I would probably buy it and try it. I have complained about not using the world of Azeroth before - 80 levels shuttled into a handful of instances for the end game.

Those rumours, if true, are a brilliant move by Blizzard. That is what I would call an expansion.

Of course, bonus points if they let me into their content.

BB keeps a “reliability rating” with your account. Basically it is a percentage based score of matches played vs matches completed. My first 17 games I had a rating of 100% and proud of it. Players who challenged me knew I would stick through to the end no matter how poorly, or how brutal, the game was going.

It is now down below 80% – none of which I have control over. Since the last patch I have been getting funky network sync errors and random disconnects. Strange, and very frustrating.

Final frustrations after the jump…

BB made the odd decision to connect players directly together instead of a central server. Teams are stored on a central server, both pcs pull from there then hook up directly.

This has lead to the speculation of rampant cheating. Everyone knows that if you pull the plug on your Internet during s match (if a player you like dies, for example) then your team info isn’t updated. The pulley gets a safe team (and still gets the loss and the rep hit) while his opponent gets the win, some SPP and couple MVP designations.

Some of these disconnects have cost me losses, while some have not. It doesn’t make much sense to me how the same error can produce different outcomes. I am starting to suspect my opponents when it happens now when I am winning and it happens. I don’t know what my opponents think of me when I am losing when it does.

Strangest part of it all is that we can both play the game until the end most times, and the error isn’t obvious until players don’t progress after the game, or players who should be injured aren’t.

I don’t mind losing – you still get money and advancement points when you lose (and also strategy experience). I get nothing but the brackets and a reliability rating hit – basically nullifying anything positive for time spent – with the added kick in the jewels of a lower RR.

I’d have to buy a new game to reset my RR – it is per account. Frustrating when you lose pieces of your online reputation when it is beyond your control.

Sadly, I deleted them all before running a google translate, but I’ll be sure to remember to fix that when I get another stack.

• The Campaign AI sucks
• Online Players are typically good
• Community is typically fun to play with
• Randomness is specatular – moreso than I blogged about last time with Blood Bowl

A few neat things happened when I started playing online. I’ll share them with you after the bump.

I started off my rookie online career in the public league, with a spectacular 0-1-7 record before realizing how wrong I was playing my chosen team (the agile, pass happy Wood Elves). I had a few players die, a few injured, and although I was getting destroyed I was having fun – but most importantly – learning how to play the game. Since the dreadful start, I have had a couple great things happen to me, some good roll of the dice, some strategy improvement, and hey, some wins! My record after tonights match is now 4-2-8. Still nothing to write home about but I am really finding a comfort level.

I ran with one Wardancer (one of the best Elf players in the game)- great movement allowance and great starting skills – Leap, Block, and Dodge. The way characters work in BB is based on 4 stats: MA (Movement allowance, how many squares you can move in a turn), ST (Strength, guaged for blocking (attacking) and defence against blocks), AG (Agility, used for dodge rolls) and AV (Armor Value: Used to see if you get injured or killed when blocked (attacked)). Wood Elves have high MA, Average STR, Good AG, but low AV. In a straight up fight-em-up match you don’t only lose, you get maimed. Besides the core stats that every player has, there are skill sets as well. For the Wardancer the base three (as mentioned) allow you to leap over players (Against a wall or cage, you have to go through your opponent typically), Block saves you from going prone on a “both down” roll, and Dodge allows you a reroll on a failed dodge as well as a pushback instead of a ‘defender stumbles’ roll. All of that basically means they can get around the field very well, and are hard to knock down. A player down is a useless player.

Doing things in matches gets you SPP (I don’t know the acronym – Stat Purchase Points? Star Player Points?) which can then be spent. The dice rolls, and if you are lucky you can increase one of your 4 main stats by one (which is huge). If you are unlucky you get to add other skills (which are still huge) – such as Pro (50% reroll chance on a failed roll), Sure Hands, Frenzy, etc. There is a long list and you can tailor your players to your style or team needs.

Back to my Wardancer, the first one I had was injured the first match and lost a point in her AV. That is bad news, meaning she is more likely to get reinjured or die. Regardless, because of how much that player costs I kept playing with her, and I became really lucky. I received a +1 in Agility (already very high), and a +1 in Movement Allowance (she can cover more ground on the field than any other player in the game that I have seen – besides the Wood Elf/Skaven Catcher who is base 9 MA). I also took Pro with her. I ended up saving up and bought another Wardancer, and on her first skillup she got +1MA as well. Now my team has 3 players who cover more ground than anyone else in the game. Needless to say (and Syn will confirm) that is pretty sweet for a 1400 rated team. (Teams are rated by the value of its players.)

I dare EA to put a lust contest on this asskicker. Double dare.

The main reason why I am writing this tonight is I just had a crazy fun match. I played against a Chaos team (they have horns – and hurt). I kicked off first and it was shallow – on the kickoff event was a Blitz! That means I get to move before the receiving team does. I was able to position myself under the ball I just kicked, dodged a couple rolls and got a quick score. Bad news is, the Chaos guy managed to injure one of my players. Injury roll was “Badly Hurt – no long term damage” which is good – what is bad is that I couldn’t afford any subs. For the rest of the match – 2 turns into 16, I would be down a player (He has 11, I have 10).

Since I scored I kickoff again. It was a decent kick, and his front line injured 2 more players (both no long term damage – but out for game) before he even picked up the ball. He then positioned his players next to mine that were in range (forcing me to either block them, or a dodge roll success to move away from them) and then the rediculous happened. He failed a pickup roll. I ran in my 9 MA Wardancer – she failed a pickup roll. He failed his next pickup roll. I failed my next pickup roll. Finally, he picked the ball up and threw it accross the field to a lone runner, and it was caught – ran it in, Touchdown – but not before he injured ANOTHER one of my players (broken shin, -1MA, miss next match). And then it was my turn to receive a kick.

For those keeping track of players to this point, on the field it was 11 of his players against 7 of mine, at 5 of 16 turns. NOT a good sign, and with the score 1-1 with 3/4 of the match to go, I was starting to worry more about having a team left instead of winning the game. His players were pulverizing mine.

He kicks off to me, and leaves a hole on the left side while stacking the right side of the field (where my two Wardancers were – I had my Catcher (another MA:9) on the left hand side). A “hole” is when there is 3 movement spaces between two defenders. If you move within a “Tackle Zone” of a defender (the 8 squares surrounding him) he gets a free swing at you (Dodge roll to avoid). Because there was three spaces between two defenders I could sneak a player through without the chance of harm. I send my Catcher long, pickup the ball with a Wardancer, run my MA, hand it off to my Thrower, run until I have a clear passing lane (to avoid interception rolls), and Pass the ball to the Catcher. He catches it, but can’t make the endzone in 1 turn (no players can). With my remaining moves I stack a row of defenders around him, including my other Wardancer. If I can stave off his block/attack turn, I can make the endzone on my next turn.

He has a few players near where I am, and surrounds the ball carrier and the defender. The basic way group blocking works is this: if he has 3 players in the Tackle zone of my one player, he gets to roll three dice and choose the best result from the three (modified by Strength). Now, if I have defenders around my ball carrier, the surrounding players in adjacent tackle zones can cancel out the extra dice roll – giving him a much lower chance for success. If he has three blockers, and I have three attackers around the ball carrier and we have even Strength he only gets one dice to roll, and must take the result of that roll (be it good, bad, or ugly). There are skills that help you defend even if a player is in your tackle zone, but I will stick to basics here so it doesn’t get too confusing.

With his defenders around my ball carrier, he blitzes (you can only block ONE player per round from distance – the rest have to be in your tackle zone – so use that blitz wisely!) and knocks down the ball carrier – forcing a dropped ball. After bouncing around a bit, it ends up in the hands of my Wardancer. He has one player in her TZ (tackle zone) so gets another chance to knock her down – it fails, and pushes me back a square. No other player is in my TZ now besides the last attacker (who has the default option to “follow” a push to stay in the TZ – but since he has used up his action for the round cannot reattack). He gets the rest of his in range players to form a cage (Box) around my Wardancer – so next round he can pummel her good and force another fumble. Except, now it is my turn.

I use my Leap skill, hop out of the box, and bam, in for a touchdown. 2-1 for me. Yay. Except, I forgot to mention he Injured (no long term effect) another player. it’s now 11 Chaos, 6 WE on the match. He has double my players. My slim lead won’t hold. I manage to play out the half, 2-1 score and do not sustain any other injuries (yay). At halftime it’s just like football – if you received the kickoff at the start of the game, you kick off to begin the second half.

Without going into too much level of detail, with a lot of luck and some well skilled players I won the game 4-1. At the end of the game, I only had 2 players left on the field that weren’t Injured or KO’d (KO’s happen for temporary out of game injuries. After the ball changes hands they get to roll to see if they come back in or stay down for another drive). He had all 11. Goes to show what you can do against a frustrated player who wasn’t used to the Movement and Dodge ability of the Wood Elf team.

With a little lot of luck, some skill, I was able to beat all odds. Try doing that in your Raid team if 3 healers go down.

As a quick “prologue” here, I have had several matches go the complete opposite way – where I felt I did everything right but couldn’t buy good dice rolls for the life of me. I didn’t get frustrated though, because that is the magic in this game. ANYTHING can happen, and it does, and will, when you least expect it. While my gaming time is still very limited, I manage to squeeze in a quick 30 minute match or two a night when I need that break from work – it has been a great escape. I am curious how private league play works, and may start looking into it after I hit .500.

Slippery slopes after the jump.

The “Telephone Terrorist”, as reported in the link above actually lives in my community. All name calling and finger pointing aside, I can’t help but think how easily this could have been stopped right in it’s tracks – with a little understanding that participating in criminal activitiy, RECORDING PROOF of it, and then posting it on YouTube, message boards, etc. is some sort of waiver of rights to privacy. I am not going to get into investigative journalism into it, but by reading the article above it seems that this has been going on for some time – and no one figured out who this person was until The Smoking Gun fooled him into clicking some IP logging links, came to Canada, staked out his house and uncovered the whole mess.

Granted, I am not big on privacy rights. I don’t fear my government (my tax collectors don’t carry guns), and Politicians in Canada are public servants – not celebrities. This will shock and awe some of you, but if a police officer knocks on my door and asks to have a look around because there was a crime in my neighbourhood I’d let him in – without a warrant. I have nothing illegal, and nothing to hide. If I did then shame on me. If I can assist in some way by opening the door to help in an investigation I would. No, I am not naive – just fully comfortable in my participation of a fine standing community member.

I know many are afraid that if some privacy is given up, then ALL privacy would be gone. I am not big into conspiracy theory. I think there can be reasonable laws setup based on my previous argument: If you commit a crime, record the proof, and decide to share it with the electronic world then you give up your privacy rights. Pretty simple. In fact, in the case above, I can’t believe it took a news outlet to figure this out. Pretty open and shut case for me.

I half expect some diehard privacy advocates to comment here – and I am very interested in hearing from that side. What is the fear founded on? Where is the limit on privacy over the internet – how about internationally? Where is the comfortable line in the sand.

While this doesn’t relate to gaming explicitly I have always argued that removing a level of anonymity on message boards, etc. would improve that community as well. If the WoW boards forced you to post with your account name, and a person could click it and see a list of ALL of your characters, that would provide a level of self moderation. People generally care about their online reputation – giving them avenues to hide who they are creates the cesspool to begin with. If it was your real name and state/province it would be even cleaner. Is the former okay, but the latter pushing it too much?

Where is that safe middle ground?

To hell with ordinary and predictable. While I can’t recommend this game to everyone, it has brought to my forefront that despite pretty graphics and neat mechanics, the predicatbility of gaming is killing me. So I kill my enemies on the Blood Bowl pitch. More chatter after the jump.

I had never heard of Blood Bowl before, which has a long, interesting and successful tabletop history. I heard about it through reading a couple of posts at Hardcore Casual (sorry for the tri-pingback Syn, but they are all older articles so shouldn’t mess up your clean blog too much!) and a few thoughts gleaned from those articles made me purchase.

• I was looking for a strategic challenge – but not too crazy difficult
• I like sports, and fantasy, and bloodletting
• I wanted something completely out of the comfort zone realm of my gaming
• Something turnbase, easily pausable, saveable, etc. A game I can play for 15 minutes and walk away and come back when I have time

The fact the game has been around for years was a bonus – the rules have been created, updated, and tested extensively. BB is considered a very true port of the tabletop version so hey, let’s see how those years of refinement would translate into a gaming experience. Not surprisingly, very well.

I chose Elves. I know, make fun of me, whatever. While Orc and Human teams are supposedly the better learning teams the team description for Elves was pass, pass, and pass. I like that style of play, so I chose them. I tried to do the tutorials – sadly, it took longer to load a tutorial than to complete it (and the game itself loads really slow before a match – can’t figure out why, considering there isn’t much in the way of moving parts). I downloaded the ruleset pdf, read through it a bit before realizing without a board or visual reference in front of me it was hard to grasp the core concepts. So, in the end, I just dove right into campaign mode. I would learn through trial, error, and failure. It took about 5 matches before I really understood and got the hang of it – so the learning curve wasn’s so bad. Shortly after that, after competing in 6 tournaments over the past few weeks, a team rating of just over 2000, 1 trained up star player from a rookie, 2 trophies to my name, I can safely say I am hooked on the game.

The basic mechanics are beat the snot out of your opponent in a footballesque setting. It just works. Your players improve and you can customize their stats and bonus skills (not much in the way of visual customization except at purchase) and you can tip the advantage in the game through other mechanics – rerolls (wish I had invested in them earlier), cheerleaders (assist in certain rolls during the game), and apothecaries (can stop your players from permadeath, or perma injury).

That’s right, permadeath.  Ther permanency of it all is great. Break a leg? Lose one Agility point – permanently. Your players can – do – and will – die. My favorite player on my team was a Wardancer. She kicked serious ass. Got up to level 5 – an emerging star. I was playing a first round tournament against a far weaker opponent and bam – she was blocked by a small goblin and the injury roll came up “Death”. Dead. She’s gone. That’s it. Bring in the sub, and exact some revenge. That kind of randomness is what I really like about the game – although I am certain it will frustrate some incredibly. You can setup your offence perfectly, knock down opponents, send a receiver deep, have your Thrower go to pick up the ball and pass it into the endzone for a quick point – only to have him fail a pickup roll. No one around him, nothing in the way, just a bad dice roll. Now, the tables are severely reversed if you don’t have a contingency plan for that error roll. He fails the pickup roll and automatically its a turnover and the other team gets their moves. One runs up and breaks the Thrower’s collarbone, the next picks up the ball, and trots into your endzone. No matter how well you plan, how good your players are, and how sound your strategy is – you are at the mercy of a random dice roll that can turn the entire game upside down with with fatal 1 roll.

And that, my friends, is sweetness. Pure sweetness. The unexpected and unpredictability of it all has me in love with it. Imagine an MMO, where you go to cast your fireball of doom on the Big Mob, and you fail a roll for it – causing it to explode around you, damaging anyone nearby? Interrupting a heal on the tank, causing the tank to die, and more craziness to ensue? That may not sound like a lot of fun in current MMO iterations, but if encounters were scripted to allow failure in the first place (without wiping) we could really have some fun with it.

I haven’t tried Multiplayer yet, and granted, I am only playing the game on the Easy setting – I am still understanding the different races and how they play, and how to counter their strengths. The only team that gives me a major headache right now is the Lizardmen team, with Dwarves close behind (they are tough little buggers, and push around the Elves fairly easily). The Goblin team is the easiest for me to beat, and Chaos is hit or miss. I am looking forward to digging a bit deeper into the game, reading the official rulebook for the tabletop version (now that i have played a bunch of matches, I’ll be able to understand it better) and throw myself to the BB wolves out there. I expect it won’t be pretty. But hey, maybe their Runner will roll a 1, fall down flat, and give me a chance to win. I fully suspect at the mercy of the RNG even an average player has  a shot at a great player. I suppose I’ll find out soon.

The directed experience feels like Uwe Boll is the one calling “cut” right now. Throw in some twists, have some fun. Play some Blood Bowl.

This ‘exhaustive’ Q&A about SWTOR is just exhausting to read.

To save you the clicky, I’ll paraphrase the key points for you. After the break.

I ‘exhaustively’ combed through the 4 page interview and took out the newest, and greatest features being discussed about Bioware’s epic MMO – SWTOR. Here’s the juicy goodness!

“We’re not talking about that now”

“I don’t think we are speaking in detail about it”

“There’s a whole lot of MMO stuff going on”

“I’m not sure how much detail we can go into”

“We aren’t talking about space combat yet”

“As of right now we’ve only talked about humans, and that’s pretty much what we’re talking about”

“To be revealed at a later date”

“That’s also something we’re not talking about yet”

“We can’t be specific about any of that stuff”

“I can’t definitively answer that question”

“I’m not sure that we’re getting into comparatives here”

“I don’t think we have details that we’re willing to share”

“I actually cannot answer that”

I don’t know that there’s a ton of detail that I can be brilliant about”

“We have mentioned them, yeah, but we haven’t given a lot of details”

“Thanks, dude. I’m so full of PR. It’s awesome”

Even Paul Barnett makes more sense than those two guys.

I find it extremely difficult to write about gaming when I am not gaming. It’s frustrating as I see all of you poking your noses in here to see what I’m writing about – and no doubt that comes with heavy dissapointment. Bored and Unispired Gameaholics Anonymous (BUGA) chatter, after the break.

I haven’t been playing anything. A little bit of MLB 2K9 – which has beauty presentation but the more you play the lack of basic baseball mechanics sucks. There is nothing wrong with all pretty and nothing upstairs for a little bit, but after a while it lacks any sort of staying power. First date yes, second date maybe not. I took the WAR 10 day trial (again) and made it through 30 minutes before shaking my head and wondering… why am I doing this again? Booted up the EVE trial – SUCH a beautiful game. I could just fly around and enjoy the immersive scenery. After waiting 20 minutes for my first skillup I was reminded why I didn’t stick with it. (I am too casual for EVE – make no mistake about it. While the visuals and mechanics are sweet, I need a game that LOOKS like EVE, plays like EVE, but made for faster gratification in shorter bursts. I am not bashing the game, I have done trials on it a few times and often very close to buying. It just doesn’t fit me, unfortunately). I popped into L4D for a couple survival modes, and flirted with the thought of honing my leet FPS skills with my shotty in BF2142. I just.. well.. not having fun playing games right now. It just isn’t doing it for me. I almost resubbed to WoW (yes, I unsubbed again – 4th or 5th time) just to see the new Druid skins. I am in a downward cycle of booting up games I have, being “surprisingly” disappointed after 20 minutes, then digging deeper on my harddrive for the next “dissapointment”.

I am in dire need of a new experience. My wife thinks I am cheating on her right now. Usually come Friday and Saturday nights, and my little one is off to bed I am entirely content toiling away at my PC gaming while she watches her shows. It has been a very consistent thing in our lives, and we are both happy for it. Lately I have been going out “with the boys” for the odd adult beverage. “Whats going on with your games?” she asks – inquisitively and hardly trusting. She doesn’t mind I play them, and realizes it is a huge source of entertainment for me. “Nothing. Sadly, nothing is going on with them.”

“Did you just put gel in your hair? Is that cologne” – cue suspicion

“I thought you wanted to raid again?” – blow below the belt, of course. That’s just mean.

With the lack of fun gaming on my agenda right now I have stuck towards working Friday and Saturday nights. It is amazing how productive you can be when the phone isn’t ringing off the hook. For the sake of my marriage, and my sanity (all work and no play…) I need a new game. I need a single player game though, something I can jump in and out of. This game needs to capture my imagination, challenge me in some ways (physically, intellectually, or hell, even emotionally at this point).

I have promised myself to go give M59 a whirl for something old, something new (something borrowwed something blue?) to support Psychochild after reading his input on many o’ blogs (I do like to vote with my wallet for support – whether it has any real effect in this market or not, it’s the principal) but hardly have the time for any sort of  MMO and actually want to give it a fair shake.

I am curious about Blood Bowl – I never played the table top game, but I love sports, and fantasy characters, and blood, and uh, strategy games. Mostly here though I am curious if that Blood Bowl is a pure tabletop conversion with fancy graphics – can someone please do that to Battletech?

Other games I even have an inkling for are a couple years stuck in development. I can barely Beta test the games I am in right now as they are the same games I have been playing for 6 years already.

Any suggestions? Anyone else feeling the same pain as me?

Remember, the first step in BUGA is admission.

With little time to play any.

I manage to do a little in each each week but nothing I could dedicate in the past. This problem stems from two separate issues, real life being one and beta fatigue the other.

We seem to be in the middle of the WoW-Dev cycle – games coming up for release started during WoW-Prime, so pitches and design are WoW-Like. Sure, there are a couple that stray from the model but the underly is firmly WoW-Entrenched. It is wholly uninspiring to even play these games as I have already spent years in WoW. The minor nuances do not change the core gameplay. Uninspiring is the one word I will probably repeat a lot.

That’s not to say each aren’t going to have their niche and none of them have redeeming features. None of them will pry cash from my wallet though, either. Then again, I am not the typical MMO player either. I am sure these companies realize they have a large audience out there dying to pay $15 a month for something new.

My wife hates how I watch movies – no matter how bad it is, I can’t NOT watch the whole movie. I have seen some really terrible ones because of this. I sit through the 1.5 edited hours waiting for that what redeeming plot twist, memorable quote, that “thing” that made people put money into the project in the first place. Surely, there has to be one thing to make the hour and a half long torture worthwhile? Typically there is and that leads to a level of satisfaction. My wife already started doing laundry 45 minutes ago, but I am happy to pass the one highlight she missed onto her with enthusiasm and “I told you so”.

I used to care a lot more for the beta process – in the past they felt like an actual mechanism for improvement and testing. Lately it seems as though it is just another ‘10 day trial’-must-have-mechanism. Some of these betas have slim to none dev communication. While I always try to be a positive participant in the process judging by the quality of communication from fellow testers – in almost all of them – it is not hard to see why companies don’t take their own beta processes more seriously. I know I would be more inspired to test better if the devs actually had testing as part of their betas – and expected people participating to do the same. Beta tests are wholly feeling like wasted time and energy for both participants and organizers.

The fun part of betas are the various personalities you meet. Some of them are very useful, for sure, and they seem more or less consistent in most of the betas I have done over the past three years (the personalities seemed a lot different 4+years ago).

1.) The Fanboy: Notice no ‘i’. I do not pick on these people. They found the game for them, and no matter what is missing it just fits their style. Their typical posts and response to posts usually cover how much they love the game, there really isn’t much to change, and if there are necessary changes they are sure the devs will get to it eventually. In the meantime they would pay for the product as is because no one understands how hard it is to make non buggy code anyway, and the devs made the game closest to what they need anyhow. Do not fight the Fanboy with reason or logic – they have their own. Niche gaming depends on them.

2.) The Doomist: The game is destined to fail without a complete code rewrite, mechanics change, graphics engine update, and firing of the entire development team. In fact – they won’t buy the game unless all of that happens. Them and their thousands of like minded friends. Devs need to listen to this guy, as they have participated in millions of beta tests (and “this” test always seems to be the worst one).

3.) The Undecided: Not on the game, no, but undecided on everything that is being discussed – yet they chime in. “That could be good, but so could this!”. “OOh, that is the best idea I have heard in a long time!”. “No wait, THAT idea is!”. They post a lot but still haven’t figured anything out, and have a hard time forming their own opinion. Easily swayed by shiny objects.

4.) The Quiet Observer: Watch out for this guy. He reads a ton of posts and plays hard. Doesn’t say much on beta boards, but knows is poop. When he does speak it usually carries the weight of a guy with 35 years of pent up anger ready to unleash on the world. Of course, he doesn’t kill anyone but typically makes a lot of sense. He is easily ignored by all due to the signal to noise ratio.

5.) The Cruncher: I love this girl the most. She breaks down every mechanic into something that is tangible – math. Of course, most devs cannot confirm nor deny those numbers, but they wade through combat logs and perform testing of such impact and use that if a dev company had a herd of these people their game would be perfectly balanced – for the number crunchers. They tend to ignore fun for facts, and when a person says that it “feels” like they swing their sword too slow, they promptly post [a*10 + b*1 ==> So (10a+b)**2 ==> 100a**2 + 2*10ab + b**2 ==> 100aa + 20ab + bb ] is the rate of swing for you race class combo and it is working fine. Crunchers tend to make everyone else feel stupid around them. Even if just by accident.

There are many more that make up the lovely beta test, but I have too much work to do to keep writing today.

If you are in your first Beta and it is in late stages  just remember this. The game you are testing is pretty much exactly how it is going to be with a little extra polish (hopefully) at launch. Not only can you not change the core concept, but the devs don’t want to do it anyway. Play the game as they want you to, submit your bugs, and decide if you are going to pass or play come release. If you know right off the bat you are not only not interested in buying the game, but don’t want to waste your time testing don’t feel bad about not participating either. You were chosen among a pool of hundreds of thousands, most likely by luck (or a specific spec your PC has) and the beta process isn’t what you really think/hope it is anyway. There will be a free preview weekend upcoming anyway where thousands more will get to trash the system. If you have better things to do than go do it.

That defeatist attitude my friends, is the result of beta fatigue.

What is your age

I am older. I told EA the truth, but won’t bore you with the details.

Do you own Mass Effect? PC or 360 Version?

Yes I do. And the game is full of win.

On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you?

9ish.

Do you plan on purchasing Mass Effect 2?

I definitely do.

We would like to ask you some questions about another upcoming Bioware game

ooh, getting more interesting now! SWTOR? Tell me it’s SWTOR!

Are you aware of Dragons Age: Origins?

(Damn, it’s not SWTOR). Yes I am.

Do you intend to purchase it?

Weird here – it has a yes, a yes and preorder, or a no. No ‘maybe’, which is what my real answer is. Since it’s Bioware, and I love their single player RPG’s, I’ll just say yes. (Although I would prefer a maybe).

If Dragon Age: Origins contained an exclusive Mass Effect 2 piece of armor with unique design and stats…

Oh no. You did NOT just go there! I am one of your last defenders EA! Why do this to me!

chose option “I would be no more likely to purchase Dragon Age: Origins than before”

Thank you for completing our survey. We greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts and opinions. Now go play more games!

I will, thank you.

It then took me to the Dragon Age: Origins web page automatically. Of course, my inquisitive nature, I wanted to see what other options were available in the survey if I redid it. It actually LET me take it again. This time, I say I don’t know about Dragon Age:Origins.

Dragon Age: Origins is a new RPG game from BioWare the makers of Mass Effect and Baldur’s Gate. Dragon Age is an epic tale of violence, lust and betrayal. The survival of humanity rests in the hands of those chosen by fate. You are a Grey Warden, one of the last of an ancient order of guardians who have defended the lands throughout the centuries. Betrayed by a trusted general in a critical battle, you must hunt down the traitor and bring him to justice. On a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being Not at all Likely and 10 being Very Likely, how likely are you to purchase Dragon Age: Origins?

That didn’t really WoW me we marketing speak or anything. No pictures of the lust OR betrayal as laid out on their website. Based on the laclustre sales pitch, I pick 5.

If Dragon Age: Origins contained an exclusive Mass Effect 2 demo…

It wouldn’t make a difference. I already told you I own ME1, and will be buying ME2.

And they thank me again and go tell me to play more games.

Who writes these things? How useful is that knowledge they can glean from those kind of questions? Are they that worried about the release of ME2, or just digging to see if they could sell more copies of Dragon Age: Origins? Are preorder sales for DAO crap or something?

I dislike the cross promotion idea. Give me something for being an ME1 purchaser – sure – but don’t push me to another title to get some fancy little widget. Don’t punish me if I am unwilling to drop $60 on a sword and board title I may not interested in. Just seems kind of silly, if you ask me. I don’t like where they are going with that idea one bit, and I hope it doesn’t become commonplace in the industry.