So... I got Origin from EA. (A Review) (Image Heavy)

[Hjalmar Fryklund]

Actually, you had that part correct. I realized I wanted to take screenies after the fact, so I stuck them in the "Hidden" folder. >

Dang, I forgot to note that Sims was not not tagged as new anymore! >_<

 

[Silverbane7]

in which case then, you used the correct path to the desired affect lol

Origin is the only way to realy use EA products from a digital standpoint.

*captcha : Kitten Mittens? my kittens only play with gloves and shoes hehe*

 

[lacktheknack]

I installed Origin for the Humble Bundle 2 days ago, and still have yet to get past the login screen. I'm told I already have an account with my email, but whenever I try to actually log in with it it doesn't exist. I can activate the reset password feature, but the emails never get sent. I had to create a whole second email address and second Origin account just in order to be able to access the actual help, which I had to wait an hour for. The help assistant guy managed to send emails to my original account just fine, and sent the reset email to my original email address where it all worked fine.

Or so I thought.

Actually it reset the password on my second account despite having nothing to do with that account, and now I'm in the process of waiting another hour to contact someone in order to try to get it sorted out again.

My overall opinion of Origin? Not so great, right now. I thought the humble bundle thing was a smart move by EA to get people on its platform, but I think it might work a little better if they'd actually made the damn thing work first. There's also warnings all over the site saying that Humble Bundle codes can't be redeemed right now, not that I got far enough to even try.

I'm actually having a slightly similar problem, in that my Account Settings has a message saying "You haven't validated your account, please check your email". No emails on that front, despite resending several times. It still works for the time being, so I didn't bring it up.

Also, I had no trouble redeeming my key, even though it had the message saying "CANNOT REDEEM KEYS" (yes, I'm bone-headed enough to try anyways), so clearly someone didn't get a memo somewhere.

 

[DEAD34345]

I'm actually having a slightly similar problem, in that my Account Settings has a message saying "You haven't validated your account, please check your email". No emails on that front, despite resending several times. It still works for the time being, so I didn't bring it up.

Also, I had no trouble redeeming my key, even though it had the message saying "CANNOT REDEEM KEYS" (yes, I'm bone-headed enough to try anyways), so clearly someone didn't get a memo.

As far as I can tell, the email systems EA uses are just terrible. I've had very similar problems trying to play The Old Republic, which requires a one-time password sent by email every so often to log in. My friend has had it even worse, and was once unable to use his subscription for about a week because of it, though they did refund it in the end.

Emails from EA are just a crapshoot, sometimes you'll get them right away, sometimes you'll get them hours or days later, and sometimes they won't come at all no matter how many you request. Considering I know from personal experience that it has been like this for a good few months at least, I doubt they're planning to fix it any time soon.

 

[Amir Kondori]

I still don't have any trust for EA so I will continue to avoid their platform. It sounds like it is a slightly worse functioning version of Steam, missing a few of the Steam features I use, like Steam Cloud and Steam Workshop. But even if it was better than Steam I wouldn't use them, as I have no trust for that company.

 

[lacktheknack]

I still don't have any trust for EA so I will continue to avoid their platform. It sounds like it is a slightly worse functioning version of Steam, missing a few of the Steam features I use, like Steam Cloud and Steam Workshop. But even if it was better than Steam I wouldn't use them, as I have no trust for that company.

It does have cloud function, for what it's worth. Should have mentioned it.

 

[Amir Kondori]

I still don't have any trust for EA so I will continue to avoid their platform. It sounds like it is a slightly worse functioning version of Steam, missing a few of the Steam features I use, like Steam Cloud and Steam Workshop. But even if it was better than Steam I wouldn't use them, as I have no trust for that company.

It does have cloud function, for what it's worth. Should have mentioned it.

That's good, I do like to see Origin improving from the mess it was. While I don't want to use it I am happy to see competitors to Steam, as long as we don't end up in some wasteland where every major publisher has their own digital distribution platform and only sells their most popular titles through it.

The two companies I just have an almost total lack of trust in, and so try to avoid their products, is Ubisoft and EA. I already have so many great games to play that I have not even noticed.

 

[DEAD34345]

Alright, as a continuation of what I was saying before, I now feel the need to warn everyone to stay away from Origin and EA regardless of how cheap the games are. At this point I would feel ripped off if I had paid them even 1 penny, luckily the money for the Humble Bundle went to charity, and some of the games were available on steam. The customer service requires you to wait over an hour before you speak to anyone, and in my case (the 2nd time I've had to contact them with the same problem detailed in my earlier post, I have yet to even be able to log in to Origin with my account), the first thing they'll say is "I'll look into it, one moment." and then disappear for over an hour. I left that conversation, and the waiting time to speak to someone else has now raised to "over an hour".

I'll be obtaining my games through other means, and EA won't see another penny from me if I can help it. I highly recommend others do the same.

If you're interested in the Humble Bundle, my recommendation is to give money to charity separately and then obtain the games through an "alternate" method. That way you at least wouldn't be actively damaging the game industry by rewarding the incompetence and sheer indifference to its failings of Origin and EA's service in general. It boggles my mind that a company this large and successful can fail at such basic features.

 

[lacktheknack]

Alright, as a continuation of what I was saying before, I now feel the need to warn everyone to stay away from Origin and EA regardless of how cheap the games are. At this point I would feel ripped off if I had paid them even 1 penny, luckily the money for the Humble Bundle went to charity, and some of the games were available on steam. The customer service requires you to wait over an hour before you speak to anyone, and in my case (the 2nd time I've had to contact them with the same problem detailed in my earlier post, I have yet to even be able to log in to Origin with my account), the first thing they'll say is "I'll look into it, one moment." and then disappear for over an hour. I left that conversation, and the waiting time to speak to someone else has now raised to "over an hour".

I'll be obtaining my games through other means, and EA won't see another penny from me if I can help it. I highly recommend others do the same.

If you're interested in the Humble Bundle, my recommendation is to give money to charity separately and then obtain the games through an "alternate" method. That way you at least wouldn't be actively damaging the game industry by rewarding the incompetence and sheer indifference to its failings of Origin and EA's service in general. It boggles my mind that a company this large and successful can fail at such basic features.

Meh, Steam has done worse to me.

Why have they done worse? Because my problem happened during the Summer Sale, where the servers were constantly crashing and the tech support was nearly killed off.

EA's suffering even heavier load than that (over seven million copies or so sold in two days), so this really isn't being fair. If the tech support acted like this in, say, three weeks, after the EA Bundle rush has died down, then I'd say that you're in the right to write them off entirely. As is... I think you're overreacting.

Besides, you got five Steam keys. I doubt you feel ripped off for a penny if you actually consider the whole bundle.

 

[DEAD34345]

Alright, as a continuation of what I was saying before, I now feel the need to warn everyone to stay away from Origin and EA regardless of how cheap the games are. At this point I would feel ripped off if I had paid them even 1 penny, luckily the money for the Humble Bundle went to charity, and some of the games were available on steam. The customer service requires you to wait over an hour before you speak to anyone, and in my case (the 2nd time I've had to contact them with the same problem detailed in my earlier post, I have yet to even be able to log in to Origin with my account), the first thing they'll say is "I'll look into it, one moment." and then disappear for over an hour. I left that conversation, and the waiting time to speak to someone else has now raised to "over an hour".

I'll be obtaining my games through other means, and EA won't see another penny from me if I can help it. I highly recommend others do the same.

If you're interested in the Humble Bundle, my recommendation is to give money to charity separately and then obtain the games through an "alternate" method. That way you at least wouldn't be actively damaging the game industry by rewarding the incompetence and sheer indifference to its failings of Origin and EA's service in general. It boggles my mind that a company this large and successful can fail at such basic features.

Meh, Steam has done worse to me.

Why have they done worse? Because my problem happened during the Summer Sale, where the servers were constantly crashing and the tech support was nearly killed off.

EA's suffering even heavier load than that (over seven million copies or so sold in two days), so this really isn't being fair. If the tech support acted like this in, say, three weeks, after the EA Bundle rush has died down, then I'd say that you're in the right to write them off entirely. As is... I think you're overreacting.

Saying "Hold on a moment" and then leaving for good isn't even the worst of my problems, just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Over the past two days since I bought that bundle, I've had my account password fail, I've had emails from several different EA sources all (literally all of them) fail to be delivered despite it clearly saying they have, I've been completely unable to receive tech support at all in the first place without breaking their rules, creating a second email account, and creating a second Origin account, I've waited over an hour for tech support to talk to me in the first place, then been told the problem is fixed and had my issue closed before finding out shortly after it hadn't, then had to wait until the next day before being able to access tech support once more (after waiting another hour). Finally, after all this, the tech support merely says "Hold on a moment, I'll look into it" and disappears for good. That isn't even the end of it, really, because after exiting that conversation I immediately tried again only to find that the tech support is all gone again, and won't be back for an indeterminate amount of time that is above 1 hour, so I'll probably have to wait another day.

And then to top off all of that, this isn't even the first problem like this I've had with EA, and they were just as bad a couple of months ago when I had issues with my Star Wars: The Old Republic account, and they weren't under any unusual amount of strain at all. At the end of that issue (after several different conversations, each with hours of waiting beforehand), I found out they couldn't fix the problem and I'd just have to delete the character and start again.

Overreacting? I don't think so. Actually I think I was pretty dumb to keep giving EA chances for this long.

 

[lacktheknack]

Alright, as a continuation of what I was saying before, I now feel the need to warn everyone to stay away from Origin and EA regardless of how cheap the games are. At this point I would feel ripped off if I had paid them even 1 penny, luckily the money for the Humble Bundle went to charity, and some of the games were available on steam. The customer service requires you to wait over an hour before you speak to anyone, and in my case (the 2nd time I've had to contact them with the same problem detailed in my earlier post, I have yet to even be able to log in to Origin with my account), the first thing they'll say is "I'll look into it, one moment." and then disappear for over an hour. I left that conversation, and the waiting time to speak to someone else has now raised to "over an hour".

I'll be obtaining my games through other means, and EA won't see another penny from me if I can help it. I highly recommend others do the same.

If you're interested in the Humble Bundle, my recommendation is to give money to charity separately and then obtain the games through an "alternate" method. That way you at least wouldn't be actively damaging the game industry by rewarding the incompetence and sheer indifference to its failings of Origin and EA's service in general. It boggles my mind that a company this large and successful can fail at such basic features.

Meh, Steam has done worse to me.

Why have they done worse? Because my problem happened during the Summer Sale, where the servers were constantly crashing and the tech support was nearly killed off.

EA's suffering even heavier load than that (over seven million copies or so sold in two days), so this really isn't being fair. If the tech support acted like this in, say, three weeks, after the EA Bundle rush has died down, then I'd say that you're in the right to write them off entirely. As is... I think you're overreacting.

Saying "Hold on a moment" and then leaving for good isn't even the worst of my problems, just the straw that broke the camel's back.

Over the past two days since I bought that bundle, I've had my account password fail, I've had emails from several different EA sources all (literally all of them) fail to be delivered despite it clearly saying they have, I've been completely unable to receive tech support at all in the first place without breaking their rules, creating a second email account, and creating a second Origin account, I've waited over an hour for tech support to talk to me in the first place, then been told the problem is fixed and had my issue closed before finding out shortly after it hadn't, then had to wait until the next day before being able to access tech support once more (after waiting another hour). Finally, after all this, the tech support merely says "Hold on a moment, I'll look into it" and disappears for good. That isn't even the end of it, really, because after exiting that conversation I immediately tried again only to find that the tech support is all gone again, and won't be back for an indeterminate amount of time that is above 1 hour, so I'll probably have to wait another day.

And then to top off all of that, this isn't even the first problem like this I've had with EA, and they were just as bad a couple of months ago when I had issues with my Star Wars: The Old Republic account, and they weren't under any unusual amount of strain at all. At the end of that issue (after several different conversations, each with hours of waiting beforehand), I found out they couldn't fix the problem and I'd just have to delete the character and start again.

Overreacting? I don't think so. Actually I think I was pretty dumb to keep giving EA chances for this long.

Fair enough, I guess. Although I still take issue with "I'd feel ripped off if I paid a penny", seeing how you still have 5 Steam keys.

 

[Illyasviel]

Overreacting? I don't think so. Actually I think I was pretty dumb to keep giving EA chances for this long.

No, I'm pretty sure your experience is more related to you reaching Origin tech support at a bad time. They've sold like a billion games in two days and not so much as received a penny for it.

And as a counterpoint, let me share with you a story I've had with Origin tech support:

I once requested assistance with moving a game from one account to another account. The wait time was a minute. The representative who assisted me was very courteous, helpful and for the most part, timely. Even though I'm certain my request isn't particularly common, the representative took it in very well and didn't harass me over it all, like I had kinda anticipated ( asked only once why I wanted to move the game, and I believe this was more to buy him more time to maybe clear the request through a supervisor ). And then he moved the game for me. Not only that, the game wasn't deactivated on the prior account either, so now, I have two copies of the same game. There may have been an explanation for why this happened related to the game being pretty old ( pretty sure if you tried this with a newer game like Battlefield 3, this would not happen ) but I don't remember, and overall, I didn't have even the slightest issue with my request.

 

[Brian Tams]

An unbiased review about Origins on the Escapist Forums? Blasphemy!

Good review. I think its important to note that when Steam first launched, it was also a broken mess of a system that got better after taking in user criticism. Origins seems to be going to same route.

 

[Vivi22]

On the whole, first impressions are good. The client immediately dropped my library in front of me, where it's taken the gog.com approach of showing all my games by cover on a grid (I immensely prefer this to Steam's giant list of doom). Unlike gog.com, you cannot move them into groupings of your choice, but they are kept in alphabetical order, which is fine

You should use these buttons.

Origin doesn't have these options. It's cover art or go home.
Edit: sadly I have been ninja'd. I got purdy picture though. Purdy picture will do?

I vastly prefer small mode for Steam to be honest. A nice simple list in alphabetical order. Everything else is clunky by comparison.

 

[DEAD34345]

Overreacting? I don't think so. Actually I think I was pretty dumb to keep giving EA chances for this long.

No, I'm pretty sure your experience is more related to you reaching Origin tech support at a bad time. They've sold like a billion games in two days and not so much as received a penny for it.

And as a counterpoint, let me share with you a story I've had with Origin tech support:

I once requested assistance with moving a game from one account to another account. The wait time was a minute. The representative who assisted me was very courteous, helpful and for the most part, timely. Even though I'm certain my request isn't particularly common, the representative took it in very well and didn't harass me over it all, like I had kinda anticipated ( asked only once why I wanted to move the game, and I believe this was more to buy him more time to maybe clear the request through a supervisor ). And then he moved the game for me. Not only that, the game wasn't deactivated on the prior account either, so now, I have two copies of the same game. There may have been an explanation for why this happened related to the game being pretty old ( pretty sure if you tried this with a newer game like Battlefield 3, this would not happen ) but I don't remember, and overall, I didn't have even the slightest issue with my request.

As I've said, this isn't the first time I've had these issues with EA. Also that last "conversation" with the tech support person was obnoxious, certainly, but other than that they've been alright. The real problem is their broken system, especially with regards to emails never getting delivered (a problem I've had constantly for months, as have several people I know), and the fact that it's designed in such a way as to actively hinder you getting help if you can't access your account.

I was lucky, in that I didn't really have much to lose, but if this happened to someone who had fully paid-for games on their account it would be a serious issue. Not everyone would have the several hours, spread over several days worth of time to spend trying to break through an issue like this, and not everyone has the know-how to reach the technical support in the first place considering it blocks you out of it if you can't get into an account. I'll also repeat myself, none of these specific problems are due to the load, because I've seen them all before whenever me and my friends ran into issues in The Old Republic.

I'm sure sometimes their service is acceptable, but that isn't enough when it can also get this bad, this often.

 

[gorfias]

You should use these buttons.

Origin doesn't have these options. It's cover art or go home.
Edit: sadly I have been ninja'd. I got purdy picture though. Purdy picture will do?

I didn't see the ninja, just yours. I did not know this before. Now I do and, yes! Steam with art is very, very pretty! I'm up to 64 Steam Games now. I've beaten, like, 4. They're just so darn cheap I have more than I'll ever fully play.

On topic, I got the Humble Origin Bundle without too much trouble, downloading Steam Games available, while having the other games downloading at the same time from Origin. The slow down was not my computer or my network connection but these servers, so, I likely about doubled download time.

Little pain getting Sims 3. Long story short, I'll like only have 2 of the 3 offered expansions... unless I really messed up and there really are only 2.

 

[lacktheknack]

Little pain getting Sims 3. Long story short, I'll like only have 2 of the 3 offered expansions... unless I really messed up and there really are only 2.

Yeah, there's only two. The main game, the Late Night expansion, and a Stuff Pack that I forgot the name of.

 

[gorfias]

Little pain getting Sims 3. Long story short, I'll like only have 2 of the 3 offered expansions... unless I really messed up and there really are only 2.

Yeah, there's only two. The main game, the Late Night expansion, and a Stuff Pack that I forgot the name of.

I think it is called High Loft?

I look forward to giving it a try. One player nearly scared me off saying it took 24 hours to download and keeps crashing. Happily that never happened to me.