The 12th Fleet: Starbase Valhalla

For me, the proverbial straw was the closure of Westwood Studios, which prematurely shuttered Earth and Beyond just as it was finding its footing as an MMO. Command & Conquer series quality slipped drastically after that, as well.

I'm a huge C&C fan. Tiberium Wars FTW.

Johnny Macintosh wrote:Maxis has admitted that the always online design was entirely their choice. They wanted this weird MMO type Sim City thing.

The person who said that was fired after he told the public Maxis was planning an offline mode, at which point he went back on that statement.

That shouldn't be a surprise, at all, since the exact same process happened with Mythic over Dungeon Keeper Mobile, Danger Close over Warfighter, Westwood over C&C Renegade... Design changes were forced on them by EA, EA required them to defend those changes (and fired anyone who failed to do so), then when the game still failed the studio was shuttered and the second severance checks cleared everybody was eager to tell the truth.

The same pattern's already happening with Visceral and Bioware. Visceral may well be doomed if Hardline doesn't deliver. Bioware is probably safe for the time being, since while they've had a couple critical failures they haven't had a major financial one, but they're in charge of EA's flagship MMO right now, and everybody who's handled an EA flagship MMO has eventually been shuttered when it had a bad quarter.

I've seen it since EA bought Bioware. The games *coughcoughmasseffectcough* have gone downhill, and everything about the post EA releases seems to be shoehorned towards EA's apparent vision of "everything must have multiplayer". I hate to generalize, but it really does seem true that anytime EA buys a studio, you might as well write it off as the death of said studio.

We dont talk about Mass Effect.

Johnny Macintosh wrote:We dont talk about Mass Effect.

Why not?

My ME2 sits half finished, and I haven't even opened my ME3 box...

They were awesome games.

Husker wrote:They were awesome games.

Agreed!

Velzan Dar wrote:I've seen it since EA bought Bioware. The games *coughcoughmasseffectcough* have gone downhill, and everything about the post EA releases seems to be shoehorned towards EA's apparent vision of "everything must have multiplayer". I hate to generalize, but it really does seem true that anytime EA buys a studio, you might as well write it off as the death of said studio.

Mass Effect had such potential..

The person who wrote the majority of the first two games did not get to be a part of the 3rd, though.

It's funny, because the same thing virtually happened with Assassin's Creed. It was only supposed to be a trilogy.

Mass Effect = loved the story, universe, exploration, and characters

Mass Effect 2 = loved the faster gameplay, character development went up a notch, disappointed by less exploration, and fewer small details.

Mass Effect 3 = the only take away here was further character development, but not better than ME2 except Javik. Gameplay was more complex but not better than ME2.

juztmello wrote:

Johnny Macintosh wrote:We dont talk about Mass Effect.

Why not?

My ME2 sits half finished, and I haven't even opened my ME3 box...

Dont open your ME3 box.