Well, to be honest this is the most appropriate avenue i could find. social.bioware.com has no avenue that approaches a "general discussion", as far as I could see. They have off-topic, and that's about it. I wanted to chart out the evolution of the company by its products - because company culture and direction usually have a big impact on the product, as much or more than any person staying or leaving. Wanted to try and nail down what went wrong, and where. Share these with fellow enthusiasts, and maybe find agreement or different opinions. Oh, and I wanted to share that I for one am feeling hopeful because of ME3. It felt more like the olden days than he-heating the once-winning formula.

I'm opening this thread because I posted to a thread that seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. Essentially it was the usual "who killed what and when". EA, Bioware, Haters and general blame thrown around. But it got me thinking, and here's the result of these thoughts: Bioware is currently suffering a crisis. But its not something new. The "good old" Bioware you all seem to be so fond of - wasn't killed. Not by EA, not by haters, not by this game. I think what happened was much more insidious. They were transformed by their own success. Crippled by it. Like a wunderkind musician who collapses on stage voice with 100$-a-bottle scotch in hand. The company got big on innovation. Note: I've never played their MDK2 or the non-PC games, so no comment on them from me. Baldur's Gate was huge. A RPG juggernaut in an age where the genre was considered dead as a doornail. They pulled together a good story (excellent by that days standard! We've come a long way). The result was pulished reasonably, and suddenly, the RPG was back in black. With Fallout on its left hand, and Baldur's Gate on its right, Interplay tore the genre a new one. RPGs cropped up left and right. RPG elements invaded most other genres. And then, there was BG2. The game got better than ever. Gone were dozens of Fedex quests. Gone were the tedious interface problems. The cast was compressed to reasonable sizes, and they all had a story. Even Korgan Bloodaxe had his reasons for being in Amn, and his walkups. It blew my mind away. The romances were something I had only seen in Treasures of the Savage Frontier, and they were executed better than ever before. Really, I still consider BG2 the game that made me a fan. When you thought BG had pushed the envelope, BG2 sealed, stamped and mailed it. NWN: What to say. Lackluster main storyline (The expansions fixed that, mostly). Uninspired writing. Technical glitches left and right. Turned my CPU into a small stove. Still, the toolset / IDE they shipped hasn't met its equal before or since. Both in power, and in frustration. This is the first game I spend money on what you'd today call DLC. The tools spawned a community. And lest we forget - you could actually do multiplayer D&D-ish gaming on your home computer. This was an example what a "bad" early Bioware game looked like - it looked like biting off more than they could chew. It looked like setting their goal to high. Like doing things undone before, and heroically failing. We all know what KotOR did. Again, when you thought the limit had been reached - it hadn't been. Before, the main character was a blank slate everywhere. It was a dogma. It was inevitable, since without a more or less blank canvas, how could you make sure the player got to play what they decided to play? Well, turned out that dogma was wrong. The systems where lacking. The alien-speak was horrific. But the storyline was fantastic. And I mean both sides of the coin. For once, being bad felt bad. I must admit, I felt dirty on my DS playthrough. When Mission died, it punched home. Choices had consequences in a way they never had before. The zenith had been reached. I personally love Jade Empire, despite its flaws. Funny how despite its flaws is such a recurring chant in this retrospective... The fights were too easy. Take the longsword, never look back. The backdrops where beautiful, but repetitive. The "Closed Fist" philosophy never got really defined, and wavered wildly between "cold hearted angel", Nietzsche and schoolyard bully with no clear meaning. The romances (****, hetero and bi) where so-so at best. But man. What a twist. What a Magnificent Bastard. They made good on their main strength, but their weaknesses were beginning to show. Inattention to detail. Over-reliance on being able to squash any problems with the "actual game" by the story. It was a turning point. One reached before EA took over, by the way. Mass Effect came out the year EA took over. So it must have been completed before they had any chance to meddle significantly. It was... clunky. It was hard to play. Really. The inventory was just shy of useless. Most "options" were non-options. You drowned in junk, and had to fish the occasional useful item out by manual math. Weapons vs powers, powers vs each other - balance was non-existent. Don't get me started on the oh-so-missed skill system. But it was a step up in budget. Production quality. Size. And it was a good marriage between shooters and RPGs. It was not groundbreaking in any way shape or form. It had its moments like the Conduit reveal, or the conversation with Sovereign. Heck, even meeting Liara after postponing her mission for as long as possible. But it was nothing new, nothing never seen before. Nothing really... pioneering. I loved the game dearly, but unlike most of the games before, I finished it... twice. Yeah, i got suckered into replaying it shortly before ME 3 came out, but I still claim I only finished it once on its own merit. Dragon Age: Origins went to revisit the olden days. It was more than a BG2 spiritual successor. Like BG2, the game had pioneering quality. The amount of divergence depending on your origin was great. The world of Thedas was more alive than ever with small bits woven in here and there. This lumbering juggernaut barreled through the many unnecessary additions and not-quite great features with panache and cockiness. Sure, the little flaws were still there. This was Bioware, not Blizzard. Big Ideas, not picture-perfect finish. The magic was still there, and this time it didn't have to cover so many grievances as to tarnish. Sure, your choices had little impact in the gameplay (golems vs dwarves, mages vs templars, ...) but they felt real. Mass Effect 2 did away with much dross from ME 1. They overshot into too much simplification, sure. But they dared turn around and put the player into a very precarious moral situation. Cerberus wasn't turned around to be a good guy - but riding that tiger felt "precariously justified" all the same. They dared make the game centered on the cast. The acquisition and loyalty missions are effectively "character studies", and killing off characters you spend hours getting to know for failing to buy some upgrade made me grind my teeth. ME 2 was good because it tried new things, and kept the strengths Bioware had previously developed. Then, it started. Dragon Age 2. Well. It sucked. Not news. But why did it suck? Because the game had as many flaws as any Bioware Game. It was clunky. It was in parts glitchy. It was decidedly unpolished in parts. But the magic had grown tired. There was nothing new. If anything, Hawke was more generic than the Warden. The "Rise to Power" was largely meaningless. The romances were rote and tired. They had become more or less "expected content you can't help but include". Choices where local and never felt as if they were remembered. In short, DA 2 was Bioware's performance after a hard night in the tour bus, still confident they could pull it off as they always had. After all, hadn't they done it "kinda like that" ten years ago? TOR. New Territory. A Budget never seen before. A licence that has "prints money" stamped on it. What could go wrong. Turned out, a lot of things could. Not the least was expecting to go into a market that had, at that point, reached saturation, and expect to be the overnight sensation that changes the rules. To keep in the music analogy, this game is Biowares regrettable film role. Hindsight is always 20/20, but the signs were there all along. The common wisdom dictated MMOs had to be consequences-free (see companion deaths, see no story-based buffs or debuffs, ...). Common wisdom dictated a zone flow with few branches. Bioware took the common wisdom and ate it. They distilled the most common features of MMOs and distilled, and distilled them down some more. Left only the pure essence. Linear zones. Quests to keep you occupied. Occasional a referral to the next zone. The result was... well, anything but groundbreaking. Having 8 pet classes instead of 2-3 was a small variance. Having voiced instead of written "kill 10 rats" quests was nice, for a while. But the three main pillars were just average, and the vaunted "4th pillar" couldn't bear the immense pressure all on its own. It was weakened by lack of vision, sure - but even if it had been perfect, a story has an end. They never really accounted for that end. Now, much hate has been directed at Mass Effect 3. I think it is better than it is credited. It shows a wonderful breakdown of a hero. It shows that sometimes, you can't win. It is dark, it is bitter, and it is a war story where gamers are expecting to hear a heroic epic. Shepard can't win. The deck is stacked too high against him and his. The best (s)he can do is reach some kind of bittersweet phyrric victory. Fine by me. I am a grownup. I know sometimes you lose, no matter how hard you try. I salute the decisions that got this off the launch deck. But I knew from the moment the little boy died, this wasn't going to end well. Many others had vastly different expectations off the game. And these expectations were shattered hard. But I personally like to see ME 3 as the first step of the recovery. The angry, almost un-listenable post-rehab album that nevertheless has the old magic - only now it has seen the world, and grown up.

Seriously? Yes. As long as Subscribers and F2P Whales keep supporting George's Share and 1 Server technical support, SWTOR will remain open. Heck, the worst-failed MMO I ever saw (WaR) is still open. EA would be cutting their own throat by shutting the game down entirely - no more revenue to hold against their horrendous losses. So SWTOR will languish with an estimated 3 devs, 1 community rep and a half-dozen guys in a call center. I doubt the game will see a lot of development unless F2P actually works - which I have severe doubts about.

I severely doubt we'll see any chapters beyond 3 for a long while, even if they are already scripted and recorded. Bioware would have thrown them at the shrinking subscriber base. I mean, for crying out loud, they did a free month to cushion up their quarterlies. So even if script and VA is already there, there must be some major development still undone. Considering the positively glacial pace of updates, the tooling and / or processes must require some serious manpower and / or money, and this is something this dying game will not get. I wished so hard for it to be otherwise, but by now, I call it like I see it. Any story half-done by now will probably rot in a drawer or a network share.

Trooper Coruscant:

I'm in for 6 months, with open eyes. Why? Because I enjoy the game immensely, what bugs there are minor annoyances, and the things coming up look more than exciting.

I would like to have the "Corruption Option" enabled by default for the force classes and disabled by default for the non-force classes. Matches my expectations more closely.

Enjoying the game very much - some slight quibbles here and there, but nothing remotely able to reduce my enthusiasm.

If it wasn't for my personal inner Vader-wannabe, I'd be all over the trooper. My favorite Act I bar none, and 2 is shaping up nicely (if only I wasn't compelled to do Darth Barras' bidding...)

Wildside: Not bothering with spoiler quoting, but it boils down to this: In your first case, you help a corrupt senator hide her misdeeds (however well intentioned) from the proper process - which admittedly will probably be harsh on her, but protect the system itself In the second case, you are helping an extremist subvert the democratic process itself in order to avoid a possible, but none-too-likely bad end. Even if the senator proposes his initiative, and pulls some favors, such radical ideas usually are shut down fast.

Maybe because flying Jedi would stretch my suspension of disbelief beyond its limits? The "force-jump with salto and corkscrew-saberstrike" is athletic enough, no need for them to do the superman

Talked to a Marauder on my Trooper just yesterday. Maybe people just don't want to talk to you?