I just want to be the third person to point out that your point about Origin is wrong, OP. It functions perfectly fine offline
But I never said Origin doesn't work. I said it didn't work when it was first forced on players, and it was a beta service. There are still problems with it, but I'll admit they're far more minor. Please read the post before you comment.
S: We just stop giving a flying fuck about what other people do and just do our own thing.
Paragraph 3.
Is it just me, or does anyone else get a sneaking suspicion this is MS fanboy/employee trying to rekindle the flame of EA hatred so MS will not be the primary target anymore?
Oh, damn! You got me. I'm actually the CEO of Microsoft. Sorry to tell you, but we're also scanning your brain using the new Kinect. Good thing you're already wearing your tinfoil hat.
That's called competent tech support. You don't make it a first option to call someone when things can be handled over the internet just as well.
You're meant to read the explanation, not just the subheading. Their internet customer service is useless. Most people who have had to deal with it would agree. It's just EA's way of dismissing the issue and pretending to try to fix it.
This is called good time management. Most of the development staff doesn't do much for the last several weeks of development and this is their chance to work on bits that had to be cut from the final version because of time constraints. the fact that they know in advance what these parts are going to be shows a more refined degree of time management on their part.
For art DLC made when the art team have already finished their role. But the programmers will generally be working until release, with some games not even being finished, and yet those resources are put into making extra stuff they can sell for extra money. This is the same as taking content out of the game and selling it for extra.
If someone wants to pay extra to save themselves a bit of time in a game, then who are you or I to disagree with their choice? The games aren't forcing you to and it being in the game doesn't effect your game enjoyment in the least unless they shove a message saying "BUY THIS TO KEEP PLAYING!" in your face at every pause screen.
I explained this already. A game is about winning, getting to the end. The player takes the fastest route there, that's how a game works. When microtransactions are there and they help you to the end, if you don't take them, you'll feel like you're doing it wrong. There's psychological pressure to take that option, and if you don't, it'll nag at you and ruin your enjoyment. It's no different to how, after you find out the cheatcodes for a game, you can't enjoy the game the way you previously did.
See, that's the crux of PC gaming: if you protect your software you inconvenience your customers by making them take an extra 20 seconds of installation to enter a code in order to slow pirates down, but if you don't protect it at all then people will pirate the ever living @#$% out of it(regardless of the games price, by it 1 cent or $60).
For a start, piracy isn't as much of a problem it's made out to be. And DRM isn't the solution it's made out to be. BF3, ME3, every other game running through Origin was cracked within a few days except SimCity - and that was only because SimCity relied on online components for a lot of the game.
So DRM doesn't stop piracy. It just inconveniences customers. It also tends to be more of an inconvenience than 'an extra 20 seconds of installation'.
That said, they are making a move away from some of it since they decided to move away from the online passes.
There's speculation regarding that, actually. They removed online passes when both consoles were expected to prevent used game sales. Sony turned out not to do that. EA is now supporting Microsoft with early DLC. Think about what that implies.
All MMO's have that issue. The initial server load is rarely something a company can anticipate, and even if they do they are loath to have enough servers to manage a load that is only going to last a day or so, mostly because both the servers and the backbone to support them is very expensive to maintain. As you put it, they are a business and they made a business decision to go with a normalized server estimate instead of spending a fortune on enough servers to handle the initial rush , but are then going to go mostly unused afterwards. May not be the best PR choice, but from both a business and an IT standpoint it makes perfect sense.
It's not even just a server issue. The game itself was filled with huge gamebreaking bugs that remained for a month at least. They're one of the biggest publishers around. They have the time, the experience and the money to do better than that.
