For a long time it was playable with a GameTap subscription ($10/month, cheaper if you buy a year), and I was trying to wait until I finished Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 before jumping on and paying for a month to play PST. Unfortunately, I waited too long, and at the end of June this year PST and the other BG-engine games were all removed from GameTap (licensing issues from the Activision/Vivendi merger, so they said). They're trying to get them back but don't have any news to share as to likelihood, timeframe, etc. I really hope the license holders are looking to let it back out into the wild, GOG would be preferable, but failing that, back on GameTap.
'Cause no one but a serious collector is going to spend upwards of $60 on a used CD-only no-manual copy of a 10-year-old game.

I'm of the opinion that 4th Edition is crap. It just... doesn't make any goddamn sense. I mean, granted, 2nd Edition doesn't make any goddamn sense, either. I understand it, but that's only because it was the one I cut my teeth into. It was the first tabletop system I ever played. So I actually -know- what the hell someone means if they ask me what my character's THAC0 is.
That being said, yeah, I always felt 2E had a pretty steep learning curve, and in a lot of ways just didn't make a lot of sense. 3E was pretty streamlined, I thought, easier to get into, and was just a cleaner system overall. Especially when it came to things like multiclassing. I always felt the multiclass rules in 2E were some of the most hacked up, ridiculous things ever. Completely off the wall. 3E's at least made sense.
Then 4E came along with its silly things like "healing surges" and just completely lost the plot. I never bought any of the books, but I found a torrent of the player's handbook back when it was first released. I just wanted to have a look to see if I actually -did- want to buy a hardcopy. I skimmed, was not impressed, never looked back.

You know what would have made me interested in 4th edition? Pain & Mortality. Call me an imagination stunted realist but I don't think anything could survive an axe being buried in thier head and even if it was a glancing blow that took half their face off, they should be in pain from it and pretty disadvantaged.
The White Wolf system is the closest I've seen to a system like that and ironically it was set up for people playing actual supernatural creatures

Then how do you explain recent rerelease (22.5.2009) of boxed polish localised version PS:T by CD Project?

I dunno... didn't know about that one (it's not like I actually keep track of all the various releases). It could fit in with "CD Projekt has permission to sell X hundred thousand copies of their localised version of PS:T in Poland". I'm just trying to come up with any plausible explanation, creating new pieces if the old one doesn't fit.

I guess a license to digitally rerelease PS:T worldwide without any DRM whatsoever is a whole different beast than just a limited retail rerelease in one country.

Well that should not stop them from offering PS:T, BG or IWD on Steam, Gamersgate, D2D and the like. And all three were offered by GameTap until they were pulled recently.
Weirdest thing in the situation is that GameTap pulled the games because of Bliz-Acti-Vendi merger. What do any of the three have to do with the games in question? They were developed by Black Isle(PS:T, IWD) and Bioware(BG, Infinity Engine), funded and distributed by Interplay, license from Infogrames who in turn got it from Hasbro.

Wasn't Sierra involved in some way as well? The 'net says they are (or were) owned by Activision.

I can't find any mention anywhere that Sierra was involved in any way. They are not mentioned in game boxes either. (need to dig up manuals to see full credits).

Going back to which games were played for which experience...I don't think Planescape was played for a 2E experience because they added so many idiosyncrasies to the gameplay. High wisdom affected dialogue options in a pretty big way - way more than I expected, at least. Multiclassing was weird...then there was the whole thing about not really worrying about death. Everything was poured into developing the story. To be perfectly honest, I didn't play the game much because I constantly remade my character.
Then you look at BG and IWD. BG offered total control of your main character's development between original and sequel (which was really cool, and something I never really bothered to do with the older DOS games and floppy disks), and offered a ton of really good NPCs to customize your party. The rules still weren't as much of a focus as they could be. IWD was the only series that really let you deal with 2E the most, and it was probably my favorite even though it had the least involved storyline. Really good dungeon crawling, the best music, and it was the setting I was most familiar with from the novels. It also didn't have as much of a world-changing plot as BG, so I had an easier time moving through the endgame without constantly going "This is non-canon. This is non-canon. This is non-canon." =P

That was the very thing that made the game so compelling to me, almost every single element of the game was in service to the story

Yeah, it just butted heads with my tendency to take forever to make characters, something that plagues me to this day with NWN and DDO. Not that I lose sleep over it or anything. Maybe I'll give it a try again now that it's been about 8-9 years, heh.

I FINALLY received my shiny original version of Torment! It was a bitch to find, but I did it, woooooooohooooooooo! I am going to play it for the first time.
What are the essential mods and patches and where can i find them please? I have 2CD version.

Yay, sure you'll love it.
http://www.gibberlings3.net/widescreen/
Thats about the only mod I'd suggest

Yep, now I found this:
http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2009/01/planescape-torment-fully-modded.html
So I guess I will install the GUI and fixpacks as well : ).