diamond boasted ~300 online players. In May, Overwatch had about 40 million players. Skyrim (classic) had about 10,000 players last month, and SSE had about the same. This online community that we keep hearing was fleeced, threatened, or otherwise undermined included about 300 players on a busy weekend. And they all already owned the game. Nothing has changed for users of Diamond Edition other than the growth prospects of their community, which was already unequivocally bleak.

Obviously, we can all rage about how inexperienced and ill-equipped Beamdog is relative to behemoths like Blizzard and EA, and veterans of RPGs like BioWare and Bethesda. And we can certainly pontificate on their mistakes and harangue one-another on their major botches of new content. It's easy to do this. These days, it's effortless to join a tribe. It's happening everywhere...politics, sports, you name it. Everyone wants to feel like they are part of a tribe or a cult that shares their views. One such tribe is the Beamdog bashers. This is the path of least resistance.

What is quite harder is understanding why Beamdog can make a living doing the things that they do, and how RPG games are dwarfed by other genres. What is difficult to accept is that the most lucrative franchises are not RPGs, but are in fact action and sports games. To take it a step further, classic RPGs are undoubtedly but a tiny subset of mainstream role-playing games like The Elder Scrolls series. By far, the pill lots of gamers here don't want to swallow is that sometimes you have to make do with what you have. Beamdog is one of the few entities left with people that care about classic RPGs and want to see them expanded to a wider audience. Other developers and publishers don't want to commit to these kinds of games because they hardly make any $$$. NWN EE can be thought of as an indicative test for the popularity of multiplayer D&D-based games. If you are a true "fan" of Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights and so on it is simply an incompatible viewpoint to wish that Beamdog didn't exist and that these games remained buried in history and largely inaccessible to the huge demographic that is casual gamers today. To be clear, it is perfectly compatible to suggest that NWN:EE isn't worth the cost and that Beamdog will not be able to handle this project in the long-run, and I totally respect this view.

Can we have the sale time extended, please?
Many of us cannot place the orders and can not access the GOG checkout for a couple of days now due to some GOGs javascript (CDN or whatever) breakdown.

Agree.
I have the same problem when i try to bui it.

Edit
after i tried from another device it seem to work. So may be a problem with cache of my browser, or something else broken on my pc.

GOG built a business selling old games because they provided a user-friendly install package that worked on modern systems (removed DRM, made sure it could run, included compatibility software like SCUMM, etc) and a technical support guarantee if something went wrong. Eventually Steam started selling older games, but only after GOG proved there was a market. Steam still doesn't provide support like making sure games from the 90s run on Windows 10.

With Steam, it's all on the developers to deal with issues. GOG does have technical staff that will actually try to fix issues, that was a big part their initial marketing. They were willing to do what Steam wasn't. They can't promise to fix everything because they aren't the devs and don't have the code, but they do guarantee compatibility with the listed operating systems.

I'm kind of bemused that we have GOG users now who don't know the history. Makes me feel a bit old.

You are much more informed on GOG than I am. But I am somewhat aware of their technical support guarantee; most of it seems to be described in their return policy.

I kept mistakenly conflating technical support and application support. While GOG is committed to ensuring the games run on modern systems, I'm pretty sure they have no intention of porting engine and code fixes from EE to Diamond. I think Diamond is (sensibly?) frozen by both parties.

I definitely agree with you about people joining one tribe or another when it comes to stuff like this; almost like there can't be middle ground, both sides are all or nothing. The basic idea of all or nothing undermines the strength of dialogue, which can take those strong ideas and foster new understandings and insight to possibly create an entirely new concept. We see the industry itself strive to meet this criteria, through things as big as community events like Quake-con, down to the small things many end-users take for granted like blue-posts reading the feedback of their forum topics and responding to the community directly. We see it in the way smaller companies, and sometimes big ones create and market games with crowdfunding to make sure their niche idea can best fit their target demographics. But we don't often see the community following that same direction and that will only hurt all of us overall.

I think many companies get lost trying to not single anyone out as a target demographic; and would rather cater to the masses. With RPG's this can be disastrous because as you pointed out, the market is small to begin with; alienating ANY potential customers could result in the project losing money overall. It's a tight-rope that the industry walks with role playing games; which is why many companies are choosing to add many of the basic RPG elements into their action games and such. Even many sports games are focused around having you create a character, join a fantasy championship of some kind, gain stats as you play to increase the effectiveness of the character. Change or trade teams and players. Action games are the same way; many times even opting for skill tree's and stat-based weapons. Is Shadow Warrior 2 an RPG? What about Borderlands, Battleborn, Destiny, Dead Island, Dead Rising, Batman, Superman (2018 PS4), etc? Some are obvious, but many of them start to blur the line. Minecraft is an RPG of sorts. Maybe the idea of RPG being a genre itself is an antiquated idea, much like First Person games have evolved into being known as more than just a shooting genre.

I also couldn't agree more about the mobile version being a lower priority than the PC, MAC, Linux version. I would love a definitive edition for computers as soon as possible since the only reason they can make the mobile is because people supported the computer based version. However, I also understand the user base for mobile is huge, and portable access is an important factor to many people. Mobile is also a better platform for small-factor DLC, which seems to be the direction they are going to take NWN:EE. Also, once they have ported over the code for mobile the vast majority of development can be done at once for both platforms. This allows them to not only sell more copies, but maintain both at once rather than having to do almost the same amount of work updating, only to redo the work later for mobile. I can see why a developer would want to flesh out the base code first; push out updates in tandem and double your efficiency. It's much easier and less energy to keep something moving than to start it up initially. So strike while the iron is hot, and word of mouth buzz is at its highest. In the end, the goal for Beamdog is to profit.

As for the question of why Beamdog can do what they do; have you ever thought, I wish I could play "xGame" again? After that, find out who owns the license and get a hold of them. If you have credentials in development, even weak ones, there's a chance that license owner will give you the source code and allow you to attempt to make it accessible again; especially if they are making no more residual income from it. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the mindset that Beamdog used, or something similar at least. The main thing is having the ability and resources to make good on your intentions; and most people who think they're up for the task probably aren't. People buy nostalgia, and as long as you stick as close to source as possible, you'll cash in on maximum nostalgia. It's actually such an easy concept I've been surprised over the last few years tons more of these haven't popped up.

A shame the 50% discount is finished. While I might have paid 20-25 for the deluxe edition, there is no way on earth I'll pay 50 for a game I already own (old physical discs, plus the non EE edition here on GOG)

I don't know about tribe, a company that pisses me off in the way Beamdog did, is just a company I won't do business with anymore.
I think that is normal customer behaviour, sure they could "atone" but I have seen no move on their part there so eh just excersing my right.

But frankly there is also no need to get half assed stuff like their EE editions or "Expansions" there is a ton of CRpgs around, so many I won't ever be able to play them all, so it is really simple to just ignore a company you don't like.

Reaper9988 Can we get a mini-list or something like that going? I myself only know a few :/

Enhanced screw people in the rear edition. It's the same goddamn game but now it costs 500% more.

Sounds like they can't do it... it's their game, and it's free market. Vote with your wallet, you can choose to not buy the enhanced version. (and also there's no reason why they are obliged to provide the older version and within reasonable price - this is closed source proprietary software world, the availability and price of SW is fully up to the author, and the alternative is "no SW for you", if you don't want to agree to their terms... actually there's one more alternative: "write your own", but only few people want jump on that one ... if this is truly bothering you, pick next time only open source and free software, where you can be almost sure the thing will be available to you for your whole life in at-least-current state, if not improved, and support by wallet (donations) or effort those.