Overly expensive voice-acting that heightens the cost of games while adding nothing, or very little, to the actual quality of games. (I'm looking at you, Bethesda.)

If you meant Ultima Online, and what EA did (wasn't it GM Sunsword from EA?) then yeah that sucked. EA ruined the best mmorpg in my opinion. UO was the best until they added Trammel and then started making special items and powerscrolls, adding more skills we didn't need, destroying the pvp and pk stuff. In the beginning the pks or "reds" never killed each other and had a lot of respect and honor even for the anti-pks. I remember killing people and not looting them several times but EA came in and took all that away. That whole honor and code amongst "thieves" died. I wasn't a miner/lumber jack pker, just a dungeon one, and I liked attacking groups of people, being out-numbered and still winning had more glory in it. I also role played a vampire. Oh well. I miss it a lot. I liked that UO was skill-based instead of level-based. Darkfall will hopefully be good, since a lot of stuff in their game is similar to the original UO. The one thing that really sounds great in DarkFall is the stealth system.

I get some random -1 for no apparent reason as well. And no I don't like microtransactions either...

The fact that for too many companies, it's become all about graphics with gameplay a distant second. Played Far Cry 2? Great looking game, but an utterly hollow and repetitive gameplay experience. You're apparently in a war zone, yet there is no war happening EVERYWHERE. Civilians exist ONLY when they're directly mission-involved. Take out everyone at an outpost, come back literally a minute later, and they've magically returned (some sort of delay might be nice). And utterly repetitive missions.
I have never stopped playing a game because the graphics were sub par. I HAVE stopped playing a game because of weak gameplay and bad control/camera schemes. That's what matters, and it'd be nice if the idiots running the companies figured that shit out.
Also, insanely intrusive DRM schemes that install secretly and don't go away when I uninstall the software, and that acts as spyware in the background. I will no longer play anything that comes with SecuROM. Tages is okay (it really is just a disc check, and it installs nothing on your PC, for those who were talking about it earlier), Safedisc is okay, I don't mind serial number keys. SecuROM can piss off and die (and hopefully will in the wake of the lawsuits going against it's use).

I know what you mean about graphics vs. story. Have you ever read some previews/interviews about some games and about 99 % of the article is all about the latest graphical boondoggle in the game but not a damn word is said about the actual story??
Personally speaking I wish that PC gaming wasn't such a damn arms race between the gamers, developers, and hardware manufacturers. It seems like if you want to enjoy a game that is $60 you have to spend another $200-600 for hardware in order for it to not be a damn slideshow. Can't companies just optimize the engines/code that they already have instead of making us upgrade all the time? I would go the console route but then I would miss out on the modding capabilities of some games and, of course, almost none of the semi-decent PC titles ever make it to the console because of the different target markets.

- Installation and disc check. Please, one or the other! Why not run off DVD with an option to install? Best of both worlds.
- In fact, copy-protection in general. Copyright laws forbid me from introducing new copies of a work into circulation without the explicit consent of the copyright-holder. Fine, I really am in favour of that arrangement. But technical boobytraps in software does nothing but interfere with law-abiding individuals.
- The general aversion to 2D gameplay. Seriously, more devs need to go out and play Megaman Zero!
- Internet activation and limited installs. All these publishers trying to discourage me from buying their games make me feel very excluded.
- Arbitrarily-required awkward mouse interface periodically interrupting an otherwise completely keyboard-controlled game (actually, it's mainly just Ubi that does this)
- Steam. Lots of people (mainly oversees) like it, and it provides services would be very useful as an option, but it is almost completely infeasable for most people in my country. It's virtually a "crack or you can't play" situation. Also, ephemeral dependancy makes me uneasy.
- Keyboard+mouse. Okay, I don't really mind this setup, and it works really well in many cases, but what happened to having a little variety?

There would still be DRM after the fallout...it's called Life...
"Checking for vital signs....No vital signs found. Please insert living person into seat."
"Retry/Cancel"

Everything that everyone has already said.
BTW - For those talking about TAGES like it is "not that bad", check your device manager for hidden devices and you will find a non-Plug and Play driver called either enodpl, tandpl, lemsgt or hwpsgt. That is the device driver that TAGES installs without your permission in order to do its thing. It is just as bad as all other copy protection schemes.
The only copy protection that did not install anything extra on your machine was SecuROM 4.7 and earlier. Starting with version 7, it installed "UAService7" and became part of the problem.

I would add lirsgt.sys as one of those hidden device files from TAGES(I found it on my PC after looking around in the hidden devices section...it looked suspicious so I googled it.) Thanks for the heads up. I retract my earlier statement about TAGES.

...bashing the company that:
- invented the FPS genre (Wolfenstein).
- Made the best FPS ever (Doom II).
- Made the first real 3d FPS engine (Quake).
- Made the best competitive FPS ever (Quake Arena III), just ask the pro gamers.
- Pioneered LAN play with the doom Engine, yea that's both Co-Op and Deathmatch.
- Later again Pioneered Online play matchmaking in Quake.
- Again are pioneering netplay by working on a new project that will make a version of Quake 3 play free directly in most major browsers. Letting you play without buying anything or installing anything.
- Pioneered player Modifications to their games. Became the first gaming company to buy a third party modification. All games are highly moddable. Source code releases etc.
- Base their games on the OpenGL API and releasing their games on multiple operating systems instead of just focusing on the M$ monopoly and DirectX. Offering a real alternative to does who want to use another OS.
- Released all their old game engines as Open Source as time go by making major modifications possible and awesome programs and JDoom, Zdoom, Skulltag etc ensuring the games will be preserved and playable on any system forever basically.
- Only uses safedisc as DRM and always releasing official no-cd patches after a few months.
- Still today doing the most for their fans by hosting the huge QuakeCon every year.
- Have their own onlineshop with lots of the classics as DRM free and downloadable purchases.
- and last but not least... including zombies, demons, cyborgs, crazed nazis or any combination of those in all their games :P

Yeah, that's the other bad part about it, they keep re-naming the hidden driver so that it is harder to keep track of it. That list I posted is just the few I have seen, I am sure there are others I haven't encountered (yet).

Yep, I don't really care for FPS games that much (1/2 life excepted). Pro gamers mean nothing to me, and their opinions even less. I respect that you enjoy these games, that's great. Frankly, I don't. All of those games are awful in my opinon. They were a diversion when they came out because of the "OH WOW" factor, but that's it.
I don't particularly like playing on-line. Not everyone likes multiplayer games. But this is all technology. Not a game. They make great tech, just really shallow games.
This isn't a bad thing either, I don't think id are evil. But they're a tech company (and very good at that), a tech company that releases, in my opinion, shallow and bad games. But this has nothing to do with playing a game. Just creating a mod for a game. This has little meaning for me as I don't really care about mods.
Wow. "M$". Really? It's 2008 you know. I was OK with the whole thing up until reading that.

The case of M$ are worse than ever as we are more or less stuch with the OS while they pretty much underminig PC gaming because the make big bucks on xbox 360.
For example refusing to release dx10 for winxp and forcing developers to spend twice the amount of effort on developing new game engines and splitting what is really one market into two.
I commend id on using technology that will run directly on other systems as well and does not put their customers only in the mercy of Microsoft.
Frankly I don't see what you are getting so worked up about and how you can disregard all the enjoyment and innovation they have brought to gamers because in your opinion their games are "hollow".
Also I disagree with disregarding coop. deathmatch, mod communties, online play as just "technology". Even if you don't like it most or all of todays successful games include some of those components.

Are you missing your 'S' key? Are you incapable of spelling Microsoft? Seriously. Your paranoid drivel is annoying, please stop. If you'd like, I can make you a tinfoil hat.
Google WDDM. Do some actual windows programming at the driver level. And take your paranoid rambling back to slashdot where it belongs.
I'm not getting worked up over this particular part. It's your unbridled (and very misinformed) anti-Microsoft zealotry that I can't stomach (and to be fair if you were an anti-linux or anti-mac idiot, I'd still give you shit for it). As for disregarding the "enjoyment" - I didn't enjoy their games, so where's that enjoyment for me? I never said they weren't innovative. Technolgy wise they're incredibly innovative. But technology innovation != good game. I feel their games are hollow. And I stand by that. You can no more prove to me that their not hollow than I can prove that they are.
You just said it, they're components, pieces of technology that are used within the game. They are not the game as a whole.
Before you go on one of your paranoid rants - please, don't. I would have gladly debated you about the merits (or lack thereof) of id's software. But I can't tolerate the whole "Microsoft is going to take over the world and enslave us in their programming mines" thing you zealots vomit up. Don't try and turn this into a platform argument or preach about the evils of Microsoft, if you want to do that, go to slashdot. You'll find a lot more like minded people there.