I wonder how long it takes for some of those people to transfer to a more embittered relationship with Bethesda over it? Assuming any of them have that “I’m staring at a title screen realizing I haven’t actually had fun playing the game in weeks but the dopamine loop of the ‘loot, kill, craft’ system had me deluded into thinking I was enjoying myself. Like a social media doom-scroller or something” moment.
On top of some of the commentary here, I’d like to add that I think there’s a real chance that WoTC’s put some money behind getting it heavily reviewed/boosted, and so more articles about it and wider attention. That is not to undercut its quality, just that I think its layers of support. (I’ll admit there’s more than a little bit of my distrust of WoTC in that. Like after all their other scandals they need a win to try and suck newbies into the game after so much messing up. And I don’t even mean in the last year or something, their release quality for 5e has been abysmal for a long time.)
Additionally Larian played the early access thing very well. Not only did they listen to their ongoing players, and even netted some “tried it didn’t like it” people back, it gave time for everyone who was perhaps too into the older isometric BG1&2 titles (like me) to realize the game didn’t seem quite like it was for them and not pick it up. So you get clear, mostly good(if outdated) information out there for people to use in researching if they wanted to buy it, helping to avoid a lot of the knee-jerk hate that stuff like Fallout 4 and 76 got from misplaced expectations that could dull the release.
Nah, I loved changing out those disks. Core memory nostalgia material right there. Waste of time for sure, but one I remember fondly in hindsight.