Actually people are saying that the temporary bans are preventing them from accessing their games and dlc. Dunno how much is true, but it's an interesting development if true:

http://uk.kotaku.com/5780876/how-saying-bad-things-can-keep-you-from-playing-a-video-game

And a continuation thread about the matter, if anyone is interested

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6465725/1

Have to say honestly im shocked. Not shocked the guy was forum banned, not sure what his full post was. But i suppose with enough swearing and nay-saying it was justified. Now, taking away someone's ability to play a game they bought because something they said, now that is completely wrong and not justifiable in any way shape or form.

Stanley Woo:

"Please review the EA Community Terms of Service, particularly sections #9 and #11. There are two levels of enforcement here:

1. BioWare community bans are forum-only and can be for as little as 24 hours. These bans should have no effect on your game, only your ability to use all the features of this website/community. these bans are handed out by BioWare Moderators as the result of our travels around the forum and/or issues reported by fellow community members.

2. EA Community bans come down from a different department and are the result of someone hitting the REPORT POST button. These bans can affect access to your game and/or DLC.

Because the BioWare community now operates under the same umbrella as all EA Communities, community members here have all explicitly agreed to abide by and be governed by both sets of rules. Consider it an added incentive to follow the rules you say you're going to follow.

If there are further questions or concerns, please send them to me via private message. Thank you.

End of line."

And EA wonder why people pirate. Its shit like whats bolded above that keep giving those people all the power in the world. Bad form EA...Bad form.

I 110% agree. I was just saying banning him from the forums was one thing, but banning him from his games was fucked up and they are receiving A TON of bad press from this. Perhaps i need to organize my post differently so it doesnt appear im defending EA or Bioware, cause trust me bud, im not.

I didn't think you were defending them. I was merely responding because the idea of them doing that pisses me off.

Did you know that sort of provision has been in EA's terms of service since at least the middle of last year? (Proof.)

I know that most of people on metacritic are raging and thus give the game a 1, but damage control isn't any better.

http://imgur.com/Cazky

Please vote for us! ^^

LOL BioWare. That is just too hilarious for words.

Yeah i read that as well. Doesnt shock me in anyway honestly. If Steam has the right to ban people's accounts and take their games, why cant others do it.

They must be really desperate to call their fanboys to arms.

So to counter this "unpleasant flashmob" we're creating one of our own, lol!

Just for a laugh I decided to play another hour - to see if maybe I was being too harsh on it - and I kept a small list of the pros and cons that I encountered:

- selecting enemies during combat is a disaster. More than half the time, when I move my mouse over the target, the icon doesn't change to a target. Invisible walls, bad camera angles and weird "hit" boxes seem to be the cause. Because you no longer have a free camera, it means that you can't select an enemy that isn't within your view point which is ridiculous - I have to walk manually to a point where the game won't be buggy and be unable to target

- dear god this city is EMPTY - "the heart of the city" my companion tells me when we reach the market, where there's a total of 3 "shoppers". For a city that is "full" and "over-crowded" this place seems deserted. It's so jarring to see the huge gap between what the game tells us is reality and what my eyes can see ... "immersion breaking" doesn't even begin to describe it

- about 40 enemies killed in an hour and only two dropped loot, both times it being preset loot. Talk about not rewarding you on top of making combat weaker ...

- most of the time during combat, enemies appear out of thin air! I mean, you walk up to 3 enemies and think "I can take them" yet suddenly two appear out of nowhere! So you start killing them and right in front of you, another one appears, making it 6! I think Bioware played too much Call of Duty - most combat consists out of mob fights that respawn.

- you can no longer select your party and position them manually out of combat which is extremely annoying. I walk through a corridor and look out into a room with enemies - I can decide to run forward and start combat, but the rest of my party is lagging behind inside the corridor! I can't manually set them near the end of the corridor because the game won't let me unless combat has already begun, by which time it's too late anyway.

- what have they done to crafting? You have to ORDER potions and stuff now? I used to love making my own traps by scraping together stuff! Talk about dumbing down and taking away the fun!

- the standard item icons suck. I'm wearing two rings and I want to replace one of the two rings - I have to mouse over both rings to know which is which because the darn icon gives no clue. Same with my daggers! Laziness ...

- I feel like I'm spending half my time running through streets from one errant to the other - it reminds me of KOTOR at the start when you arrive at the city except KOTOR was a lot more fun and the city looked interesting and cool at least compared to this mauve one.

- lockpicking and trap disarming has become a joke. You either always spot a trap or you don't. You either always disarm it, or you don't, same with lockpicking. There's basically no tension anymore when doing lockpicking or disarming since you will either fail or not and with chests you simply get a message that you can't pick it yet. And did I mention you can pick locks and steal stuff right in front of people?

Did I say a list of good and bad things? To be honest, I didn't find much good to mention. Everything little good thing was ruined by a larger bad thing almost immediately. You can't steal from vendors either, and I'm not sure you can still pickpocket.

And combat ... ugh, it feels so generic and repetitive. Use taunt, get all enemies to surround my tank, use every AoE ability on them, rince and repeat while the rest of the team chips away health and focus on a single enemy. There's no possible tactics because of the spawning enemies and it being impossible to position your party.

With Dragon Age Origins I could forgive some of the shortcomings - it was no Baldur's Gate and it nerfed a great deal of things by mixing it with KOTOR but DA2 simply goes too far and makes it impossible for me to forgive the bad decisions - the whole game is full of them. Whose bright idea was it to set the entire game in a single city? Who decided to make enemies appear out of thin area in the middle of combat? Who thought it would be good to nerf crafting, lockpicking, etc. ? Really, Bioware, this will not do. Right now this is getting 65% at most - it feels like a bloody MMO.

I've heard several accusations of critics' reviews being "paid for" or critics having been "paid to remove bad reviews", is there anything to this? I mean there was that whole brouhahah over Kane and Lynch getting crucified by a reviewer (like a 6/10, oh the horror!) and eventually getting fired. Are game reviews on AAA really this bad these days?
What you just described is actually worse than any MMO I've ever played.

At least MMOs span across more than a single location and have decent crafting usually.