What I don't understand - why would anyone prefer the original versions (as a casual gamer, this is a non-starter for me anyway, because I don't want to spend a fortnight on patching things...)?
The thing is, you don't have to spend a fortnight patching anything. The originals, while not perfect and slightly dated, are still stable and playable.
I'd also argue that depending on your hardware, the EEs are not necessarily stabler: for example, on the latest update (not just the beta, mind you), PCs with integrated Intel video cards freeze the game for upwards of a minute when saving. Not to mention the horrible lag caused by the zoom-out effect of the area map screen (which you can't disable).
The whole point here, which a lot of people seem to be missing, is that not only there are cases in which the EEs won't run (while the GoG originals will), but for some veteran players, all these actual improvements and enhancements made by Beamdog come with the price of excessive or arbitrary changes and additions that ultimately make it a mixed bag.
And that's when the whole removal of the originals thing comes into play. If they were still there, available as always, none of this would be a big deal and the whole "WELL IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T PLAY IT" argument would actually hold water.
Sure, you can still get them from GoG if you buy the EEs from there. Is it right that folks have to play double the price for games they don't want to a developer which didn't even make them?
Well I get your point, but I really think that from Beamdog's perspective the "veteran players" are a minority. Most of the players these days will be either people who are new to the game or players like me, who used to play BG etc. casually ages ago and want to come back (and don't want to play the versions from AD 1980, hence you do need a lot of patching work). The GOG versions are also on sale all the time, I bought BG2 for 5£ a while ago...
Again, I get your point - what I don't understand is why people behave (even more so on the GOG forum) as if Beamdog were trying to sell their grandmothers on ebay...
@Kilivitz I get the frustration. And I have no illusions about "letting Beamdog off the hook" when they make a decision that frustrated you. My point was merely to try and get people to realize that this was a three way decision and that all the companies involved share blame.
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Well I get your point, but I really think that from Beamdog's perspective the "veteran players" are a minority. Most of the players these days will be either people who are new to the game or players like me, who used to play BG etc. casually ages ago and want to come back (and don't want to play the versions from AD 1980, hence you do need a lot of patching work). The GOG versions are also on sale all the time, I bought BG2 for 5£ a while ago...
Again, I get your point - what I don't understand is why people behave (even more so on the GOG forum) as if Beamdog were trying to sell their grandmothers on ebay...