Am I the only one fed up with the Expansion packs?

Stante · Post by **Stante** » Thu May 27, 2004 2:19 pm

I sure hope not. I hate it how almost all of the servers now use the expansion packs, so us people who don't wanna bother spending money on some game add-ons are singled out from almost all the servers, and the ones that don't use expansion packs have hardly any players. At least Neversummer isn't joining the expansion pack bandwagon...

Teh Panda · Post by **Teh Panda** » Thu May 27, 2004 2:25 pm

It does get annoying not being entitled to certain game option because you don't have the expansion pack (HotU in my case). But I guess it's the only way BioWare can make profit... yeah right :evil:

I WANT TO BE A DWARVEN DEFENDER TOO!!! :cry:

Stante · Post by **Stante** » Thu May 27, 2004 2:36 pm

If someone could tell me what's so different about the expansion packs and the original game, I'll decide myself if the changes are enough to warrant me buying them... mind you, if all the other servers start converting then I guess I'll have to buy them anyway.

Teh Panda · Post by **Teh Panda** » Thu May 27, 2004 2:41 pm

Tilesets

Prestige Classes

Feats

Skills

Epic Levels (HotU only)

Models

Scripts (not being able to load some of the better .erfs is a real pain)

Can't forget the OCs, they're real neat.

Familiars

did I forget anything?

Stante · Post by **Stante** » Thu May 27, 2004 2:49 pm

I still don't know whether or not I should buy the expansion packs... all depends on price, really. If they're more than £25 (I'm British), then to hell with that.

Kell Of Neversummer · Post by **Kell Of Neversummer** » Thu May 27, 2004 5:37 pm

The biggest reason for HotU is epic levels. Without it you cannot get beyond lvl 20. Note that I played NS3 for several months as a lvl 20 and had a lot of fun - but there were things I just could not do because I could not level beyond 20. (when I did get HotU, I was able to lvl 3 or 4 times immediately, because the xp continued to accumulate).

AndrewCarr · Post by **AndrewCarr** » Thu May 27, 2004 8:40 pm

The oc's are good enough to warrant spending 10-15$ on that alone. The gold edition plus HotU cost me 70 USD. If you find it on ebay, or amazon.com i'm sure that you could get the expansions for around 30 USD or less, if they're used. So it's not a huge investment imo, and they brought back my interest in the game. That and the CEP have made NWN a whole new experience for me. A lot of it might be eye candy, yes, but eye candy is what a lot of new games today are, so going from basic NWN to two expansions and a nice hakpak has made NWN a virtually new game to me, and the above things listed by teh panda have fleshed it out more and made it more interesting. Then again dev crit, igms, and bigby's spells are sorta a fun ruiner if a server's devs are too lazy to edit them out/balance them.

bongoblue · Post by **bongoblue** » Thu May 27, 2004 9:16 pm

With more character faces, gear, etc. I see the reduction of all of the character types looking like clones of each other...

IcemanXV · Post by **IcemanXV** » Thu May 27, 2004 11:09 pm

I think the expansion packs add so much. Maybe to an RPer it would matter little. However to me, who likes to play the game and explore, more classes, feats, tilesets, spells, skills, monsters, etc is where its at. The more content there is, the more possibility to make each char, NPC, monster, and area completely unique. I think regular NWN was very limiting, that's all.

Stante · Post by **Stante** » Fri May 28, 2004 4:24 pm

Well, after thinking about it I think I'll be getting one of the expansion packs... if they do add as much to the game as you say (And they're around £20) then they probably are worth it, maybe even more than just playing... but which one would you say is the better out of the two, SoU or HotU? Which one has better add-ons in your opinions?

Teh Panda · Post by **Teh Panda** » Fri May 28, 2004 5:06 pm

I'd say you need HotU more, the Epic levels are a big thing.

AndrewCarr · Post by **AndrewCarr** » Fri May 28, 2004 5:11 pm

HotU, but SoU wasn't too bad. SoU just seemed more like an oc built for showing off all the new things, and imo there weren't as many as in HotU.

Stante · Post by **Stante** » Fri May 28, 2004 7:51 pm

I was thinking of HotU myself. Also, which one do most servers use, anyway? Or do they usually use both?

IcemanXV · Post by **IcemanXV** » Sat May 29, 2004 1:24 am

Stante wrote:I was thinking of HotU myself. Also, which one do most servers use, anyway? Or do they usually use both?

Most servers use both. As they come out most people upgrade to the newest. Generally you won't find a HOTU server that doesn't use SOU too. You may have slim pickings for servers that just use one or the other, although some servers use just SOU because of the hate of epic levels.

I just see the breakdowns as this:

20 more levels
50 + new feats
Hundreds of new spells
11 new classes (PrCs)
6 new tilesets
Several Monsters (usually updated in patches)
Limits increased in toolset for enhancement, damage, resist, immunity, etc
Epic spells, feats, and skills

Whats not to like?

Stante · Post by **Stante** » Sat May 29, 2004 9:41 am

damn... I'm not too sure whether I should buy both or what. To be honest, I have better things to spend my money on than one expansion pack that I've heard is good and another I don't particularly want.

Are there any extras in SoU that are any good? Maybe I won't feel quite as bad buying it if I knew I was getting more than just access to more of the servers.