EA's horrific downward spiral; using bots to sign scapegoat poll

[Thor]

Is ToR tanking?

It's losing subscribers very quickly. Subscriptions peaked near released and have been going down ever since.


People are leaving because servers are empty at this point. It's Warhammer Online all over again

EDIT: Indecently, EA just gave a free month subscription to anybody with a level 50 character who is currently subscribed. Does that sound like the actions of a company confident in its ability to maintain subscribers?

[ProqagandaClock]

Apparently that article was written by a LGBT culture and arts website, not EA

That's the point, people swallow it. Not following this story close at hand though so I might just be screaming in the woods, but the principle of it all still angers me.

Agreeing that a whole lot of problems we deal with have to do with people refusing to admit responsibility.

Have bought Dead Space 2 (which is the last of that line since it's turned into captain america in space) and Mass Effect 2. Nothing after that.

[buttplug]

It's losing subscribers very quickly. Subscriptions peaked near released and have been going down ever since.


People are leaving because servers are empty at this point. It's Warhammer Online all over again

EDIT: Indecently, EA just gave a free month subscription to anybody with a level 50 character who is currently subscribed. Does that sound like the actions of a company confident in its ability to maintain subscribers?

Remember when Dwarf and some other people spent pages trying to defend it as a good game

[CranberryClock]

It's losing subscribers very quickly. Subscriptions peaked near released and have been going down ever since.


People are leaving because servers are empty at this point. It's Warhammer Online all over again

EDIT: Indecently, EA just gave a free month subscription to anybody with a level 50 character who is currently subscribed. Does that sound like the actions of a company confident in its ability to maintain subscribers?

Blizzard has given free game time.. but usually its because of outages.. I guess the major factor thats going to trump and show a failure is what we call in the industry as the "Newbcuiting" *noob-cooting* effect.

The newbcuiting effect is an effort to recruit new (newb) players into playing a game that is free for the sake of making them addicted to gameplay or feel the investment they are making is worth the time played.

Heres some examples:

-Double XP weekends
-Freemium, Free to play, with premium products
-Free to play weekends where you get 2 free days a week to play the game, which requires an active subscription which makes no sense because you still pay for the month, but you assume you get... free days. Its a market ploy

[DWARFINATORclock]

It's losing subscribers very quickly. Subscriptions peaked near released and have been going down ever since.


People are leaving because servers are empty at this point. It's Warhammer Online all over again

EDIT: Indecently, EA just gave a free month subscription to anybody with a level 50 character who is currently subscribed. Does that sound like the actions of a company confident in its ability to maintain subscribers?

A lot of people are angry about the bugs that still haven't been fixed, like the main raid has so many bugs it's more a fight against bugs than the game mechanics being difficult. They also made a gigantic mistake with naming the servers causing faction imbalance (servers with sith names will obviously have a bigger empire presence) . Basically they did a lot of things that would seem obvious wrong. More time in development and more common sense would have delivered a more complete game and less angry/disappointed people. I think a few patches from now we will see the game that they planned to release from the start but couldn't due to time constraints/incompetence.

Server merges would easily fix the low population problem. After they released the latest patch (1.2) yesterday my servers population was actually close to launch again. However the patch contained shit that had to be fixed today, and today's "fix" actually rolled parts of the world back to pre 1.2 patch and they had to shut down all servers again for emergency maintenance. I'm expecting this is going to cost them thousands of subs, especially the ones that came back hoping things would be better.

EA is either incompetent or doesn't care, I'm guessing both.

I still enjoy the game though and think it's good despite its many many flaws.

[Thor]

Update:

EA stocks are still plummeting. Stocks are selling at the lowest price in 15 years. When I made this thread it was trading at about $15 per share, and now it's down to around $11.

SWTOR is currently not profitable but they can't stop hosting the game and updating it due to their contract with Lucas Arts.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48212955
http://www.google.com/finance?cid=168725

It's seriously starting to look like the biggest video game company in America could actually go bankrupt in the near future. Is this the coming of the second videogame crash?

[NintendrCkolc]

My favorite recent EA blunder was the announcement of BF4 when they aren't even done with BF3 yet (dlc and what not.)

Way to kill the sales of your DLC and also hype a game that won't see the light of day for at least another 2 years.

[buttplug]

Update:

EA stocks are still plummeting. Stocks are selling at the lowest price in 15 years. When I made this thread it was trading at about $15 per share, and now it's down to around $11.

SWTOR is currently not profitable but they can't stop hosting the game and updating it due to their contract with Lucas Arts.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48212955
http://www.google.com/finance?cid=168725

It's seriously starting to look like the biggest video game company in America could actually go bankrupt in the near future. Is this the coming of the second videogame crash?

Good.

This along with the shit going down on D3 should show that companies can't get away with doing shit like this.

[buttplug]

Update:

EA stocks are still plummeting. Stocks are selling at the lowest price in 15 years. When I made this thread it was trading at about $15 per share, and now it's down to around $11.

SWTOR is currently not profitable but they can't stop hosting the game and updating it due to their contract with Lucas Arts.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/48212955
http://www.google.com/finance?cid=168725

It's seriously starting to look like the biggest video game company in America could actually go bankrupt in the near future. Is this the coming of the second videogame crash?

Glorious Valve shall rise from the ashes.

[VuBawlsClock]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TORtanic
ha

[miracle fruit]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TORtanic
ha

ha

[Marlin Clock]

Glorious Valve shall rise from the ashes.

Great, and I wait long enough for their games already.

Although if they really did go belly-up it might not be so much a crash as much as a restructure. It'll show that making triple A titles with ridiculously overinflated budgets just isn't going to work anymore.

[Thor]

And what is there to replace the old paradigm? You can't make triple A games without corporate budgets. I love low budget games like Binding of Isaac and Receiver as much as the next guy but we need games like Arkham City, too.


The only way that indie devs could get funding that rivals EA is with something like Kickstarter and that system is broken as all hell.

[TequilaClock]

Is this the coming of the second videogame crash?

There is not an awful market saturation with consoles of any bran imaginable, and extremely poor games that are barely functional as in 1984, so no.

What might happen though, is that EA might do the biggest lay off in their history which would send a lot of talented people out on the street in which they either could join a better company (Valve... ummm... Gearbox... SEGA of America(???)... Valve...) or open their own studios which COULD be good news.

[Slurpee]

ea's been evil since the dawn of fucking time. remember when they snatched up the nfl license and killed nfl blitz or snatched up the marvel license and killed mvc snatched up the bond license and made absolute crap for six years remember the 100 hour work weeks controversy remember when they KILLED BULLFROG yeah they're bastards and they've had this coming for a long time. this is what's supposed to happen when you run a corporation like satan and bless the free market for finally doing something right.

ea if you're reading this I'm late on this but please stop delegitimizing serious issues with your video game bullshit. I'd point out that you weren't on our fucking side three years ago when there were "no gays in star wars" except I'd hate to lend any more dignity to this debacle. video games are stupid and your company based on selling them for other people has been a gaggle of unscrupulous goddamn knaves about it. either your failures have compounded on you or savvy consumers made enough noise that the hoi polloi picked up on it. either way you don't smokescreen your way out of a pr meltdown by attaching yourself to a beleaguered issue that's only just become populous after a decades long struggle. fuck. you. make like domino's pizza and man the fuck up over your mistakes. leave us out of it. sincerely, the king of the gays.

I love low budget games like Binding of Isaac and Receiver as much as the next guy but we need games like Arkham City, too.

"need".

[TequilaClock]

or snatched up the marvel license and killed mvc

wasn't that Activision?

[PolyhedronClock]

oh god EA, i really want to see this company fail. from turning great studios into mediocre piles of shit, to hideous market practices which fuck over the consumer. i really hope this trend continues and their whole studio implodes on themselves.

i feel bad for the people that actually produce the actual product though, although something like this was bound to happen eventually.

anyone have that huge image explaining all the bullshit EA did the past couple of years?

[AstronautClock]

"need".

haha I read that too and was like the fuck thor

[TequilaClock]

I believe what Thor meant was that it's necessary to see games with ambitious technical features in order to know what can be developed in the future.

But yeah.

[VolcanoClock]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TORtanic
ha

hahahahahaha brilliant.