I've seen PW admins fall flat on their faces due to their ideals, and the thought that bigger areas and more of them is always a good thing, tends to be a sign of a PW which is going to have trouble launching.
It's a basic computer problem, everything added has a cost and when it gets too expensive you run into issues. If you spend your resources on area size, you cannot also have lots of grass, shadows, placeables, triggers and scripts, and have thousands of areas at the same time all doing the same thing. It is impossible for me to say you can't do this or that, since even i break ALL the rules, but i know enough so I can compensate for pushing things in one way, by pulling somewhere else, even then there are limits which affect performance.
There are no restrictions on what you can do with the toolset, or ones that are actually a bit ridiculous, but that does not mean it is wise to do everything, or that you won't find problems when you push the limits of the engine. Initially you want to get the PW up and not discover what you have does not work ( and I've dealt with far too many PW admins who have run into this ). Hopefully you push edges to support something unique, and not just shoot for a quantity which makes it sound like your world has more. You also should be a bit theatrical with your areas, using smaller areas which are designed much like theatre sets to give the impression of vastness. It's not actual quantities that you can measure, as you can have the max sized area feel small, or make a player feel that a much smaller area is actual vast in size.
Less is more, what is the minimum needed to get your vision, your point across and make the player get the right feel. The big successful PW's are ruthless in focusing on performance, thinking thru every shadow, every tree, even how simple the walkmesh is. They tend to do more interiors than exteriors as well, since they have a lot less overhead to be used ( one pw admin said they do 4 interiors for every exterior ). Everything in NWN1 is an interior, so it's just hard to compare things, and exteriors use up a lot of your systems memory ( and 32 bit apps have limits in the OS which is discussed elsewhere ).
Scripting is the same, the core script functions are different though, but quite a bit can still be used, especially if your scripts are entirely custom. There are removed features, with script functions still present, so scripts that deal with model parts in NWN1 cannot work for example.
You can convert NWN1 module interiors to NWN2 exteriors via a vault plugin, does not do everything, but copies over the tiles so you can then recreate them.
Start small, 5-6 areas and get a player or two on to test your areas as you add - call it unofficial and pre-release, but get it up and being used so you can get feedback, and so as you add things you can see how they affect performance. This way if you start pushing things too hard, you see it happening and don't learn this after you've done 200 perfect areas and only realize it's an issue until after you decide to launch.
Get all the plugins provided by skywing for NWNx, xp_bugfix, the script compiler he has as well as the plugin that lets it replace the default scripting, networking, etc.
Listen to other PW admins, and if something is critical for you design ( ie you want 500 ants in an area ), discuss and ask how to accomplish this in a way that won't break your PW. ( the sticky for the irc channel is a good place to hang out as well )
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