EA games… now theres a Love hate relationship 99% of gamers deal with. EA used to be a good company, but over the years they have been going downhill and just about freefall speeds. Back in the console only days of my gaming i never really gave a thought to electronic arts, but as the PC days of my gaming came I started to realize more and more just how bad EA was. Back in the days of my first MMO, Ultima Online my friends and I played that like crack. About a year into playing EA bought out origin and Ultima online started slipping into obscurity.
It was noticeable when the takeover happened. Small thing, Worse support patches that got worse over time, game client started to bloat to no end. We used to Download the beta clients to play UO, they were absolutely the best way to play, No lag , Extremely small size of the client (200kb’ish) . always worked like a charm. After EA had fully digested origin a very noticeable thing happened, the game started to lag alot more, patches with show stopping bugs, crazy memory leaks, and most noticeably the client size getting to ridiculous size (4 to 10MB now maybe more).
Anyhow, more about EA- they are like an amorphous blob. they consume everything in there path and just shit all over the place. I’ve played alot of EA games, now i barely play any. the less I play the better off my PC is due to the crap that happens with there games.
over the years I began to noticed how EA kills Creativity in games.
NHL1998 Damn good game we played that till the we hours of the morning doing all sorts of crazy shit.
NHL2000 -Start of the series going downhill, bugs introduced into the game that made gameplay hard at times
NHL2001 – bugs from 2000 carried over , also removal of features in game.
NHL2002 – bugs in 2000 still persist never corrected, addition of some features , removal of net play , must sign into there lame servers
NHL 2003 – 4 years and bugs that existed in 2000 still carry over. more Features dumped from game, Higher push on EA server play..
NHL2004-2006 Same bugs, Removed even more features , complicated the fuck outta the controls and basically at this point the series has turned into a joke. I’ve not purchased NHL since 2004 but have tried out 2005 and 2006 from other people.
the Sims (1 and 2)
Not much here to say , EA’s acquisition of maxis had some profound effect’s that will get there own little section, both games when first released crashed like a drunk man driving backwards on a highway.
Command and conquer series
after EA’s aquired redwood studios they left most of the games to simmer until releasing Command and Conquer 3, that game alone had some of the worse crashing i’ve ever seen from a game on a Windows XP machine Causing full lockups and other undesired effects with typical blame the user type support.
Most companies EA buys out , they turn the companies into slave labor and generally destroy the games with Destroying the playability of such games by limiting the content, turning the game into a yearly Release game, or the worse offense – Expansion vomit.
Expansion Vomit- thats the term I use when companies just fire out one useless expansion after another (EA by far is the worst offender, Sony gets 2nd place for this). The expansions get so ridiculous the game is brought to obscurity.
If you want a good example of what i call Expansion Vomit. lets take a look at the sims 2
- The Sims 2 University”
- “The Sims 2 Nightlife”
- “The Sims 2 Holiday Party Pack” (A Stuff Pack)
- “The Sims 2 Open for Business”
- “The Sims 2 Family Fun” (A Stuff Pack)
- “The Sims 2 Glamour Life” (A Stuff Pack)
- “The Sims 2 Pets”
- “The Sims 2 Happy Holiday” (A Stuff Pack)
- “The Sims 2 Seasons”
- “The Sims 2 Celebration” (A Stuff Pack)
- “The Sims 2 H&M” (A Stuff Pack)
- “The Sims 2 Bon Voyage”
- The Sims 2 Free Time with Bonus!
- The Sims 2 Kitchen and Bath Design Stuff with Bonus!
- The Sims 2: Teen Style Stuff
Ultima Online also has the Same expansion Vomit problems.
12 expansions
Most are completely crap others just make the game more buggy and more clusterfucked than the previous expansion.
yes this is a longwinded rant, but with EA buying out bioware and pandemic… R.I.P bioware rather than getting resurrected into a brain eating zombie that makes you stupid just for thinking about playing EA’s idea of a game from the former company.
EA as of recently has taken interest in Take Two interactive (rockstar games, 2kgames, etc). If take two has any fucking intelligence at all they will stay away from EA. if not we will see the dawn of GTA:LXXXI-Tommy Vercetti Takes a dump with the Super OMG Fantastic clothing pack edition.