There is a logic to that WoW design of different low level zones: Players probably like to try out different characters, play each of them for a while, and then decide which one they like the best and want to keep playing until the end. If every time you want to try out a new character you have to go through the same quests and story, that is getting boring really fast. So I think a game like Baldur's Gate 3, which has a really huge Act I, would have been better served with let's say 5 different starting points, each with 20% of that content.

Other than the start, I am mostly content with how Baldur's Gate 3 is working out for me. The download was impressively fast on Steam, I was able to play just 1 hour after release, with only a few minor hickups. I made a custom character, bard level 1, then 3 levels of warlock, and that is working out quite good as well. In 5E D&D, warlock spell slots work very differently than the spell slots of other casters, and warlocks are mostly limited by having very few spell slots. The two level 1 spell slots the level 1 bard adds, and the different spell list he gives access to, are quite beneficial here. The idea is to switch back to bard now, and get to the sword bard subclass at overall level 6 (bard 3, warlock 3), which would probably work well together with the warlock Pact of the Blade. My character also comes with a huge "I win" button, because of the interaction between the Darkness spell and the warlock's Devil's Sight. That is something that is too annoying to use in actual D&D, because it impacts your fellow group members. But in a single-player game without a DM that could do something clever against it, being the only one that can still see on the battlefield defeats a lot of AI monsters.

Where Baldur's Gate 3 fails for me is in providing good content from content creators streaming it on Twitch or YouTube. To their credit, Larian Studios tried to stick as close as possible to the D&D 5th edition rules, but the D&D Player's Handbook is 316 pages long. The highly complex rules make for a deep tactical gameplay in combat, but that doesn't translate into great visuals. Buttons are smalls, menus are nested, status information hidden behind tiny icons: Watching combat in Baldur's Gate 3 isn't always a great experience, especially if the player isn't a great commentator spelling out everything he is trying to achieve. And in many places in Act I, combat only takes about a quarter of your play time, with cutscenes, dialogue, and ability checks taking the rest. Those are a lot more visually obvious for people watching a stream, but not very exciting, because a dialogue has a lot fewer options than a combat situation. Most of the time the "good" response is obvious, and you see streamer after streamer going through the same dialogue choosing the same options.

One extremely bad design choice for streaming is how it deals with darkness. If your character has Darkvision, the image on the screen is a lot brighter than if he has not. That makes total sense for a single-player experience, but totally sucks for viewers of a stream where the main character doesn't have Darkvision. Kudos to Larian Studios for the Twitch Integration features, but unfortunately voting on dialogue options via Twitch is rather slow, and so it rarely really used. And the Twitch Integration features only work on a PC browser, not if you are watching Twitch on a mobile app. All in all I would say that Baldur's Gate 3 is great, but it isn't a great spectator sport.