Electronic Arts Message Board older than one year ago

And very retro it is too. C&C Tiberium Alliances is the next reboot of the Nod vs GDI universe, and as we discovered earlier it’s a browser-based “epic strategy MMO” using the dark magicks of HTML5. Here’s what it’s going to look like. In short, like C&C classic and yet… not. Really not.(more…)

We sent Agent Smee to have a good long play of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Below is his detailed report on the colourful open-world fantasy ‘em up where atheism gives you an XP boost.(more…)

Oho, looks as though we’re actually getting two new Command & Conquer games. We know about the Frostbyte-powered, militaristic Generals 2, but the Tiberium universe yet lives too. Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances is a browser-based, HTML 5-powered “epic strategy MMO” which “allows players to experience C&C in a brand new way.” Primarily by being able to access it from most any browser – they seem to be thinking about mobile devices here too. The MMO bit revolves around playing with or against your friends and forming alliances on a “dynamically updating map”. Despite all this new-fangled newness, the brief website maintains this is “hardcore strategy.” On dev duties are Battleforge chaps Phenomic.

There’ll be a closed beta soon, though the URL for it is deaded. Now working. Gogogo!

Battlefield 3's "Back to Karkand" has been deployed on PC and Xbox 360. The maps for the expansion were buried in a recent PC update, so the mouse and keyboard crew should be good to go. Xbox 360 users have a 2.07 gigglebyte update ahead of them, so that's something to get going on ASAP. The PS3 version was updated last week.

"Back to Karkand" is free for those who picked up the "Limited Edition" version of BF3 at launch -- otherwise it's $15 (the standard for FPS map packs).

The mega Xbox 360 download doesn't just add Karkand maps, however, as there's also a ginormous list of changes made to single player, multiplayer and Battlefield 3's general balance. Check it out after the break.

Bioware have put out a video focusing on Shepard’s improved animations in Mass Effect 3, which you can see below. The clip shows off how his reactions when taking cover are more nuanced, and also shows how melee is made a little smoother and more believable with improved animation syncing. It’s quite an interesting insight into the little tweaks that the devs are able to make for the third game, and it shows the designers demonstrating their combat in a test scenario, which makes the improvements on the original character animation really stand out. Skip to 1:20 to get past the “community” blatherings and get to the meat.(more…)

If you’re one of the lucky ones able to access your Origin account, and you’ve pre-ordered The Old Republic, you’ll be pleased to learn you’re going to get access to it a week early. Which is in five days! Five days! Coo lummee – it feels like this game’s been in development for over a thousand years. I’ve certainly been to a thousand preview events. And it’s any pre-order that gets you early access, not just one of the fancy special editions. You also get 30 days of “free” play (I love the idea that it’s free, after you’ve just spent £30 on the game), before the tithing begins at £9 a month (with discounts for buying in lumps).

The PC version of Battlefield 3 will receive a 2GB patch tomorrow, December 6, which includes several fixes and "most of the content for Back to Karkand." DICE notes the inflated size of the patch being due to Karkand is not ideal and it will aim to make DLC content an optional download in the future.

The bug fixes and balance tweaks are plentiful in the patch, but the one that matters to many has been addressed: "Tweaked Tactical Light so it is not as blinding over longer ranges." And, to think, after being blinded so many times we were getting really good at navigating through echolocation.

There's no mention of whether these fixes are also buried in the console download for Karkand. The "Back to Karkand" DLC will be playable tomorrow for PS3 and December 13 for Xbox 360 and PC.

Either the next Command and Conquer title is called Alliances, or EA is in the process of establishing a proposal for the U.N. Security Council's consideration. We're banking on the former -- EA has registered a slew of domain names for Command and Conquer Alliances, including for Red Alert, Generals and Tiberium Alliances. EA registered all of these on Dec. 2, so here's a list of the domains you could have purchased on Dec. 1 to get rich off of EA as it bought them back:

• alliances-commandandconquer.com
• alliancescommandandconquer.com
• candcalliances.com
• candctiberiumalliances.com
• commandandconquer-alliances.com
• commandandconqueralliance.com
• commandandconqueralliances.com
• commandandconquertiberiumalliances.com
• generalsalliance.com
• generalsalliances.com
• redalertalliance.com
• redalertalliances.com
• tiberianalliances.com
• tiberiumalliance.com
• tiberiumalliances.com

Here are some details about Mass Effect 3 combat abilities. They’ve been encapsulated in video form so you don’t even have to read anything to find out about the new class-specific powers. However, if you don’t want to watch a man enthuse over the contents of the game’s special edition you should skip forward to around 1 minute 50 seconds. There’s nothing too surprising, with such things as floating turrets for engineers, improved melee combat across the board and shockwave-inducing ground-punches for vanguards. I suppose the most surprising reveal is that the collector’s edition contains a working model of the Normandy but I just made that up.

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#tetris Electronic Arts has figured out a way to make peopLe pay indefinitely for the privilege of playing Tetris. A 99-cent version of the classic puzzler just went live on the iOS store but, obviously, you'll want more than the seven Tetrominoes that buck buys you, right? Right? More »

This has to be one of the weirdest asset releases we’ve seen lately: a batch of screenshots in which the protagonist of Syndicate is having a good look at the gun that he’s carrying. That’s what it’s about: admiring the shoot cylinder. Conveniently it features most of the guns you’ll be toting in the game. So big. So gunny! Mmm. Full gallery below!(more…)

Kotaku cites an anonymous "insider" on two new rumors regarding two of Electronic Arts' biggest "new" franchises: Dead Space and Dragon Age. Though Dead Space 2 managed to ship over two million units in its first six months of release, EA wants to "make the series bigger and better," says the insider. The plan: A Dead Space first-person shooter, a Dead Space "flight game" and, lastly, a Dead Space "Uncharted-like game."

Apparently, that recent EA management shift in August "brought in new brass that nearly killed off Dead Space 3," if this insider is to be believed. But it's not dead and, as previous rumors suggested, Dead Space 3 takes place on ice planet Tau Volantis and will feature co-op.

Now for Dragon Age ... this one is good. Kotaku's insider says that, like BioWare's other major RPG brand, Dragon Age will get a multiplayer offering, reportedly powered by DICE's Frostbite 2 engine. This could be part of a future Dragon Age installment, let's call it Dragon Age 3, or a separate downloadable title; the gameplay will be arena-based, and feature both PvE and PvP combat, as well as ... dragons. Because Dragon Age, and all that.

Here's our advice, EA: If you want to increase awareness of the Dead Space brand, making games that aren't like Dead Space seems like a poor strategy. Also, a flight game? Are you trying not to sell games? And the problem with Dragon Age isn't a lack of multiplayer. The (extraordinarily) fast turnaround on Dragon Age 2 resulted in a rushed RPG that was dwarfed (and, frankly, embarrassed) by productions like The Witcher 2 and Skyrim (which managed to ship a not-so-shabby seven million units at launch).

In the month of November, EA moved another 3 million copies of Battlefield 3. At least, that's according to numbers revealed yesterday by EA CFO Eric Brown at the Baird Technology Conference in San Francisco (as reported by Game Informer), which has the game selling 8 million units in total across all its platforms out of 12 million shipped.

As with most major game launches, both the shipped and sold amounts of the game have dropped significantly since launch, with two million being pushed to retail from EA in the month of November versus 10 million during the first week. The game's first big expansion -- "Back to Karkand" -- is set to be released some time in December, with PS3 owners getting a crack at it one week early.

Seems like the Activision bossman thinks that Electronic Arts aren’t going to be printing spacebucks with their forthcoming Star Wars MMO, and said as much to his investors. As reported over here by Reuters, Kotick poured scepticism onto the up and coming MMO, saying: “Lucas is going to be the principal beneficiary of the success of Star Wars. We’ve been in business with Lucas for a long time and the economics will always accrue to the benefit of Lucas, so I don’t really understand how the economics work for Electronic Arts.” He went on to say “”If you look at the history of the people investing in an MMO and achieving success, it’s a small number.” And his company are, of course, one of that number, and must be a little nervous about possibly losing subscribers to the enormous Star Wars project. EA, meanwhile, claim that SWTOR will be a success if it hits just 500k subscribers, a figure that looks to be well within their reach.

Activate the rumour siren! Bee-WOOP! Etc. Kotaku have posted saying that an “insider” has revealed a multiplayer Dragon Age game in the pipeline. Here’s the vague heart of the rumour: “The insider wasn’t sure if Dragon Age multiplayer was going to be part of a full, stand-alone title (ala Dragon Age 3) or available separately as a downloadable game. It is apparently being developed on DICE’s Frostbite 2 game engine (used for Battlefield 3), and even early-on the game apparently looks stunning.” Apparently! Apparently dragons will be playable, too. Take that, other dragon-based gameplay experiences! It does make a lot of sense, though – a dragon’s tail whipping through a destructible building as you mill about with chums trying to kill it with hammers. We’ll find out of if this is a true thing soon enough.

The official Battlefield 3 Twitter account this morning announced plans to launch the PlayStation 3 iteration of its latest title update (dubbed a "client update") for BF3 tomorrow. Additionally, it seems that the Xbox 360 will be getting the same update in the near future, as the post on Battlelog states it'll "follow shortly" after tomorrow's PS3 update. PC players already got the update last week, which improves a variety of issues with the game across campaign and multiplayer.

Like with the PC update, the patch notes don't indicate that the the tactical light has been altered, but plenty of other major issues have. For instance, now, if you're holding a SOFLAM (which is, of course, so fly), and an enemy tries running you over, you'll totally live. After the patch? No more! We've listed the menagerie of fixes and tweaks after the break, wherein you can preemptively decide whether or not the patch will "totally break the game."

Good Old Games have been adding a bunch of EA games in the last few weeks. But today’s requires a post. They’ve got hold of the complete Ultima VII, widely considered to be the best in the Ultima series. (Argue!) So in there is all the extra bits and bobs, The Black Gate, Forge Of Virtue, Serpent Isle and The Silver Seed. For $6/£3.85. Which is nice.

With the massive quantity of land and air vehicles being added to Battlefield 3's multiplayer in the "Gulf of Oman" map -- part of this December's "Back to Karkand" DLC pack -- we'd suggest packing two oversized engineer pockets full of blowtorches for all that repairing you'll be doing. Points!

Footage of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning makes it clear that the fateless hero will spend a great deal of time ending the destinies of almost everything he comes across. As Alec’s hands-on experience taught him, having an open world doesn’t mean an RPG has to be about exploring and collecting vegetables. It can also be mostly about killing things, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. To that end, here’s a video showing a variety of things being killed in a variety of ways. It doesn’t make me care a jot about the no doubt lore-laden terminology describing elaborate special attacks, but it does make me want to try them out.

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Given the choice between being a Jedi Knight (nahyt) n. a mounted soldier serving under a feudal superior in the Middle Ages, and a Jedi Consular (kon-suhl) n. an official appointed by the government of one country to look after its commercial interests and the welfare of its citizens in another country, it seems hard to imagine why anyone would choose boring Mr. Government for Star Wars: The Old Republic. But the video below attempts to show you why melee lightsabre combat might be something worth avoiding in favour of making people dangle in the air like twits. And the sneaky-sneaky.

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In August, EA brass restructured the company putting Peter Moore in the role of COO and converting the illustrious BioWare brand from developer to "label," joining the ranks of EA Games (DICE, Visceral, Criterion, EA Partners, etc.), EA Sports (Madden, FIFA, Fight Night) and EA Play (Maxis, The Sims, MySims). With this new understanding of "BioWare" we bring you the latest scuttlebutt from internet scuttlebutter Superannuation, who spotted a LinkedIn resume (since edited) that described the Marina del Rey-based Victory Games as a BioWare studio.

Victory Games, you might recall, is a new "strategy studio" announced by EA last February, as an offshoot of its EA Los Angeles location. Like Danger Close and Visceral Games, Victory is more of a "rebranding" than an entirely new studio; Victory was set up as the EALA shop handling all things Command & Conquer, much like Danger Close was established to handle all things Medal of Honor.

Now, onto the new "BioWare" game being revealed on December 10 at the Spike Video Game Awards. With the latest teaser promising "a new direction, a new game, from a new BioWare studio," that sounds vague enough to contain a new Command & Conquer installment. New direction? That sounds like Victory's mandate for the franchise. New game? Well, yeah. A new BioWare studio? We're not sure what makes Victory a BioWare studio (per the above LinkedIn resume) instead of an EA Games studio, but there you have it. We'll find out on the 10th!New game from new BioWare studio could be Command & Conquer by Victory Games

A little more of the new Bioware game was shown last night, giving us a glimpse of APCs. Meanwhile the various nodes of the internet were at work, speculating that the new game could be either Command & Conquer or even a Mercenaries game. Or even Army Of Two. It won’t be that. (I hope.) The best lead is the clue that was in this LinkedIn profile, which stated at the artist worked for Victory Games, which was formed from EA LA to make C&C games. Combine this with the apparent disappearance of Visceral, another LA-based EA studio, and you have a bunch of devs who could have formed into this new studio. This could, it is speculated, be a new Los Angeles-based Bioware studio working on the old faithful.

Sounds like a jenga tower of theorising to me. And I think it’s time for a new IP, anyway… We’ll find out soon enough.

Battlefield 3's first, er, second major patch is now live server-side and for PC, with console updates coming as soon as the patch finishes the certification process. There's no mention of the tactical flashlight fix, but patch notes confirm that squad selection has received a significant upgrade.

Changes to squad functionality, detailed on the Battlefield blog, include the removal of "find me a squad" and other streamlining enhancements. Squads that are empty will now show up in white and occupied squads in blue, so it'll be easier for friends to quickly select a room to join together.

We've placed the full patch notes after the break, since EA decided you need a Battlelog account to view it otherwise (and we know plenty of people who still can't get that mess to work).

Battlefield 3 developer DICE is currently working on a patch for all versions of its just released game, set to improve "polish, stability, weapons balancing, squad control functionality, user interface enhancements, and several feature enhancements that address feedback the community has provided to date." The studio's blog post on the matter also specifically calls out the PC's "negative mouse acceleration" problem as an issue the update will address. It also stands to reason that the tactical light issue and the PS3 digital edition's Battlelog problem will be fixed, but we asked EA for clarification.

While the patch will arrive on PCs some time "next week" -- the post was published last Friday, so that's this week -- the bulk of the game's community on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 unfortunately won't see the patch until it gets through certification. DICE estimates that will be "shortly after the PC update." Regardless, more patch info and a launch date is promised for this week, when we'll hopefully hear more solid news about the console patch as well.

Update: This post originally stated that the patch was due "next week," though the news from DICE was announced last Friday. We've since updated the post and headline to reflect the accurate launch projection for the PC patch (this week!) and apologize for any inconvenience.

Battlefield 3 developer DICE is currently working on a patch for all versions of its just released game, set to improve "polish, stability, weapons balancing, squad control functionality, user interface enhancements, and several feature enhancements that address feedback the community has provided to date." The studio's blog post on the matter also specifically calls out the PC's "negative mouse acceleration" problem as an issue the update will address. It also stands to reason that the tactical light issue and the PS3 digital edition's Battlelog problem will be fixed, but we asked EA for clarification.

While the patch will arrive on PCs some time "next week," the bulk of the game's community on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 unfortunately won't see the patch until it gets through certification. DICE estimates that will be "shortly after the PC update." Regardless, more patch info and a launch date is promised for next week, when we'll hopefully hear more solid news about the console patch as well.

In case you didn't believe DICE when the studio informed us that Battlefield 3's destruction engine would be more destruction-ey in the upcoming "Back to Karkand" expansion, the latest trailer should convince you. Just look at all that debris!

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) is a bill currently in the US Congress, with the stated goal of curtailing copyright infringement, but with the actual effects of setting up a government firewall to block out unwanted sites, and giving the US jurisdiction over foreign sites that have anything to do with infringement of US copyright.

It is repellent.

A Reddit user discovered a document [PDF] hosted by the Global Intellectual IP Center ("Global"), from before the introduction of SOPA, urging Congress to enact such a measure. Among those corporate sponsors is Nintendo, who is demonstrably and justifiably upset about piracy, and committed to taking all the wrong steps to stop it.

Other companies signing off in favor of this anti-"rogue site" legislation, in the interest of protecting their IP online include Sony -- Sony Electronics, Sony Music, and Sony Pictures, separately. EA is also listed, along with Rite Aid (what?) and Zippo (what?)

Okay, so you already know how we feel about this thing. If you feel the same way, you can write or call Congress. November 16 saw concerted "Stop Censorship" efforts (Tumblr black-barred everyone's dashboard in protest, for example), but you can, of course, still contact your representatives. If you're outside of the US, uh, cross your fingers and hope you don't lose all the US-based visitors to your sites.

[Image: Infographic from AmericanCensorship.org]

You know how we’re giving away 12,000 beta keys for a weekend of Star Wars: The Old Republic? (There are still a few left, although not many – you need to claim yours before Friday at midnight – go here for all the details.) (Well, not all the details, or there’d be no reason for this post.) We finally have a date for it. It’s the weekend after this one. Things kick off on the 25th Nov, and come to an end on the following Monday, 28th. So there you go.

EA has dishonorably discharged "hundreds" of Battlefield 3 cheaters and boosters. The publisher has banned and stats-wiped offending accounts that used known exploits. The company is still on the hunt, saying it has a "zero tolerance policy for cheating," so consider that fair warning.

The known glitches involve players earning tens of thousands of points in a round. If you happen to have experienced the "invincibility glitch" in a round, you likely didn't earn yourself enough points to garner attention on radar and a smack from the banhammer.

DICE is currently working on a patch for Battlefield 3, which should likely resolve known glitches, and will reduce the distance of those horribly annoying, blinding flashlights. Guys, seriously, keep those things pointed at the enemy!

Would you like to play Star Wars: The Old Republic for a whole weekend? For free? See, I thought you would. EA plan a free server-stress-testing weekend in the very near future (they haven’t quite nailed down which weekend it will be yet, oddly enough), and we have 12,000 keys to give away. No, I typed that right. Twelve thousand. It’s first come, first served, and we recommend you click below right away before the rest of the internet gets wind of this.

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