Well I have to simplfy it or I will have to write a book. Do people make games because they want to make games? Yes. Do people need money to put food on the table? Yes. In an ideal world a games designer/programmer/whatever can do both. This isn't an ideal world and sometimes we have to do what we have to do to earn the money.

It should also be pointed out before people say EA are teh evil that they don't have as much control over BioWare as people imagine. Ray Musyka and Greg Zeschuk at BioWare were made Senior Vice Presidents of EA in the acquisition so it was most certainly BioWare's decision to make the changes to Dragon Age 2 not just EA.

As I said they made drastic changes make no mistake and we will see what the finished product is like. If it sells shitloads and buys Ray and Greg a new set of Ivory backscratchers then they made the correct decision. If not then DA3 will either be given a rest on the shelf or they will admit they went too far and DA3 will be closer to DA:O. It should be noted that BioWare have already said they cut too much out of the RPG side of ME2 and people should expect more RPG systems brought back into ME3.

If you ask me BioWare are trying their best to please both the hardcore fans and the consoletards to maximise their sales at the moment and it might just be an impossible task. It's still the one they seem to have set themselves and I wish them good luck because no matter how you feel about BioWare and RPG's in general BioWare still write some of the best stories and they still have D&D players in charge so if it wasn't for them CRPG's might have died a long time ago.

My only point is, there's a long continuum (and probably a happy medium) between not having enough to put food on the table and having so much you might as well buy you're third set of ivory backscratchers. I'm not sure they would have immediately folded as a company had they decided "You know what? We'll lose some sales to the console crowd if we keep the same mechanics we had in DA:O, but we have two other big-ass cashcows so what the fuck? Let's do it and make the game we want to make and we know our fans want."

I mean, maybe they really did want to make the game this way. Maybe they liked the idea of "Dragon Effect" (as you called it in another post) and it just happened to be a coincidence that the console crowd wanted the same thing. It sure does look like they caved to the "sell the maximum amount of copies with the minimum amount of work" though, and again PC gamers feel abandoned (which is certainly not all Bioware's fault, but Bioware did seem to "have PC gamers' backs on DA:O, thus the feelings of betrayal)

I'm with you, Bioware has generally been good to gamers, and fair or not, that's probably why they've been held to a higher standard and will be held to a higher standard for a long time to come.

Is CRPGs dying though? Doesn't seem that way to me, there are still the people out there willing to buy the games, there's just another larger group that companies want to tap as well now. I feel that's a bad move personally, that larger group is already being targetted by everyone else and is pretty much becoming over-saturated, there's only so many hours in a day they can play games.

I think the real problem is that RPGs have not evolved for a while. Sure you're getting all the hybrids like ME games and the 'cinematic experience' that DA2 seems to be going for, but really I think the pure RPGers were looking for the core mechanics to expand so to speak, for choice to actually really become meaningful as opposed to the illusion of choice we have been getting still for over ten years. I'm probably wrong about all this of course, but I have to admit that when I went into DAO I was expecting a game where your origin impacted on the rest of the game, not just gave you a different starting point, and I think if anything's killing the RPG genre it's this reluctance to give us real choice and consequence...

Then let's play the game before hating it.
Yes. Last true cRPG was NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer. And if I may point out everyone hated NWN2. BioWare can't win. So they are going for the mass market. Last time they looked to the community they asked us all to buy Jade Empire.

The people hating on it have played it, or the demo at the very least. Since a demo is supposed to give you an impression of the game, drawing some conclusions is a fair thing to do. They could, of course, be wrong conclusions.

At any rate, I didn't think much of the demo, I felt like a was playing a strange mix of other good games that sort of fit together in an almost good way, but their inspiration (the games from which the elements making DA2 demo were drawn) were each better.

I didn't hate it, but I wasn't inspired to buy it on release day. I've made no bones that I was disappointed by DA:O, but for different reasons. I think I'll be happier, and enjoy the game more, if I buy the GOTY later on.

Well I don't give a shit as I have it pre-ordered.

On PC or console?

I've pre-ordered a few games last year, but only ones I really wanted. I still got totally screwed on one of them though.

PC of course.

Well, I'm interested to see how the full PC version turns out for people, so please let us know. I wouldn't expect a shitty port on this game, but I've been surprised before. Did you play the console demo with the clicking, I can't remember if you said?

I won't go over them in detail again before i've had a chance to play the game, but i do agree with the main key points on that article, namely, pause becoming redundant (i've said the very same thing a while back here on the boards), preset char, lack of depth, short dev cycle, (obvious) shift towards consoles. Bioware and where they going, i just don't care, i'm not a Bioware fan, DA was basically all that kept me tuned in for a while but i have a feeling that that's about to end.

In any case, release it's around the corner and we'll all be in a much better position to confirm or adjust our current views on DA2 after that.

When a squirrel dies somewhere in the world, PC Gamers get blamed.

Probably not just the classic cRPGs dying off though, if they're dying, considering the fact that the indie RPGs sold very well. There's always demand for the classic, more hardcore cRPG, it's just that the studios of AAA titles like to dictate what most gamers want (which might be true at some point considering some newer generation of gamers).
DAO took 4-5 years to come out with, DA2 slightly longer than a year. Bioware have been working on DAO long before they've come under EA. DA2 is probably entirely under EA's ruling. Do note however I have immense hatred for EA since 7 years ago, so I might be biased. :D

If I'm not wrong the classic console RPGs are getting dumbed down to hell too? Final Fantasy then and now? And the hordes of fans complaining?

Already saw it blamed on PC gamers on the BioWare boards. Someone pointed out that leaks on the consoles are created on the PC. The mind reels.

I avoid the Bioware boards these days, too many console trolls. Reading their posts, makes the blood boil out of the ears, stuff like these out of this thread alone:
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6339028/1
"Evolve or perish." All classic RPGs are dead.

I personally HATE people to tell us to evolve to liking something we don't. I also personally do not like people telling me to cater to them in general situations because they like that better. Which is more or less the same thing and I do not ever give way.

Apparently the PS3 version was also leaked :|