It would be nice to think that but I have a suspicion that most of Bioware's efforts are going towards The Old Republic at the moment. Given the money invested in that it's a title that has to be good. I've heard that it's becoming the most expensive MMO ever made with something between 30 and 50 million invested in it. Bioware Edmonton didn't even make Arrival, it was done by Bioware Montreal with some of the ME2 guys like Jessie Houston overseeing it.

I heard movie blockbuster investment numbers, over 100 million, somewhere. Does anyone have a semi-reliable source on the actual numbers?

TOR is going to suck, I'm sad to say, it's nearly fated.

Likely too soon for QA for ME3, I think. Maybe. But my understanding is the QA would be a different team for each game. Could well be wrong though.

Porkdish: I can't think of a BioWare game that hasn't had bugs like that slip through, whether they thoroughly QA tested it or not. And I still don't share your concern. Even if they have a huge QA team on the patch, having even more people test it can only lead to more issues being uncovered and fixed. And if their QA team for the patch is on;y bare-bones, then again, more people testing it means more issues caught and not passed on to the players in the release. I really do not see a downside here.

Orcishgamer: yeah, I've seen numbers like that quoted as well. not sure about the reliability though. I'm not ready to say the game will suck, but since I have no love of MMO models, I'd be passing on TOR anyway, regardless of how good or bad it turns out to be.

It was that "EAlouse" guy who said it was budgeted at 100 million. He also said they were well over budget already at that time, and with marketing it would end up at 300 million by launch according to internal estimates. He also said the game wasn't that great (which videos kind of back up if you ask me).

Oh right, EALouse, that's where I read about their blown budget. Yeah, if that guy/gal was only half right that MMO is going to bomb. Does anyone know if they ever tracked down EALouse? A lot of people said legal would find and demolish him.

It just didn't sit well with me, in conjunction with other 'cost cutting' measures readily apparent in DA2 already. I don't think DA2 got the love or money it deserved.

End users testing a patch might be great for finding a larger number of bugs, but it doesn't indicate a big budget QA team nor heavy investment in the long term future of a DA2 by EA. Thus why I feel quality DLC/Expansion is in doubt.

I don't think it will do WoW numbers, so if they need that to make money they will fail. If healthy non-WoW numbers like LOTRO or Aion have is enough though then I am sure they will make that without issue. I don't think the Star Wars license is going to drag in the people they think it will though, frankly. WoW's massive sub number is made up of a hell of a lot more than 30 year old male nerds like me.

Anyway... nothing will unseat WoW by being just like it. That's the funny thing about companies, they see something have massive success like WoW or Call of Duty and their response is to copy it and try to sell the same exact thing. That just doesn't work. The next big MMO will be one that changes the game.

I think that is what they are trying to do with all the talk of making it singleplayer-multiplayer. They are promising quests as good as any found in a singleplayer RPG which will be something new for an MMO. However I find it funny that one of the biggest complaints about DA2 is all the quests are MMO style fetch-quests so if that's what we can expect from TOR then it's nothing new whatsoever. If they can provide as much content as something like KOTOR and crucially allow players to play on their own like Guild Wars then I might be interested, otherwise I pass.

BTW I started playing ME2 again with Arrival due in a few days and just finished Zaeed's loyalty mission. That loyalty mission has a choice which is far better than anything in DA2. Save the workers and possibly lose Zaeed's loyalty or go after Vito, get an Assault Rifle upgrade and hear the trapped people screaming as they burn alive... and that was a DLC.

The problem I see with that is that singleplayer gamers buying TOR for the story and exploration will quit after the first free month is up, or soon after. Those are not long-term players, which is what the MMO supposedly needs to survive.

They won't quit if the content is consistently engaging and high-quality.

In my experience MMO updates are often relatively small, despite the claims otherwise. Something like a new raid dungeon is not going to keep singleplayer gamers playing.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, there is a principle factor as well. Why pay $15 a month for a singleplayer game? If I play TOR like an offline singleplayer RPG, which I will, then why am I paying monthly for the opportunity? It's the same mindset I had with WoW... WoW was fun to explore and I leveled one character all the way up but the idea of paying another $15 just to keep playing annoyed the hell out of me, since I was not using any of the online aspects of the game that supposedly justify that cost.

I love how they gave you the option to leave him to die at the end, though I would have liked to have had the option to put a bullet in his head as you lift off...

Did I ever mention how much I really don't like Zaeed? ;)

You all knew it was coming:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2978-Dragon-Age-II

EDIT: I should note, if I were to say Yahtzee is an insensitive jackass you'd likely nominate me for some sort of understatement of the year award. With that said, he's more insensitive than usual in this review.

Well, i've been saying combat looks like something on crystal meth since the first gameplay videos came out, glad to see someone else agrees even if Yahtzee should probably be the last person on the planet to complain about such deliveries seeing how he made a career out of it and everything.

If you watch the Infamous review he lets on why he does what he does. Or at least he tells you something plausible.