A Test For EA

I have had many times where I have just begged for EA to go back to it’s older ways of doing it’s own work, and making them good. The sad thing is that the last game that I was overly appreciative for by EA’s own doing (keep in mind, I’m not counting the good folks at DICE, just EA itself) was Need For Speed: High Stakes released in March of 1999. Since then, EA has become a major power-house, and made highly controversial (and even hated moves) such as acquiring my beloved Bullfrog Productions in 1995, and officially killing the studio in 2004.

Call me bitter, but I take a very cynical view with a hell of a lot of things related to EA. Warhammer Online? Not sure it’ll pan out, either by totalitarian methods of enforcing their EULA, by refusing to fix bugs that are detrimental to gameplay, or by requiring high-end systems so that no one with low-to-midrange hardware can play it.   Need For Speed: Undercover? Sure I’m as excited as a schoolgirl for it, but at the same time, I can’t help but hold in the pit of my stomach that somehow EA will manage to screw it up.

Now, to the main ‘test’ that I was talking about.  Most of the people I talk to have heard about the horrendous EA Link, and it’s replacement EA Downloader. Horrible software that just flat-out gave people headaches with DRM restrictions, etc. The new revision (third time’s the charm?) EA Download Manager has appeared and rather than trying to take on the superior Steam platform, it was toned down to just act as it sounds: A manager for EA Store purchases.

The downside is that the DRM crap is still there, which can potentially give problems. There are download time limits involved with it as well, which is never a good idea if you want your customers to come back. (Hey! I want to download my game again.. ooh, there’s something new too!)

With all that said, I decided to finally give them a try. This afternoon I was installing Battlefield 2142 in hopes of being able to play on a server with unlocked Titans. Ever since the huge problem involving titans melding together, I have yet to find a server that actually had them unlocked. Regardless, I also noticed that the Northern Strike expansion pack had dropped to ten dollars. I remember back with EA Link that it was pretty notorious for wanting to know exactly what you were running at the time, and after I found out that the system was replaced with a lighter method, I decided to give it a try.

Purchasing the expansion was easy enough. I was more frustrated when I was shown the strangely popular “Extended Download Service” that places like Digital River and what-not ‘offer’. Again, as I said above, I am quite curious why these companies don’t see the length of time and offering as an investment to bring their customers back, rather than severing them off from their purchased licenses.

Bought it, easy enough, and had it install through EA Download Manager. I will say that this is the one aspect that got me to (shamefully) exclaim out loud, “Woah”. I never expected any EA server, or service associated with EA to actually offer a decent speed. I saw surges of over 1.3MB/s, while it averaged out at just under 1MB/s.

After, I had the “woah” knocked out of me with a request to “activate” my purchase. Activate my purchase? What the hell? The ‘Unlock’ key is already registered to my Battlefield 2142 account, why would I need to activate it? If someone else where to TRY and use my purchase, they’d have no luck with it, considering that I have the permissions applied to my account, not theirs.

Activating was quick, but made me ask the obvious question: “Just how many times can I activate?” I’m sure there’s some sort of limit outlined in the Terms of Service or agreements, but let’s face the fact that all of that stuff is just a bunch of legaleze that no regular person would be able to read within a decent time frame.

We’ll see what happens after, EA. Hopefully this little test proves to be worthwile for your sake.

Someone wants me to socialize, or not.

Let’s take a look at what MMORPGs I am currently subscribed to/active with.

EvE Online: Paid by Timecards (Active through June)

World of Warcraft: Paid By Timecards (Active through July)

Age of Conan: Paid by Initial Purchase (Active through June)

—-

I apparently won a random drawing of doom for an online site for a Dungeon Runners promotion. After which I completely forgot about and went on with my life. Some bad things happened, some good things happen, until I get an e-mail from someone in San Fransisco alerting me to my win in the drawing. I got a second e-mail asking for my name and address so they could ship “something” to me, and I gave it to them. (What were they gonna do? Send me Anthrax? Haha.) I then forgot about it for another couple weeks.

After awhile I get a second e-mail from the same guy in San Fransisco asking for my phone number so he could ship it via Fed Ex. I provided it, and a few days later got a tracking number. Again, I was forgetful, so I went on with things and actually started playing Age of Conan.

This afternoon I heard a thump at my door and went to see what it was, only to find a box.. A big box. It said “Belkin” on the side so I wondered if my father had ordered anything that I wasn’t aware of before I looked at the address label, and found it was for me, and then found that the return address was to the guy that had asked me for my information. Curiously, I opened it with a key and found a good set of boxes inside that made me laugh loudly.

It came with:

Guild Wars
Guild Wars: Factions
Guild Wars: Nightfall
Guild Wars: The Eye of the North
Lineage 2 (Client or 60-day Card, I can’t tell.)
Tabula Rasa

——

So, The bad news is that I already own Guild wars up to Nightfall. The good news is that I can easily use The Eye of the North without batting an eye (pun unintentional). I can’t tell if the Lineage two addition is the client itself (allowing activation of the full product) and 60 days, or just a 60 day time card.

Don’t know what I’ll be doing with the stuff I already own yet. I do have a sudden urge to rip open Tabula Rasa though.

Guild Wars, Guild Wars: Factions, and Guild Wars: Nightfall have been made available as a bundle on KSL.com for residents of Northern Utah.

“Save It For LiveJournal!”

So, first blog with WordPress. It’s mine, not GameSpot’s, not Gamepolitic’s, not ECA’s not GameCritics’. It’s a really weird feeling as I can do almost anything I want. I can swear, I can post any image I want, I can even put up MP3s, or at least so I’ve read. I won’t do a lot of it; why should I?

It’s a different kind of feeling to have a full page dedicated to whatever I write, instead of a page crowded with advertisements (for those that haven’t paid cNet, or spend their time moderating) or other people’s diatribe. I don’t know how many people will actually read this, especially as how this is just the kind of stuff that just sits on the web for awhile and will eventually be forgotten.

I started doing a few new things today, ranging from trying to get back in the habit of posting in my Gamespot Blog, as well as setting up a little diversion at 360voice. It’s funny at first considering the fact that my 360 would have a personality and the like, but after reading the same outline it really feels like one of those “talkback” java applets where you ask things like “How are you”, and they respond with something stupid like, “I don’t know. How do you define “How”?”

My brother moves out of my father’s house tomorrow. He’s going on a train to California to work for my mom. I’m not sure how I feel about this, he’s had some issues with school, I’m not sure if this is a good idea to trust my half-sisters in his care. I mean, I’m not perfect myself, ironically enough I almost didn’t graduate from High School, but at the same time I know that there are things I just can’t mess around with, and that everything I do affects others. The good news is that he seems to be genuinely serious about getting things straightened out. It’ll cost him a decent amount of time, and money, but he’ll be able to do it if he sticks to it.

My best friend and I have recently been at odds. He’s kind of drifted away from wanting to hang out, get breakfast, or do… anything. Some guy I haven’t seen for awhile apparently moved back to the area and has been hanging out with him a good deal. Jealous? I guess so. He rented a Counter-Strike: Source server recently and had me do a bit of admin work. Mainly figuring out how to add and remove files, play custom sound files, and mods. Of course, recently he’s been on a bit of a power trip. I play an audio file that I particularly like, and he chews me out for doing it. Not many complaints from many players so far, but every time my buddy decides to say the same thing: “Don’t play any sounds while the server is at capacity.” I can only roll my eyes as he uses various RCON commands to speed his own movement up, and numerous complaints ensue from that choice. What really broke my patience was when I started a vote to change the map, considering that the map had been playing for over 40 minutes, and something along the lines of 25 rounds. The vote popped up at the end of the round, but only finished and passed in the middle of the next round. What resulted? My buddy telling me that I should “Only start a vote at the end of a round.” What the hell? Here he is effectively cheating (despite his claims that he isn’t cheating because he isn’t shooting or attacking), and I’m just using what tools that even a basic player would be given. After that I just told him that it might be a good idea to remove my admin rights, since I’m not permitted to actually use them. His response, although expected had a sneer that I didn’t expect. I asked him to call me tonight, but he hasn’t at this point. He said he would, but he hasn’t.

That’s pretty much it. Kind of basic for a free-man’s blog I suppose but we’ll see what happens.