Having 'attributes' (traits like Strength, Intelligence etc) which can be easily increased with experience points/levels is bad game design and makes no sense. This sort of system has the tendency to make the initial character creation aspect of rolling or choosing stats unimportant as every one of your PCs will eventually have maxed out/uber-level stats. It makes no sense for most genres (fantasy, sci-fi etc.). Did Conan get stronger and smarter with each chapter of every book?
The unfortunate thing for you here is that the genre of RPGs (as opposed to FPSes, arcade games etc.) does not cater to people who just want to be able to 'pick up and play' if you are lacking familiarity with the genre of RPGs. Even for people like myself who are VERY knowledgeable about the genre a new game will sometimes require a restart or two as we learn the ins and outs of the game. What do you want?! You seem to be wishing that RPGs either tell you everything you would like to know (such as what sorts of magic weapons will be obtainable in game) OR that power gamers are protected from not being able to effectively use all the best items. Do you think that weapon types be determined by the proficiencies chosen at character creation or in game (so the "Flail of Ages" becomes the "Broadsword of ages" for PCs who specialized in large swords)? This right here says a lot more about your position. Why even play RPGs if all you really want to do is start off at high levels and become a god?! This is a matter of some debate amongst CRPG players. Some only want to play with one single character (regardless of the specific CRPG they are playing). Some want to create a small 4 PC party. Some (like me) enjoy creating an 8 PC member party. Some like having a limited selection of Recruit-able Player Characters(RPCs), such as the two RPCs of Wizardry 8. Some like the 'create one and recruit the rest' style of Baldur's Gate. Some don't like RPCs at all.
You have a valid contention here, in that in most CRPGs the RPC selection is too limited ideally a well designed CRPG will have multiple different RPC builds for every class/race available.

I disagree. It is fine to make the aspect of rolling or choosing stats unimportant in the long run. There is no reason not to have short term choices taken at character creation. Remember that the choice of known spells (for a mage) and initially memorized spells (for any non-sorcerer spellcaster) is a short-term choice; if you didn't start with a spell, you can usually learn it later. (That "usually" ought to be "always", but unfortunately some spells, like Spook and Remove Magic" are rarer than they should be.) No, I just think that a choice like weapon proficiency should have trade-offs that are immediately evident at character creation (like in Lords of Xulima, which doesn't even make you choose until level 2 anyway) or can be fixed later without using up a limited resource like level ups (like in Wizardry 8 and Final Fantasy 2). The issue isn't against low levels in principle, but rather Baldur's Gate's (and AD&D's) handling of them. Some of the issues (some of which were mentioned earlier in the topic by someone else) are as follows:
1. Attacks miss way too often. It is very frustrating when your attacks keep missing.
2. When an attack hits, it is often fatal. This forces reloads when that happens to one of your characters (especially if it happens to the main character, which gives you a game over screen without letting you view the combat log).
3. Mages can only cast 1 spell before they have to rest. Depending on the spell, it can be either useless or an "I win" spell. Other spellcasters are a bit better (assuming decent Wisdom for Clerics/Druids).

In other words, the game is just *not fun* at low levels. I would rather have misses be rare and hits not be one hit kills (on both sides) rather than the situation that is low level Baldur's Gate.

Incidentally, my level 1 party (because the game keeps you at level 1 too long) encountered an enemy in a sidequest that cast Improved Invisibility (a level 4 spell). How are you supposed to counter that with a level 1 party? I believe this may have been what caused me to give up on the game.

If I try Baldur's Gate 1 again, I may cheat my main character 5,000 experience just so that the early game becomes more tolerable.

Icewind Dale handled this much better; the first town has side quests that give enough experience that you are likely to have at least one level 2 character before you encounter any serious enemies.

There are other things which are just bad, especially in comparison to BG2. Pathfinding (especially with full party), interrupts during rest (which is exceedingly long in this game, you need to rest several times in a row to fully recover), no pause in inventory screen AND Iron Crisis (weapons break left and right), limit on 1 magic item per character. It also had level scaling AND nasty fog of war respawns (the moment enemy spawn point gets covered by fog, it will respawn even if it was killed second ago, this respawn works on vast majority of monster spawn points). That's if excessive combat RNG at low levels wasn't enough already.

I played this game right after Might and Magic VI (they were released in same year) and it lacked everything that I loved MM VI for (exploration, character development, resource management, diversity in everything, good color contrast, etc; also BG1 was on 5 disks, MM VI was on 2 and had much more content.), so when I played it I kept thinking that I could play MM VI instead. Now each time when I try to replay BG1 I end up replaying some MM game.
Bad idea. It will level-up recruitable characters with bad HP gains (which are critically important at such low exp cap) and no way to choose proficiency points by yourself.
It had more to do with full control over party creation, so you didn't have to deal with thieves who have 8 STR, mages who have 7 CON, not a single NPC with 18 CHA, etc. And you start with fighting goblins (roughly speaking, Lv.1 creatures) and orcs (Lv.2), who are much easier than wolves (Lv.3) and other early game creeps in BG1 whom you meet while not even having full party.