Tales of the Sword Coast expansion pack content was already planned for the original Baldur's Gate

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It's still nowhere near Durlag's Tower like in Bioware's map, though.

True, though I can forgive that. The paper map was trying to mimic the in game map which probably shouldn't be the shape it is if it wants to keep with the canon map.

What do all the little rune like symbols mean? Do they correspond to anything in game?

No clue. Notice though that each city (and "monster camp") has an alignment. Baldur's Gate is Lawful Good, Candlekeep is Lawful Neutral, etc.

I wonder what that Lawful Evil snake symbol on the map is supposed to be representing.

Being an old softie I always felt bad for the xvarts when Ursa turned on them, before I slaughtered them all.

The red circles under them demand that they die.

FR is a cool map, I think. I used to like exploring that Forgotten Realms interactive atlas.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money from your hard work. They worked their asses off on a small budget to make a good game, can they be blamed for using the same engine to quickly make a small expansion and make money off it?

Also, look at how incredibly awesome BG2 was. It was fucking cosmic years ahead of BG1. It was also the best use of epic music in a video game ever.

Unfortunately, Bioware started going to shit after that, thanks to the great reception they got from the romances feature of BG2.

So now we are left with homosexual relationship simulators like Faggot Age and Ass Erect.

Faggots....faggots ruin everything.

It's a lot easier to come up with an idea and make make some art of it, look at all the unrealized concept art out there. I don't think it can be compared to $5 pet/clothing DLC made by interns.

I wouldn't be surprised if they cut some stuff out from the final game. Although it's worth noting that Durlag's Tower had some elements which weren't present in vanilla game, like "puzzles" using items scattered in the dungeon. So, I guess those areas might have been planned but never got past the initial draft when BG was made.

Even if they had some intention of possibly using this areas for an expansion, so what?
We are talking about a full-blown expansion here, not some 10$ horse armor DLC.

I would be surprised if devs at that time didn't think about the possibility of expansions in case that the game would turn out successfull and if it did fit with it.

Just the same you could argue that BG2 was cut from the original game, because obviously it's continuing the story: Look, they knew about that shit before! Deceit!

But hey, they learned from that mistake. The story of the Mass Effect trilogy obviously hasn't been outlined before starting with ME1 and it's much better for it. Oh, wait...

just the usual map flavoring, like explained by others.

My memory is hazy and my paper map is in another continent right now, but I'm almost sure mine didn't include Durlag's Tower and Ulgoth's Beard. And UB is of course located to the east of Baldur's Gate, not to the west.

That was the same map I got in Vanilla - those were the good old days when the designers actually tried to stuff as much content as they could into a new release instead of holding tidbits back for DLC.

Was a great game and fuck y'all that beg to differ. Nostalgia rules.

I'm surprised that a mod allowing access to PlaneScape areas through the Planar Sphere hasn't been made yet.

"Insert item, roll 1d4 where:

1= pandemonium's warrens
2= in the middle of carceri welcoming committee
3= third level of baator
4= prostate massage"

Mistake fixed, now your comment is deprived of it's focus.

Funny how you can spell Quetzacoatl, but not sphere.

Or "its".

Typing fast has its disadvantages, and there's a missing L. Enough derailing!

Every developer is planning ahead for what they want to do in the future. There is a shit ton of difference between planning for an expansion and stopping development of a game 6 months before release to work on DLC for said game. All this really shows is that they thought about making an expansion with those areas at some point.

Nothing wrong with an expansion being already planned in advance; hell the entirety of Darkside of Xeen was already planned when Clouds came out, and there were several dungeons and other items of interest on Cloudside that you couldn't activate until you bought Darkside. Which cost full price, not expansion price. Why did nobody complain? because each game by itself had enough content for a full game. Same reason why nobody complained about TotSC; BG1 was pretty meaty (quality of content irrelevant for this argument), and TotSC, priced as an expansion, added what content one expected from an expansion, and it was very good content, better than anything in the base game. Everybody's happy.

Now contrast with a DLC that costs $10 and adds a single NPC.

It's not about how much of it was planned when the game was released, it's about why it was cut out from the game. Because it needed another six months and was just side content anyway? fine, no problem. Just to cash in on an extra $10? nope.

I played Might&Magic 2, 6 and 7 when they were released, and 1, 3 and 4 more recently, but I seem to recall that Clouds of Xeen was rather small compared to the others. My memory is a bit hazy, though. But I'll replay it later this year and see if my memory is correct.

in size it was smaller, but you had Darkside to counter that.

FUCKIN BRITISH PUSHING DLC DOWN MY THROAT GARBLEGARBLGAH