Drowsy Emperor

Nothing except that they don't have the money to make groundbreaking, technologically advanced titles in established genres As much as I liked Braid, World of Goo and Plants vs Zombies - they're essentially filler (to me at least).

It remains to be seen if this model becomes the new norm. I hope it doesn't. But what I'm really hoping for is a new groundbreaking game that isn't the sequel to something or other. The real reason I don't/wont play Starcraft II, Diablo III, ME3, Shogun TW 2, CoD xy, DA2 etc. is because they're a souped up rehash of decade old games that I've had my fill with already. I haven't seen a new, non-indie development in the staple PC genre's (FPS, RTS, RPG) in years.

Can't blame it all on them can we? Although they do deserve most of the blame.

There are a lot of people that feel the same way, these are common complaints. If you can live with it, buy it - I won't. But that "I can live with any crap they decide to shove into my mouth - for my money" attitude is what makes the PC suck more and more as a gaming platform.

Fact: having to play online only is partially limiting (limits me to only my desktop PC as there is no quality wi-fi around) potentially annoying (maintenance periods), potentially disruptive (net connection down) and gives me nothing I actually need, while taking away what I consider a staple of PC gameplay - single player offline mode that I've enjoyed for the last decade. Other hoops include: registration, making accounts, limited activations and other irritating time wasters. If it actually achieved anything I might be inclined to put up with it, but the only thing it does is annoy me for my 50$ while my pirate friends plug and play at release day, or a few days after and joke about it too.

Well, we're exchanging facts here. Fact is that anti piracy measures have become insane while actually achieving nothing, and its become a pain in the ass for legitimate users. I've stopped buying newer PC games for that very reason. CD Key and disc-in-drive is the upper limit of annoyance I'm willing to endure.

I don't doubt that D3 will get cracked eventually, but it might actually take a while because the crackers would have to build load/save game feature from scratch. Dunno, SCII was cracked on release day. But that could complicate matters. I don't care either way, never liked Diablo/Titans Quest/Torchlight type games anyway.

They're just playing dumb. The huge amount of hate SCII got over the same issue was obvious for anyone to see. As usual the pirates are going to have the most fun. They'll get a nicely cracked game without all the online garbage, and it will probably work better too.

Amazon sale stats bring a tear to my eye:

That's an excellent idea. How's the wait for the Mass Effect 2 Ultimate Edition going? I'm doing the same with DA II. And the approach works perfectly if your interest is sufficiently marginal that you're willing to accept the absence of an ultimate edition as a sign that you weren't meant to play the game.

The way they show you aryans drinking champagne in the first class, while you're crammed in economy between the fat dude and the screaming kids on a 20 hour intercontinental Swissair flight sure as hell amounts to a conspiracy. Wallet apartheid is what it is.

In my experience, the dickwad making these decisions in most corporations is not a lawyer. The poor bastards have enough work without googling for random words related to products. It's kind of like gun control. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Lawyers don't make idiotic lawsuits, the people who they work for make the decisions. What do you do for a living again?

I found the ME games to have the most boring, predictable and unvaried action gameplay without a shred of tactics/fine aiming skills some shooters demand or at least mindless fun of the GTA sort. In fact ME played like RPG autocombat only you had to babysit the main character.

Why do you think Bioware is pushing all their games more and more towards action games then? Its still not going to happen, because they suck at action gameplay - its nowhere near as intense/interesting as what the competition is offering. They'll never manage to push the concept of a shooter/RPG so far to make it sell like CoD, which is why I criticized this approach from day one. But, who cares.

Its never going to happen. RPG games are a niche market. Maybe ToR, although its not likely.

Even the EA suits have enough brains to realize that affiliating Bioware (a successful company and name) with EA (which has a mixed reputation at best), does damage to the former and nothing for the latter. The only intelligent option is to have them in your pocket but under their own name and doing their own thing.

No great surprise there, they couldn't really do a BGII scale improvement with Witcher 2. In fact it sounds just like I was expecting it to be, better in the quantifiable stuff (graphics, choices etc.) and worse in the unquantifiable (atmosphere etc.). I always felt The Witcher was a one shot thing. A great game, but without enough space to improve for a drastically superior sequel. I still respect CDProjekt for listening to old school fans and critics, unlike some developers I know. I'll play it some day. When I get a new PC.

So what's the verdict on the Witcher 2? I can't play it and most of my friends say the atmosphere and story aren't as good as the first time around, but the gameplay is supposedly better.

Yeah, I see a lot of soon to be impoverished parents there.

150$ lol, they have to be kidding

That sucks. Never had that problem myself though. Still playing Stronghold Crusader. I really like the game, it doesn't have the hectic pace of RTS games and the whole castle building is a lot of fun.

Bioware having a dedicated 2d studio has the potential to be either awesome, or the factory of saddest facebook franchise knock-off games in the history of mankind. Don't choke: I agree.

No but professional football is a job done for money. A game shouldn't be the first, and you ain't gonna see the second unless you're in the top 10.

Not that I disagree but isn't that an indication of a problem with it? If spectating on a free stream is more fun than playing why buy the game in the first place? Its not so much that it isn't fun its just inherited a lot of fanatical players from SC I that you can't hope to compete with. Being serious about SCII demands too much time and stress for most people.

Quite true. The actual playing at that level of skill and training to do so is a bloody chore.