I’ve been thinking that I should just pick up Neverwinter Nights to scratch my D&D itch. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and it seems like you can get it extra cheap now with a bunch of the expansions.
Question: Does that Diamond Edition only come in DVD format? I don’t have a DVD drive on my PC.
I think it only comes on a DVD. I’ve never seen it any other way.
Of course, you can get a DVD drive for under $20. There’s no reason in this day and age not to have one in your PC.
Personally, I am not fond of Bioware’s implementation of the D&D rules. Shifting it to a real time basis made some things overpowered, other things crippled, and in general it doesn’t do a very good job of conveying the D&D experience. I find the game to be poorly balanced and actively hostile to D&D novices (my brother played it for the first time in the past week and I had to do a lot of explaining on just about everything). I am in the minority, though.
I couldn’t get into it. I didn’t like the camera angles, and just kind of got bored very quickly. I have never played DnD, but I have beaten both Star Wars KotOR games, and plenty of video game rpgs, but there were still things that I didn’t quite get.
I thought it was quite good, with an excellent storyline and series of quests that don’t just amount to a bunch of fantasy/medieval FedEx missions.
It’s available for cheap and includes the expansion.
If you know someone with an external DVD drive they can loan you, there’s an upgrade patch contained on the game DVD. After you install the patch, the game and the expansions don’t require the install disc to be present in order to play.
I’ve got the sequel, and over the years, Dungeons and Dragons rules have changed (although I don’t know precisely how).
Neverwinter Nights wouldn’t be such a bad sojourn into the world, I think.
I liked the Baldur’s Gate series better. I believe the strong point of NWN is that you can easily write your own modules. The general consensus is that the original plotline is somewhat linear, but that a lot of the user-written modules are very good.
I used to play NWN quite a bit. Its fun with an abundance of good players on server communities (and an abundance of god players on local character communities. 
) I had stopped playing when NWN2 came out, but since the latest Atari ‘update’ renders the game inoperable with a “Microsoft Needs To Shut Down This Application” error, I’ve gone back to NWN*.
*Of course, that MS error could have something to do with a module I created where one of the quests was to pull Thor’s Hammer out of the posterior of a prone character called ‘Bill Gates’.
He offers you three wishes if you do it. Unfortunately you don’t find out til after you remove it that wish #1 is to be able to install MS software legally on one extra workstation more than you have a license for, Wish #2 is that all your MP3 players are replaced with brand new Zunes, and wish #3 is a $5 coupon towards the purchase of ‘VISTA’…
5 dollars? that’s a huuuuuuge coupon for Vista coming from the Gates-keeper.
Do it. Do it now. The real-time bother can easily be negated - like in Baldur’s Gate - by pausing the game and queuing orders to your party members. The game does have something of a learning curve, but it’s mostly figuring out how the D20 system works and how the character statistics affect the die rolls. Nothing twenty minutes on Wikipedia’s D&D article won’t give you enough of a primer on, if you don’t have prior D&D experience.
It’s a very good game in it’s own right, and the expansions are mostly all delicious. And the user made modules are unparalelled, maybe with the exceptions of the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind mods.
Go for it 
(And then go get Icewind Dale 1&2, Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR 1&2, Titan’s Quest and join me in the drooling queue for Fallout 3, if you’re not there already :p)
You can get it on CD. I don’t know about the expansions, but I bought the base game when it came out. Had 3 install discs and 1 play disc if I remember correctly. Great game if you have 1-2 other people you can play with, because you can form your own party and what-not. Better than playing tabletop D&D in my opinion, but that’s because I don’t have the patience to sit there and roll dice for hours on end. I just want to smash stuff!
There’s no reason not to.
The game is great, good D&D fun. Make sure you pay nwvault.ign.com a visit. It’s the main hub for NWN and NWN 2 resources. There are literally hundreds of great adventures for you to try. Start with the hall of fame modules.
And when you’re done trying the three main campaigns and you get tired of the hundreds of adventures, and the dozens of persistent worlds, get NWN 2 and do it all over again 
Well, I went to the store to check it out and it was only available on DVD, so I was bummed. But then i saw that they had the Baldur’s Gate II Ultimate collection for $4.99 and the Icewind Dale set for $2.99, so I grabbed both of those. I figure they’ll last me until I find a used CD copy of NWN.
NWN (and NWN 2, for that matter) are by far my favorite two D&D based PC-RPGs. I’m pretty sure I’m a little outside of the traditional D&D audience, though.
(For reference, it was a HUGE struggle for me - in effort and desire, not challenge - to finish the Baldur’s Gate games.)
And let me second that there’s really no excuse to not have a cheap DVD drive at this point.