Oh it will. Practically every so-called AAA title gets "rave reviews" these days, because all the major gaming reviewers are corrupt. Look no further than any reviewer that gave the new Devil May Cry -- sorry, "DmC" game anything above a mediocre rating (and frankly even rating that game mediocre is pushing it). Companies like EA spend money by the truckload to bribe reviewers and outright lie to market their games. No doubt we'll see official Dragon Age 3™ Mountain Dew™, Doritos™ or [insert "Gamer Food" here] as well.

As for Gaider's little blog post, he's just saying what we've all known for a long time already: no one in the EA branch carrying the name Bioware cares anymore. The most I'm expecting from Bioware now is that Dragon Age 3 will have something, literally anything positive to contribute to the franchise and fiction as a whole.

 

I'd be more willing to be tolerant if it wasn't for the fact that Bioware created Bioware Social Network specifically as a place for Bioware fans to gather, talk, and most importantly, give feedback.

Bioware makes three crappy games that tank. In a row. Pretty much nobody liked Dragon Age 2, there's a reason TOR is nicknamed "TORtanic," and then you have the Mass Effect 3 thing, where a massively overhyped game was average and okay for about five hours, and then became absolute shit for the last ten minutes.

So they get heat from their forums about it. That they made. Specifically so that they could get this sort of feedback.

Their decision? Clearly, these people do not represent the general attitudes of the whole. In fact, these aren't even our fans. They're just radicals who create a toxic environment and it makes us feel sad, so we're just going to ignore them and keep doing whatever.

BSN is pretty much the last place on the internet where you can find people who actually like Bioware as a company, now. You aren't going to go to tumblr, or Spacebattles, or /v/ and /vg/, and find people talking about how amazing and great Bioware is.

And yet that environment is still "too toxic" for Gaider. The last bastion of people who are willing to hand Bioware free verbal blowjobs for existing just isn't gosh-be-gone good enough for them anymore.

If he's found "other places" on the internet that provide "better feedback," I can only assume that he's either visiting journalistic sites that have been bought out by EA to say nice things no matter what, or he's got a lan-line to goddamn Narnia in his bathroom.

Basically, it's one thing to say that the feedback you're getting is bad. It's quite another to pretend that three tanked games and near universal hatred isn't "descriptive of the whole," and that the proverbial complaints box you yourselves set up is now only frequented by radicals, solely because the message you're hearing isn't the one you wanted.

They asked for feedback. Feedback was given. They are now choosing to ignore that even though their last three games were terrible. So in my mind, they deserve what comes next. In my personal estimate, next entails their fourth and fifth games being underwhelming as well, if not outright terrible (probably Dragon Age 3 and ME4, in that order), and then EA will shut them down for not turning enough profit.

And I won't care, because at this point they're asking for it, begging for it to happen. We all know what is coming next. We all know that it's richly deserved. And somebody (in this case, me) has already made the popcorn.

Hell, by the tone of that article, Bioware still seems amazed that we didn't all drop what we were doing and fellatiate them for Mass Effect 3.

Well, yes, but I mean rave reviews from anyone who matters and cannot be bribed. No shit IGN and Game Informer are going to give it nines and tens, but then, I don't view those sources as being anything besides third-party outsourced advertisements anyway.

They've been leading up to some kind of Superfriends thing where everything goes to shit but that's cool because Hawke and The Warden and all of their friends are going to team up and beat evil to death with their bare hands.

In fact, the entire point of DA2, given the gigantic narrative flashback by Varric, is to set up DA3 and what else that comes after.

That's pretty much the only thing that could ever make me consider buying DA3. If it's just some "here's a new protagonist, again" thing, then I probably won't care less.

 

I agree with you 100%. I haven't bought a Bioware game in a good while, mainly because their games turned to absolute shit. And now they don't listen to their fans cuz the pussy got his feelings hurt? Yeah...typical EA bullshit, as always. I hope their company goes bankrupt. Which it probably will soon. And I'll have to say is "good riddance". Same goes for EA, which won't happen.

 

Actually, it probably will. Not immediately, but it's going to happen. EA has survived this long by eating smaller companies with good IPs and franchises, like Mass Effect. However, at this point, there's no one left. EA is a carnivore that's eaten itself out of a food source. All of the other decent studios around have already recieved and turned down offers of buyouts from EA. Hell, remember when they tried to eat Valve and Steam? Didn't work. Valve said no.

There's no one left for them to absorb. They've gotten everybody that was willing to do a merger, and the only ones left are either opposing giants like Valve, or new European startups who are going to self-publish and not give two shits about anything EA does.

Without new blood to infuse itself with, all EA can do is churn out crappy sports games and pray to Tzeentch. It'll take them time to die. They're too big to go quickly. But give it a decade, maybe a little less, and EA will be closing it's doors, assuming it doesn't get bought out by somebody else after bleeding money for a few years.

You are now imagining Valve turning the tables eight years from now and buying all of EAs IPs.

 

Don't like EA that much, but I'm still not too pissed at Bioware. Maybe disappointed, but I played their games and have had fun. Wish they could have been more to them, or could have been better, etc. Doesn't mean I still didn't enjoy them. Though I guess I can see where you're coming from, but until they make a game that really sucks, I'm not talking about ME3 sucking(as some say), but more like this sucking.

Until that happens, I'll probably keep buying their products. They won't be OMG as some of their past stuff, maybe, but as long as I have fun.

 

I doubt EA will go bankrupt, though I could easily see them selling off some IPs. There's plenty of people that will continue to buy Madden and CoD long into the future. I've yet to see any real sign of either franchise slowing, if anything its quite the opposite considering things like this: http://www.tgdaily.com/entertainment/67889-call-of-duty-black-ops-2-hits-a-billion-dollars-in-sales.

The article points out that Black Ops 2 took less time to reach one billion in sales than Modern Warfare 3, and this is during a period where game sales as a whole have been in a bit of a slump. I'd love to be wrong and live to see the end of EA though.

 

EA doesn't own CoD, that's Activison. I can see why you'd get the two confused though.

But yeah, EA isn't going away anytime soon. I don't see where Lord Raine is getting this idea from that there are no other studios EA can buy out. That's definitely not the case. EA still owns a lot of worthwhile IP's and studios too.

I could see them being in a bit of trouble though. Activision is looking better than ever after merging with Blizzard and with CoD and everything. Bethesda is becoming a pretty big publisher (Zenimax owns like 9 dev studios or something now?) and Valve is pretty huge.

 

I'm probably just making this up as I cant find information or google results to back me up but for some reason I feel like I've read an accounting report that pretty much stated that EA was operating near red.

As for new games to boost EA,

They'll do what they've always done.

Buy out a developer. Have them churn out a bunch of games with a noticable drop in quality. Once those games tank, take them out back and put a bullet in their head.

Then they go and find another developer...

And do it again.

Bullfrong, Pandemic, Westwood, Origin Systems


I wouldnt be surprised if Bioware joins that list too.

That said, it probably wont happen since EA will probably keep the bioware name if only for SWTOR.

Though thats only if SWTOR's F2P doesnt work out so well.

And the SWTOR thread already lists my views on the scheme so I wont repeat myself here.

For the record I liked DA2.

Oh the dungeons were shite(Gee... its the same map but with a door closed instead of opened. )

The story was... weaker(You go from being the HERO! The last of your kind! to the story of some guy or gal.) and also a little annoying.

(Really Anders thats your solution? Blow up the church? Yeah thats really going to free the mages yup.)

But yeah its pretty bad when a dev out and out just says "Yeah we're not listening to the fans anymore."

Because constructive criticism? Not acknowledged as that means admitting they fucked up.

So whats left? The rest of the criticism which he deemed too "toxic"

So there was DA2.

And then SWTOR(WoW with a fresh coat of paint)

I'll admit I did like the Voice Acting.

But for the money sunk into it... felt like it was set up for failure. There's no way they could have recouped their money in the what? 1 1/2 year before it went f2play?

And then there's Mass Effect 3.

Enough said.

 

I'm sure as fuck not going to defend Bioware here. EA has sucked the life out of that company and left it a shambling ghoul, exactly like they've done to so many others over the years. They'll keep the brand name around for exactly as long as it still means something, then kill it off. And nobody will be left to mourn, because Bioware has been on life support for years. At this point it'll be a kindness.

Having said that... of course they're ignoring the BSN. I don't see how anyone can call most of the bullshit people post on BSN "constructive criticism" with a straight face.

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121817-Electronic-Arts-Suffers-45-Million-Loss

Vindication?

 

Vindication.

Datamine confirms that all of the guns that aren't in the Multiplayer yet are going in. The Earth Maps will be getting Hazard variants. There will be new Gear. There's evidence of Lightweight Materials for the rest of the gun types (shotguns, sniper rifles, assault rifles). There is a spoiler picture released by BioWare of a Krogan running around with a warhammer. Speculation is that this is the Krogan Infiltrator, so we may be seeing invisible Krogans swinging warhammers in the near future.



Co-op story mode missions will be available in multiplayer, though the precise details of this are unknown. The two main lines of speculation are either re-enactments of scenes from the story with a party of PCs, or some kind of Mass Effect Zombie mode where they strand our asses in the middle of nowhere and we get Husks until we TPK.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that they've already announced both DA3 and ME4, and people are being pulled off Mass Effect 3 to work on them. This and the Citadel main story DLC are probably going to be the last DLCs released for the game. I'm not going to miss the storymode DLCs, as they've all been various flavors of mediocre and terrible, but the multiplayer support has been absolutely outstanding, and I'll be sad to see that get pulled.

I leave you with this thought:

They could have recycled the elf models from Dragon Age and changed the skin color to make the Quarians. Instead, they went for Tumblr.

 

Oh god no. OH god NO. OH PLEASE NO.

Its going to be like Halo 4 isnt it? They're gonna somehow bring back Shepard.

DA3: Eh. Considering the mess the story was from DA2 there's no where to go but up right?

Guys?

Guys where you are going?

Oh who am I kidding.

I bet its gonna be a badass game for 90% of the game before it ends being "Become the Blight, Destroy the Blight(and magic) or Everyone is Darkspawn."

Calling it now.

:|

Edit: Eh if they just did a recolor they'll get complaints of "SPACE ELVES?"

Then again... I guess it was a damned if they do and damned if they dont.

Still I think it would have been the lesser of two evils.

 

Technically, they've already done it - see the cutscene following the "Destroy" ending.

 

Unlocked the N7 Shadow...

Its like a Tech version of the Vanguard. Only single target. And a bit slower.

Still Electric Slash is pretty awesome. Goes through walls and doesnt give a shit.

Unfortunatly it seems to do jack all to Shields, Barriers, or Armor.

So... Pretty much useless.


Though it is kind of fun to use Shadow Strike and get into a melee fight with a phantom.

COME ON BITCH TRY AND KILL ME! AHAHAHAHA SEE HOW YOU LIKE THAT SWORD TO THE FACE!?

 

I don't know, the N7 Shadow, fully and properly leveled up, was my go-to class back when I last played the multiplayer. I remember that Electric Slash did a ton of damage, and Shadow Strike was useful as both an attack against weakened enemies and an escape if things were too hairy. Was there an update that neutered the class or something?

I think my biggest problem with the multiplayer is the unlock system for weapons and classes and such. It's not merit-based like, say, Battlefield 3, it's pretty much based on luck. So you can spend hundreds of thousands on Spectre Packs and still not get the damn Cerberus Harrier. Other than that it's pretty fun. Too bad the singleplayer game suffered for its inclusion.

 

You are going to be happy when you get the Turian Havoc Soldier.

 

Mass Effect 4 is in the pipeline, according to rumour.

Long story short? Looks like they're pulling a Halo 4.

 

Even though every Dev that has said anything about "Mass Effect 4" has said constantly that Shepard won't be in it and that calling it "Mass Effect 4" would be a disservice to the game they're making?

 

Holy shit dude, you almost sounded like you still had some faith in the industry for a minute there.

At this point, I'm fully expecting ME4 to be about Shepard. And it'll probably be shit, too. It's easier to run something into the ground than it is to start over and be just as successful. As shitty as they've become, they've almost got no choice but to bring him back and try to keep milking that particular cow. It's not like they're going to come up with a new and original protagonist.

I'm also fully expecting Borderlands 2 to delay the level cap raise for at least three months, if not more, and while we're waiting, here's Season 2 of the official DLC, and naturally, the season pass doesn't cover it. You'll need to buy another one to get this.

 

Saying ME4 won't have Shepard in it is like saying that the new Star Wars trilogy won't find some way to include Yoda and Vader.