I hope you are aware that "making money" and "GOTY" means a grand total of jack and shit when it determines whether a game sucked or not, right? If you don't.... well there's no point in talking to you about this. The fact is, BioWare's good games since Baldur's Gate that were original can be summed up as NWN and Mass Effect 1. The other two games they had that were pretty good, KOTOR and DA, were just dumbed down verison of previous games (in this case NWN and BG).

 Whatever

Edit:  Moderated Kasz216

Can't say i'm surprised really. Back when it was announced I had a feeling this game wouldn't so as hot as people believed it would.

You are a paragon of discussion. There is not even the slightest inkling of childishness in your posts.

What in Arioch's name is even going on here

This discussion is about The Old Republic and how it's going Free to Play, not about the quality of BioWare's back catalog

Was NWN an original title? It was more an evolution of Baldurs Gate in 3D. And I disagree about the Mass Effect series. They moved in a different direction to there older titles but they executed them very well and that's reflected in the widespread critical acclaim. As an RPG/shooter hybrid there are few games that compare.

Yes I believe it is still subscription, could be wrong though. The game is WAR, Warhammer Age of Reckoning.

Free to play is the only way I will ever play.

NWN was definitely a more evolved version of BG. Yeah they are both Forgotten Realms, but heck, NWN didn't even have to be a party game (whether that's good or bad, I can debate either way). Also, BG was D&D2 while NWN was 3.5, I would say that's a nice enough of a difference.

As for your "the later games moved in a different direction... RPG/shooter" I will just play my Deus Ex card right here. I can't directly compare DE to ME1, but I sure as hell can compare it to what BW did witht he other two (and what they did was definitely not pretty). If you can even call them shooters because... How many guns exactly did you have in ME2? From my count, far too few for it to be a worthwhile shooter. As for an RPG, how many differing armors/skills did you actually have to call it a proper RPG?

No, the best thing about the ME series after ME1, was the story and basically the dialogue. I prefer to think of it as an old-school adventure game, though with absolutely atrociously bad puzzles, because calling them RPGs or Shooters is frankly insulting to both genres.

Edit: Forgot the really big BG/NWN difference.

Deus Ex really does stand on its own in the shooter/RPG genre. There's nothing quite like it, but that doesn't take away from Mass Effect. ME2 was streamlined, arguably too much but your complaints were both fixed in ME3. Plenty of guns and a much greater use of abilities and stats. Having said that, I don't think ME2 was light on guns. It had 5 different normal weapon classes with two weapons in each class (3 in asault rifle) with 6 different heavy weapons. Add the biotics, tech abilities and the story aspects and you have your RPG elements (albeit light). It might not have been to everyones tastes but they listened to the criticisms of ME2 and fixed both of your compliants in ME3.

As for NWN, I'm not sure those can count as major evolution; more doing the expected with network technology advances and following D&D rule changes.