Bioware gives away free copies of Mass Effect 2 in order to help sell DA2!

[CardinalPiggles]

Ooooor.... they're working on adding to the hype for ME3's release later this year by trying to get Dragon Age fans interested in another of BioWare's IPs....

DA2 has been selling reasonably well. People try to do a straight comparison between the sales of Origins and DA2 to say DA2 is failing without taking into account that Origins was released right at the start of the holiday season (which spikes sales) while Dragon Age 2 came out as people were heading into tax season (which decreases sales).

Seriously, can we stop the incessant and insipid "Omg look at how much DA2 sucks and how desperate BioWare must be!!!!11one!!!eleven!1" threads?

Get a life and let it go already.

thank you, i think you said it all

 

[CardinalPiggles]

I don't honestly understand the point of this thread...
I viewed DA 1 and 2 as a breath of fresh air but didn't enjoy ME 1 or 2. . . and I've always loved biowares storytelling epic.

Now the idea of paying full price for ME1 or 2 has always been something I shy from.
But getting it free with DA2 "for example when I buy my brother a copy" means I might actually care to play through this... expanded KOTOR butchery...

/not insulting KOTOR or ME2, just saying it felt... familiar yet boring to me for some reason. Maybe I needed to spend more than 3 hours on it.

yes, you most definatly DO need to spend more than 3 hours on it, ME1 was a masterpiece of gaming, it should never be knocked, if you complete the game and then go meh, then fair enough, its not for you.

but at least give it a try.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Valid or hoax, I got sceptical when Bioware/EA started throwing additional DLC stuff at me. It's OK when you preorder a game to add specific things but the stream of additional reward content just doesn't stop.

And now this? Wow, how the mighty have fallen. I only remember one other occasion on which you got a second game when purchasing another - and that bonus game was 'Too Human'. It says something when your extra game is the better of the two.

if you pre order portal 2 on steam, you get a free copy of portal.

im not sure but are you praising 2human above something else? here i thought '2human was the worst game in the history of games...' not that i believe that myself.

 

[Xerosch]

Valid or hoax, I got sceptical when Bioware/EA started throwing additional DLC stuff at me. It's OK when you preorder a game to add specific things but the stream of additional reward content just doesn't stop.

And now this? Wow, how the mighty have fallen. I only remember one other occasion on which you got a second game when purchasing another - and that bonus game was 'Too Human'. It says something when your extra game is the better of the two.

if you pre order portal 2 on steam, you get a free copy of portal.

im not sure but are you praising 2human above something else? here i thought '2human was the worst game in the history of games...' not that i believe that myself.

Heavens forbid! I'm not praising 'Too Human' in any way. I just think 'Mass Effect 2' is a better sequel/game than 'Dragon Age 2'. And when you get the complete ME2 as a bonus to a supposed smash hit, you've got to wonder how desperate EA's gotten.

 

[Jaded Scribe]

Honestly, I understand where those that dislike the game are unhappy with it. I loved the changes, but I see where it could be a big issue for those that already loved the current system, and weren't ready for the 180 they took.

Here's a question. You know this game was made for different audience and you know that the original audience is going to be left in the dust, however instead of making a brand new game they capitalize on the success of the previous game, making the new game Sequel 2, which has nothing to do with the previous game. Here's the question - do you think it's right for a company to do this, instead of creating a brand new franchise for their new targeted audience?

I think so. I felt the character-driven story added a lot to Thedas, and left me eager for DA3. However, I think a friend of mine [http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/2011/03/31/sequelitis/] made an interesting point. If they had subtitled it "Dragon Age: Champion's Legacy" or some such instead of simply "2", people may have had different expectations.

I also think that while I liked most of the changes, they should have spread the changes out between 2 and 3 a bit more, instead of doing a full 180 right away, or had spent a bit more time discussing the changes beforehand. Going with most of the changes they wanted to make right away kind of blindsided the players if they weren't ready for them.

I think the main reason I liked it is that while I hid from reviews and such, I went into the game cleared of preconceptions of the previous game. I treated it as a completely separate entity, just taking place in the same world. I can see where people who went in expecting more of a straight sequel could have been disappointed.

 

[Hiphophippo]

Wait, wait, wait.

I bought Dragon Age II happily on PC and have been wanting to nab a copy of Mass Effect 2 on PC recently as well to prep for the third game. Is there any way I can get in on this?

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Valid or hoax, I got sceptical when Bioware/EA started throwing additional DLC stuff at me. It's OK when you preorder a game to add specific things but the stream of additional reward content just doesn't stop.

And now this? Wow, how the mighty have fallen. I only remember one other occasion on which you got a second game when purchasing another - and that bonus game was 'Too Human'. It says something when your extra game is the better of the two.

if you pre order portal 2 on steam, you get a free copy of portal.

im not sure but are you praising 2human above something else? here i thought '2human was the worst game in the history of games...' not that i believe that myself.

Heavens forbid! I'm not praising 'Too Human' in any way. I just think 'Mass Effect 2' is a better sequel/game than 'Dragon Age 2'. And when you get the complete ME2 as a bonus to a supposed smash hit, you've got to wonder how desperate EA's gotten.

oh ok, well in that case... cant people go one day without so much hate on 2human!

 

[Jaded Scribe]

Dragon Age 2 is....well....the least said the better....*shudder*

There is a good reason its selling so poorly.

Got any sales numbers to back that up because, last I checked, it was selling better than Dragon Age: Origins did at launch.

Dragon Age: Origins

XBOX 360
Week 1 - 335,941
Week 2 - 173,230
Week 3 - 96,340
Week 4 - 134,460
Week 5 - 107,755

PS3
Week 1 - 155,660
Week 2 - 72,304
Week 3 - 80,920
Week 4 - 77,414
Week 5 - 59,219

Dragon Age 2

XBOX 360
Week 1 - 392,508
Week 2 - 128,897
Week 3 - 61,735

PS3
Week 1 - 163,410
Week 2 - 61,210
Week 3 - 35,455

PC
Week 1 - 148.830
Week 2 - 38.002
Week 3 - 26.165

This the best we have to go on for the moment.
Sales started stronger then before, but then dipped strongly.
There's a thread discussing this specifically.

Dragon Age Origins was Bioware's biggest hit, much to everyone's initial surprise.

And as I've mentioned before, looking entirely at sales is skewed. DA:O released right before the holiday shopping season, which can easily explain why sales pick up in week 4 and 5 (*cough*day after thanksgiving*cough*) while DA2 is being released at the start of the tax season, when people had less money, and released at the same time as Pokemon and the 3DS. So while DA2 has sold less to this point, I don't think it's reasonable to say the primary or only reason is fan reaction. There's other factors to be considered.

 

[Hiphophippo]

oooh, found it, but the site doesn't seem to be working properly yet. We'll see how it goes. It does say both new and previous purchases of DA2 Qualify. This would please me so fucking much.

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=cs&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=cs&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbio-world.cz%2F%3Fp%3D1358&act=url

 

[Nikolaz72]

Who the fuck doesn't have Mass Effect 2 by now?

On a slightly more on-topic note, this is pretty sad. I knew that the butthurt old school RPG fans had spread their diseased reviews across the internet in an attempt to sabotage an otherwise decent game, but I didn't really think it would succeed. Apparently it is, and that's a shame.

You have to keep DA2 in perspective. It was made in 18 months, compared to DA:O which took what, 5 years? With that in mind, I think DA2 is a pretty damn impressive game. Another 6 months to add more environments and improve the story a bit and it could have been a great game.

That's all well and good, and I agree it needed more time.
But we still had to pay full price. If it had been half the price, I would not have minded at all

Yea but if you think about it. One logic suggests half the price would mean twice the sales. But you know what? I think selling it for half would somehow cut the sales even more for fans fearing that Bioware had decreased the price due to uhm. . It being bad or something.

 

[Nikolaz72]

I don't really see why Bioware should be stuck making Baldurs Gate clones for all eternity. DA:O was hopefully the last goodbye to extremely aged, boring and badly implemented tactical real time rpg combat. Either go actionpacked with some co-ordination like DA2, or do a proper tactical combat like ToEE. I kinda like Bioware, even if their writers always were bit behind their BiS/Obsidian friends. But I've never liked Bioware's implementation of combat, not in BG, not in KotOR, not in NWN, not in DA:O. Mass Effect and DA2 have fixed that particular hangup for me.

Trust me. Show Baldurs gate to the mainstream Bioware fans and they would drool. . Their eyes would pop out. And after tiring with the controls for ages they would say the game was the worst crap thats ever existed. . . It was popular then, if it came out again it would be seen as shit for appealing to a 'relatively' niche crowd. (Like they did back then)

 

[WelshDanny]

I do not own Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age 2, but I do have both of the originals.

Bioware, post them to me for free, yes? Yes.

 

[Woodsey]

Buy a decent game, get a superb one for free. Who cares if its desperate or not? A good deal is a good deal.

 

[Starke]

You say realism...have you not reached the end of the game yet? Get ready for Lightsabers and jedi force jumps....

Yeah, see, that's misunderstanding this use of the term realism. Films, and to an extent games, can be placed on a scale of Formalistic to Realistic. Formalistic means that a film is more, 'polished'. Look at Lord of the Rings, or really almost any big budget film that attempts to tell a large story coherently. Realism does not mean the plot line is realistic in the conventional sense, it means it has an unscripted quality that emulates the randomness of people's lives. Films like Fight Club or any movie that tends to focus on small events (like someone's wedding) tend to be "realistic" in the cinematic sense. The Hangover, for all it's unrealistic (in the non-cinematic use of the term) plot points tends more towards the realism end of the scale, for instance.

So, yeah, the shit with the artifact, or the introduction of a Harvester out of nowhere in the final act isn't realistic in the conventional (an inaccurate) use of the term. But it's basically irrelevant to the cinematic use of the term.

Dragon Age 2 tells the story of this guy's life in snippets over seven years. There's no real overarching plot, just a compiling list of events that build into each other in mostly unpredictable ways. That is the narrative essence of cinema realism.

Though, you did say in a cinematic sense. I dont see how it was though. Games have been doing that for years. DA2, if anything (and much like Origins to be fair) was very stiff and wooden. It's a Bioware trend they still haven't kicked out yet.

And you could play a smart ass in Origins. It just didn't need to label it with a big Purple face.

Not consistently. There were smartass options occasionally, and even the brick that is Commander Shepard get off a few memorable one liners if you know when to pick what.

Here, though, Hawke has the persistent ability to be a smartass, and sometimes a genuinely vicious one. Something no Bioware game has really pulled off that I can remember (going back to Baldur's Gate).

I wont argue the deep roads was a bit to long, but its better then the 5 minute diversion in DA2.

DA1 was filled with a lot of area padding. It's a 100 hour game, but there isn't 100 hours of content. There's about 40 hours of content that takes for-fucking-ever to get through.

 

[Wolfram23]

EXTRA EXTRA!

I just got an email from BioWare, because I registered my PC version of DA2.

The text reads as follows:

BioWare invites you to participate in our Sequel Celebration!

Thanks to gamers like you, Dragon Age II is off to a great start ? breaking the 1 million mark in less than two weeks and faster than Dragon Age: Origins. We appreciate your support. As a special thank you for helping with the game's early success, BioWare would like to present you with a download code for 2010's Game of the Year, Mass Effect 2 on PC. As always, we sincerely appreciate your support and passion as we remain focused on delivering quality interactive experiences now and in the future. Look for more exciting things coming from Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Star Wars: The Old Republic in the future, including our recent launch of Mass Effect 2 Arrival DLC



To qualify and get your Mass Effect 2 PC download code, please follow these steps before April 30, 2011 at 11:59pm PDT:



1. Activate the Online Pass content that came with your copy of Dragon Age II (The Black Emporium)

2. Start the game and log in using your EA Account or create a new EA Account

3. Visit http://social.bioware.com/me2offer and log in with that EA Account

4. Enter your Online Pass code and click "Submit". You will then be provided the code for Mass Effect 2.

5. Open the EA Download Manager and enter the code to commence download (if you don't have the EA Download Manager installed, it can be found here: http://eastore.ea.com/eadm)


For more information on this and answers to any frequently asked questions, please visit: DragonAge.BioWare.com/ME2Offer.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Get a good game for the game of the year (2010)?

Sounds like a good deal. Although, I do find the "most loyal fans" line funny. I was thinking either "Well...Loyal fans already have a copy" and "So you're rewarding the ones that didn't ***** about Dragon Age 2".

Note* I quite liked Dragon Age 2 even if it felt like Dragon Age 1.5 "The story between the big one and the next big one".

 

[Akihiko]

http://social.bioware.com/me2offer.php

^ Thats the site where you put in your online pass to get the serial code. Doesn't seem to want to accept my 360 online pass code though. Dunno if anyone else faired better.

 

[Herr Wozzeck]

I liked DA2, but that's neither here nor there.

But anyway, this doesn't smell like a desperation deal. I got an--

EXTRA EXTRA!

I just got an email from BioWare, because I registered my PC version of DA2.

The text reads as follows:

BioWare invites you to participate in our Sequel Celebration!

Thanks to gamers like you, Dragon Age II is off to a great start ? breaking the 1 million mark in less than two weeks and faster than Dragon Age: Origins. We appreciate your support. As a special thank you for helping with the game's early success, BioWare would like to present you with a download code for 2010's Game of the Year, Mass Effect 2 on PC. As always, we sincerely appreciate your support and passion as we remain focused on delivering quality interactive experiences now and in the future. Look for more exciting things coming from Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Star Wars: The Old Republic in the future, including our recent launch of Mass Effect 2 Arrival DLC



To qualify and get your Mass Effect 2 PC download code, please follow these steps before April 30, 2011 at 11:59pm PDT:



1. Activate the Online Pass content that came with your copy of Dragon Age II (The Black Emporium)

2. Start the game and log in using your EA Account or create a new EA Account

3. Visit http://social.bioware.com/me2offer and log in with that EA Account

4. Enter your Online Pass code and click "Submit". You will then be provided the code for Mass Effect 2.

5. Open the EA Download Manager and enter the code to commence download (if you don't have the EA Download Manager installed, it can be found here: http://eastore.ea.com/eadm)


For more information on this and answers to any frequently asked questions, please visit: DragonAge.BioWare.com/ME2Offer.

Ah.

Well, that simplifies my deal a little bit.

Still, have a printscreen I made of the e-mail, with the relevant sales stuff circled in red: http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d63/Artorian/E-mailStuffs.png

As for this... I already have both ME2 and DA2, so I don't really see the point.

 

[shado_temple]

I'm having trouble thinking of any other group besides gamers that could honestly complain about getting something for free. I mean really guys?

It's becoming embarrassing, really. Where did this sense of entitlement everyone has these days even come from?