Gothic 3 now on Gog.com
 

Lots of content for $9.99. I'm pretty surprised by this addition, but it's another good one!

Let's just hope they'll be brave enough to put the community patch in as an optional download for all who buy the game.

EDIT (quote from GOG forum):

Paczyk
lvl 85 Fire Mage
GOG.com Team
Registered: Apr 2009
From Poland
Posted 4 hours ago
The version that GOG has released is 1.6, the last version that the developers have officially supported.

Some users have reported that they have a better experience with patch 1.74, which is a community-made fan patch. If you'd like to pick it up, you can get it here, but GOG can only officially support the version of the game our partners do.

Hope this helps ;)

(the link: http://www.g3cpt.eu/download/list)

Yeah, I noticed it includes the 1.6 patch, but it would have been nice if they would have just put on the 1.74 patch to make installation easier. I think they only include official material in their releases. One of the few downsides to Gog, considering how many games have been substantially improved by their communities. I would imagine they want to keep the experience as close to the developer's original vision as possible, not to mention the difficulty that using fan-made material could cause in obtaining the rights to sell a product. But I still had some pretty serious problems with Gothic 3 using the 1.6 patch. The latest community patch, for this game, is pretty much a necessity.

EDIT:

Your edit pretty much confirmed exactly what I was thinking ;)

I think this is the same arrangement as on Steam (where G3 is also patched to 1.6). G3 with 1.6 is OK, but 1.74 adds much more polish, bugfixes and enhancements.

Interestingly though G3: Forsaken gods on Steam has the community patch included, probably because it is way too much of a train wreck to play with only the official patches.

I think the difference here is that the Community Patch team was hired by Jowood to patch Forsaken Gods, whereas with Gothic 3, they acted on their own.

At least they incuded it though, so people who don't know any better will at least have a decent experience. Imagine the reaction if they had uploaded the unpached version.

The Gothic 3 Patch Team said they got paid by Jowood up to 1.6, after that they were on their own.

Patch 1.6 is perfectly playable for me. The only real advantage I had with 1.7 was the ATI graphics fix. (I played 1.6 with an older computer)