Thread: NDA and EA

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  1. #61
    Quote Originally Posted by Trollsbane View Post


    And here's the line. More discussing this stuff results in bad news.

    Please everyone, end it here and keep those kind of thoughts to yourself from here out.
    Reported for flaming :P

    On topic, the NDA is probably there for the story. It's not like Battlefield in which they can "test out the multiplayer" and leave out the campaign, because the campaign IS in the multiplayer.
    Norn Mesmer: GW2
    Rattataki Sniper: SWTOR

  2. #62
    I've said it before but I'm glad it's there and hope it stays. there's already too many spoilers out there. if they just let everyone post spoiler filled videos and reviews everywhere it would ruin the game for a lot of people. I've already seen more than I'd like. there's enough about gameplay out there if you are curious.

    the most fun I probably had with a game was the original Mass Effect, because I purposely avoided everything about the game until it came out. by the time I got into ME the game was so fresh and exciting without touching any info about the game at all really. The internet makes this hard to do now.

  3. #63
    Quote Originally Posted by mystik View Post
    I've said it before but I'm glad it's there and hope it stays. there's already too many spoilers out there. if they just let everyone post spoiler filled videos and reviews everywhere it would ruin the game for a lot of people. I've already seen more than I'd like. there's enough about gameplay out there if you are curious.

    the most fun I probably had with a game was the original Mass Effect, because I purposely avoided everything about the game until it came out. by the time I got into ME the game was so fresh and exciting without touching any info about the game at all really. The internet makes this hard to do now.
    I have yet to play ME... may have to one of these days now that my WoW raid group is falling apart :O haha but that's a game I still know nothing about to this day

  4. #64
    Quote Originally Posted by Verth Aeyta View Post
    I have yet to play ME... may have to one of these days now that my WoW raid group is falling apart :O haha but that's a game I still know nothing about to this day
    Join the club , I've yet to play Mass Effect as well. Although I did get a laptop recently with a good graphics card that can play ME, so I'll be getting that here soon but I'm waiting for the gaming mouse I ordered to get here before jumping into any heavy gaming, luckily the mouse should be here by Friday.

  5. #65
    Quote Originally Posted by Sengura View Post
    Calling SWTOR an "EA game" is like calling WoW an "Activision game" or calling GW2 a "NCSoft game."

    They are only the publisher. Whenever you think of WoW, you think of Blizzard, right? When you think of GW2 you think of ArenaNet, no? Well whenever you think of SWTOR you should think of BioWare, not EA.

    Yes, EA has some pretty shitty Customer Support, but you won't be relying on them for that, you'll be using the BioWare support just like you use the Blizzard support for WoW and not the Activision support.
    At the end of the day even great game developers who are under a larger publisher still have to answer to them. Some companies give a huge amount of free reign to let them finish it in time. It's not always like that though, in any media with a heavily hyped project there's going to be concerns. Same can be said for EA wanting updates and a timeline on when to expect it's done. They can influence projects to speed up the release date even if it's not entirely ready. They may just can some of the work they were doing to a later patch. That was my original concern and why I posted.

    I didn't consider the storyline the reason the NDA was still being upheld and that's a very good point. It can also be used to hide the fact there's issues with the game they don't want to get out and hurt sales. I'm confident Bioware will deliver a high quality game, I like many others just want it to be a game to remember. Not something long forgotten or the butt of a joke a few years from now.

  6. #66
    Quote Originally Posted by Ashgar View Post
    At the end of the day even great game developers who are under a larger publisher still have to answer to them. Some companies give a huge amount of free reign to let them finish it in time. It's not always like that though, in any media with a heavily hyped project there's going to be concerns. Same can be said for EA wanting updates and a timeline on when to expect it's done. They can influence projects to speed up the release date even if it's not entirely ready. They may just can some of the work they were doing to a later patch. That was my original concern and why I posted.

    I didn't consider the storyline the reason the NDA was still being upheld and that's a very good point. It can also be used to hide the fact there's issues with the game they don't want to get out and hurt sales. I'm confident Bioware will deliver a high quality game, I like many others just want it to be a game to remember. Not something long forgotten or the butt of a joke a few years from now.
    The simple fact of the matter is that the only reason anyone is making a fuss of this is it's an MMO. No other crowd of gamers demands a higher level of information.

    Shooters, console RPGs, RTSs, we know next to nothing about them when they are days from release.

    But if it's an MMO, we want to know everything, right now. It's an unrealistic and unviable expectation. There is no reason for them to tell us any more than they already have, especially with an MMO, where many things can be in flux even months after release.

  7. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by Chrysia View Post
    The simple fact of the matter is that the only reason anyone is making a fuss of this is it's an MMO. No other crowd of gamers demands a higher level of information.

    Shooters, console RPGs, RTSs, we know next to nothing about them when they are days from release.

    But if it's an MMO, we want to know everything, right now. It's an unrealistic and unviable expectation. There is no reason for them to tell us any more than they already have, especially with an MMO, where many things can be in flux even months after release.
    That's far from true, there's a ton of information out there for just about any game, regardless of genre. MMO's are very different though, especially the ones that charge a monthly subscription as they have to sell people on their game. Which has become pretty common to get detailed information on the game and it's mechanics.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by Ashgar View Post
    That's far from true, there's a ton of information out there for just about any game, regardless of genre. MMO's are very different though, especially the ones that charge a monthly subscription as they have to sell people on their game. Which has become pretty common to get detailed information on the game and it's mechanics.
    I disagree. I've never seen as much info about any game coming out as I do about most MMO's. And BioWare has given us a ton of information.

    The NDA is to protect unfinished intellectual property, it's really that simple. There's no reason to drop it.

  9. #69
    Pretty sure the NDA still exists because Bioware wants it there. Not EA...

  10. #70
    Quote Originally Posted by Sengura View Post
    Calling SWTOR an "EA game" is like calling WoW an "Activision game" or calling GW2 a "NCSoft game."

    They are only the publisher. Whenever you think of WoW, you think of Blizzard, right? When you think of GW2 you think of ArenaNet, no? Well whenever you think of SWTOR you should think of BioWare, not EA.

    Yes, EA has some pretty shitty Customer Support, but you won't be relying on them for that, you'll be using the BioWare support just like you use the Blizzard support for WoW and not the Activision support.
    You know, this is a tough one for me to get past. I was heavily involved in WoW before the Activision thing, so Blizz has always been, well, Blizz. But I actually do associate GW2 with NCSoft and SWTOR with EA..... and not in a positive way. It's really my own fault because I <3 Bioware and I don't have a negative opinion of ArenaNet, but every time I start to wonder if the game(s) might be bad, it's always because I assume EA/NCSoft is going to crap them up.

  11. #71
    Quote Originally Posted by Herrenos View Post
    You know, this is a tough one for me to get past. I was heavily involved in WoW before the Activision thing, so Blizz has always been, well, Blizz. But I actually do associate GW2 with NCSoft and SWTOR with EA..... and not in a positive way. It's really my own fault because I <3 Bioware and I don't have a negative opinion of ArenaNet, but every time I start to wonder if the game(s) might be bad, it's always because I assume EA/NCSoft is going to crap them up.
    I know it's probably because of your specific feelings toward NCSoft and EA, but realistically, from that viewpoint, WoW and other Blizzard games should always have been Vivendi games to you. True, Vivendi didn't splash their name all over it like EA does, but Vivendi has owned Blizzard for quite some time.

  12. #72
    Look guys, Activision doesn't own Blizzard. Blizzard doesn't own Activision. Both are owned by the same parent company.

    Activision Blizzard, which is the gaming division of Vivindi ( which used to be vivindi games) is also the publisher, but Blizzard itself is still its own publisher, which is why their games are still labeled as Blizzard Games.

    Blizzard, the company is completely different from Activision the company, which is completely different from Activision-Blizzard.

    Your ideas of how much control Activision has over Blizzard are wrong.

  13. #73
    I played the beta weekend, it was so awesome that I seriously can't look at other games now. It has the classic kotor feel and plenty of content to go around, questing made awesomely fun? Fuck yes.

  14. #74
    I think one of the main reasons the NDA is still in place is because it IS a story driven MMO, Bioware is known for telling badass stories. They don't want to spoil the story experience that would come about by getting rid of the NDA.
    xm..I don't think this is the case btw. Even when the game launch some people will level their toons 10x faster than others..also, after your fisrt toon you want to make alts and someone already have leveled your alt as main, and so on...the forums must have tags like "spoiler free" or not for a long time if not ever..but I don't think NDA is here to prevent story spoilers :P
    The trick of selling a FFA-PvP MMO is creating the illusion among gankers that they are respectable fighters while protecting them from respectable fights, as their less skilled half would be massacred and quit instead of “HTFU” as they claim.

  15. #75
    "2 months out" assumes they are not going to delay the release date yet again.........

    Stay on topic.
    Last edited by conscript; 2011-10-13 at 12:05 PM.

  16. #76
    Re: NDA... I don't see, where the problem is. There isn't much in information that you'll see is really new once the NDA is lifted. The MMO style list of items etc. means nothing to most people right now. Also there is not the high level of minmaxing that you see in WoW, yet. So learning information at this stage has less advantage. Losing the story effects too early is a far bigger problem for a developer like Bioware, who are known for their plot twists etc.

    Re: Bioware/EA. As far as I know, it's more of a collaboration than EA buying them outright. I'm not too sure, but Bioware basically is still Bioware. They just get a lot of money from EA for certain titles.

    Re: Graphics. I'm sorry, if you mean by new graphics they should introduce yet more flashy flashlight flasheffects, then thank you, no. I'm getting sick of everything glowing like a freaking christmas tree. Compare LoL with HoN and you'll see the difference that I mean. In LoL I can distinguish between characters and their styles easily, in HoN I was recently watching a stream of glowing blobs moving around doing flashy things that all look the same. There is too much "high end graphics". Anyone who has played WoW from Release until now will remember the times when gameplay changed to AE being one hell of a friggin' nukefest and you could not see one actual detail. Try finding a particular mob without artificial aids like healthbars. Or look at the armor that got more ridiculous with every content, culminating in more than one bubble gum like shoulderpiece for palas, silly glowing stuff for death knights and so on.

    Stop the moar gfx plx nonsense. Less sometimes is indeed more. I'm not saying cut out every graphic effect. I'm saying it should contribute to the gameplay in a sensible manner, not jump in your face and make you ignore everything else than that one (probably unimportant) side effect.

  17. #77
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    I am actually in favor of BioWare keeping the NDA up; the main issue I really had with previous games (including the WoW expansions) is that everything was thrown out for all to see by the publisher, or by people in the beta test, before the thing was even friggin' released. I admit I am partly guilty of "ruining the immersion" with BC and Wrath myself, as I beta'd both of them (Wrath kept me going during the "motel hell period" when I moved out here three years ago); I did up to the Battle of the Undercity in Wrath before the release, and of course played through the DK area and what not. Cataclysm was more or less reading what other people had done, seeing their screenies, so on.

    Granted, BioWare's thrown out a lot of stuff already - particularly about flashpoints, class mechanics and what not - but there's still enough of it where it will be a surprise to play it when it actually comes out. And I like it like that.

  18. #78
    Deleted
    As a bachelor of marketing and advertising it is my analysis that they are holding the NDA for simply marketing purposes. They are building up the hype by gradually releasing information and they are only doing it so that the hype would reach it's climax around the release date. Just basic marketing people.

  19. #79
    I can say, for story reasons, that Bioware may feel a smidge of heat for the NDA after last year's DA2 release. They were pretty open about a lot of the game, and even pre-ordered it through the roof, but Amazon offered full refunds thousands of customers a month later because of bugs and the like, basically ruining (I think, don't quote me) 10% of their sales because of how Amazon words their 'defective merchandise' clause. As that was Bioware's first foray into something like failure, wouldn't they be a little edgy? Not saying TOR would be bad, and I don't want to begin a DA2 talk, but if you're them and less than a year ago you took a lot of heat for the first time wouldn't you be cautious?

    Even if we agree that story would have something to do with it, and certainly I wouldn't want my surprises ruined, would Lucas Arts have anything to do with it? From a legal standpoint they still hold control of the media, and while they don't control the game, Lucas is notorious for being Hush-Hush with everything to the last minute. So I also wonder if that has something to do with it. Or maybe it's a combination of everything. Either way I can live with the NDA being in place mostly because of early access. By then there is no possible way to enforce NDA and if something is blatantly wrong people will know it before they pick up their copies. So it's not like there wont be a warning sign IF something is bad.
    "Every time I see that commercial for this movie I laugh."
    "Which one?"
    "The one with the vegetarian bedazzled vampires."

  20. #80
    Deleted
    The graphics on TOR look well nice anyway! So whatever.

    The game.. looks.. awesooooome!

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