The media received it fine here as well, just check Metacritic. Then note the disparity in user scores. There were some accusations of what amounts to bribery to not publish poor reviews, though I don't know how true that is.

I don't know about DA2 but AP was definitely a bad unpolished game and most (if not all) of the bashing it got was deserved. And no, I didn't get any game-breaking bug, it just was bad.

But I do hope that they will make the future DLC-thingies much better than Origins had...

I bought them all, though, even while I knew they might suck a bit *shames*

And will prolly buy all the DA2 DLC aswell..

That they have social site members alpha/beta testing patches before release creeps me out. How shoe-string is the budget EA have this game on? (I'm not just talking about hotfix 101, I mean actual patch 1.02+ that's in testing now)

I don't hate that EA/Bioware tried to take the franchise somewhere new, I hate that they didn't realise the huge undertaking it would be and give it the care/time/money it required.

Its like EA lost confidence in what they'd wrought and pushed it out the door. You won't see any meaningful DLC for this game.

Depends on what you wanted from it I guess. I loved it. I can certainly understand why some did not, but it hit what it was aiming at.

Not to derail the topic here. They want to test the waters for new game, Ossian Studios, to see if their idea is good. Thus right now making a game for iOS won't cost an arm and a leg for their team. Should the numbers work well. They will make a ground up version of the same game for the PC. Atari really screwed them over bad so they want to start all over from scratch.

I'm installing DA2 and will report my idea and findings on this later. Assuming if installing and running goes as planned.

Solo

I actually don't think this is a bad thing. It gives them a lot more configurations to test the patches on, so a far greater chance of catching any problems the patch may cause. If it means the patch doesn't break something else as egregiously as 1.03 did with pick pocketing for DA:O, I'm all for it.

Agreed, the more people playtesting the patch the better. It wasn't just 1.03 but 1.01 also gimped a lot of things and there is a lot that still needs fixing after 1.04. So much for DLC sales paying for patches :p

Having played and completed both Dragon Age games i must admit to finding myself at a crossroads with the series. i Loved Dragon Age 1 the old fashioned style rpg with a lot of places to visit and the quests etc kept it an enjoyable game to play. Also Morrigan what more can i say about it.

Dragon Age 2 well that is a bugger to say i like it and hate it in equal amounts. The music and voice acting are spot on,some of the characters are interesting and quite funny and some of the quests where pretty good. The bad shallow game mechanics i so hated the game near the end for going through the same bloody places (mass effect 2 another streamlined game at least had a lot of dfferent planets and places to explore with hardly any copy and paste maps), the endless spawning ninja npc freaking lazy gae design surley they could have done better and half the quests felt more like an mmo quest than a deep quest with multiple parts oh and this takes the biscuit the end credits no freaking music cold they not afford any for that.

My gut feeling is DA2 was a quick and cheap game a quick cash cow for EA/Bioware to plow the money into their MMO Star Wars Knights of the Old Rebuplic which from all accounts seems to be a black hole for money (read somewhere it was past $30 million to make so far but that rumor could be misleading) This i think is why DA2 is like what it is generate a game for as little as possible as fast as possible and that they look at DLC to be able to 1 make more money and give the player some things that should be in it.

This game has left a bitter taste in my mouth and i now have fears over mass effect 3. I want to get it as i have completed the first 2 so want to finish the storyline but if they tone it down like they did DA 2 there is no way in hell ill be buying another bioware game again and i am one of the old school bioware fans buying everything since Baulders gate.

Ok rant over with

Totally not the point. There are terrible plot bugs on even the console versions. This isn't just about a wide variety of systems reacting poorly to the DA2 engine... Personal messages inviting social site members with zero QA experience to volunteer their time and inexperience testing a pre beta patch before its wider public release is anything but reassuring.

But it still gets a lot more testers than internal testing does :)

More testers ---> bigger chance to catch nasty buggies :)

Note the Mass Effect team is separate from the DA team. And they already "toned it down" from ME1. A great game nonetheless, though.

Still not getting your point. The plot bugs are there on all platforms. Other bugs can/will crop up due to different configurations. These have a much greater chance of being caught with beta testers. And this isn't something new. Plenty of games are beta tested by non-devs (and not just MMOs), so what's the big deal about patches being beta tested? Honestly, I can't see a downside here.

It inspires little confidence (in me) that there's much if any internal testing at all. Given the number of glaring bugs already in the game that aren't even platform/hardware specific ("how did they miss that!?" bugs).

If their testers are not testing the patches then I wonder what they might be doing... would Mass Effect 3 be in QA already?