Quote Originally Posted by Clertar View Post
Interesting. I confess that a person who plays BG2+ToB every two or three years, I couldn't finish Kingmaker. I found the combat gameplay underwhelming and the kingdom management just ended up demotivating me, which was disappointing given how excited I had been for the game to come out.

I agree that Kingmaker and DOS2 were probably important in the interest of WotC to make a new BG game, but my guess would be that teh release of Beamdog's enhanced editions of the original games were the main direct cause. They released an interquel, and hired David Gaider away from Bioware in what everyone interpreted as getting ready to work on BG3.
Worth noting that there are mods that basically play the kingdom management stuff for you, letting you focus on NWN-style hack-and-slash/dungeon-crawling.