I always saw NWN as a success. I had the impression it was meant to be a background for Online role playing where people could conduct their own games with players and dungeon msaters and other such role playing things.
The 'story' it came with was, to me, just like a demo, not the actual game. You were meant to come up with your own stuff, they were just providing the mechanics. That said, the game had a progressive memory leak that made it unplayable after a half hour, for me
- Kel