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EA's March server shutdowns: Def Jam, Godfather, LotR: Conquest, Mercs 2 (PC)...

C

Chrange

Banned
March 16, 2010 Online Service Shutdown

Def Jam for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Godfather for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Lord of the Rings: Conquest for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Mercenaries 2: World in Flames for PC
Need for Speed: Carbon for PlayStation Portable
Need for Speed: ProStreet for PlayStation Portable
Simpsons for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360

Service Updates.

Just a month left to get those multiplayer-only Achievements!
 
C

Cruzader

Banned
Blueblur1 said:
Mental note: Do not buy EA Games.
Click to expand...

This.

Makes buying BFBC2 a little bit worrying....

And shouldn't they stop having online trophies/achievements if the morons will remove servers down the line?? Like shouldnt that be a guideline in any EA game? Im not a trophy whore but this would piss me off to know that I cant get all of them due to EA's jackassery.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
Without defending the general idea of shutting servers down early, this specific batch of titles is pretty irrelevant.
 
P

ph15h

Neo Member
As long as they don't shut down Burnout Paradise Servers... like until a sequel comes out. I don't care what servers EA shuts down. =/
 
C

Chrange

Banned
Son of Godzilla said:
Is Conquest an online only game that came out last January?

Maybe I should reconsider buying Bad Company 2...
Click to expand...

It's got an online component, but it's not online-only.
 
Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Lord of the Rings: Conquest for PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360
Click to expand...
Awwwww....
Cruzader said:
Makes buying BFBC2 a little bit worrying....
Click to expand...
Dedicated should solve this.
 
S

sk3tch

Member
:lol at reconsidering buying BFBC2...even if the servers only last a year you will get hundreds and hundreds of hours of MP play.

Hell, I've had MAG for about 3 weeks and I have about 50 hours of play into it. And I am not nearly as hardcore as some!
 
C

cr_blah_blah

Member
Yeah, I'm so worried about purchasing an online focused FPS from EA because they're shutting down the servers on games with tacked on online modes released 2-4 years ago that nobody is playing anymore. I'm making an even bigger e-peen mental note than the rest of you!

Outside of GAF exaggeration, they really should stop wasting their time with online modes for certain games if it's painfully obvious it has zero chance of catching on. It's pointless, a waste of time/resources, and tacking on achievements isn't going to make me play it.
 
S

SaggyMonkey

Member
sk3tch said:
:lol at reconsidering buying BFBC2...even if the servers only last a year you will get hundreds and hundreds of hours of MP play.
Click to expand...

Can't play that game anyway, too much gun bobbing for me.


I guess I should see if there aren't any MP only achievements for LOTR.
 
S

Sectus

Member
For fucking fuck's sake fuck fucking fuck fuck. So Mercenaries 2 will become completely impossible to play multiplayer now? Why the heck can't they just add a simple direct-ip function? Making games rely completely on matchmaking for multiplayer is completely idiotic when they shut down servers so quickly.
 
J

JesseZao

Member
Don't care about any of those. Save for maybe mercs 2 (which I never played) that's a mediocre list. Heck, I fired up burnout revenge the other day and it was still going strong. I don't think bad compa-y fans have anything to worry about, they'll support the quality titles with large fanbases.
 
D

DodgyGeezerFella

Member
Sectus said:
For fucking fuck's sake fuck fucking fuck fuck. So Mercenaries 2 will become completely impossible to play multiplayer now? Why the heck can't they just add a simple direct-ip function? Making games rely completely on matchmaking for multiplayer is completely idiotic when they shut down servers so quickly.
Click to expand...

You got it for PC ?
 
W

Weenerz

Banned
Sucks that there aren't enough players playing these games to keep the servers online. Can't really fault EA if 50 people are playing Lord of the Rings Conquest online, just isn't worth the money for the upkeep on the server.
 
N

nyong

Banned
Wow, Lord of the Rings hasn't been out for that long. Still, I suspect the decision to shut down servers has something to do with little to no players online.
 
A

Azure Phoenix

Member
Yikes, I remember my friend begging me to buy LOTR: Conquest sometime last year. Does EA really not have anything in their Terms and Conditions that says they will keep the servers online for a minimum number of months?
 
A

Alphahawk

Member
The crazy thing is that EA doesn't have to do this, but for some reason they insist on using their own servers rather than using MS's online soloution.
 
mr stroke

mr stroke

Member
nyong said:
Wow, Lord of the Rings hasn't been out for that long. Still, I suspect the decision to shut down servers has something to do with little to no players online.
Click to expand...

+1

played this with a friend about a week after launch(PC) and there wasn't much action going on, considering the game sucks I can't imagine anyones still playing it now.
 
S

Sectus

Member
Ogs said:
You got it for PC ?
Click to expand...
I did. It's one of my favourite coop games this generation. I've had a ton of fun with it playing in coop.

Proof that Mercs 2 coop is one of the best things ever:


I'm really REALLY starting to dislike how online is handled by some companies. Xbox live is being shut down and hundreds of games will become impossible to ever play multiplayer again. Who knows if we'll be able to play any xbox 360 games online in 10 years. EA is definitely the biggest offender here considering how quickly they shut down their servers.

The solution is pretty simple... just add a damned direct-ip function! LAN multiplayer would be good enough too. Although if a game already has netcode which works well for online, it's a waste if you can't use it. It's ridiculous how I can play PC games online which are 13 years old, but a game like Mercs 2 which isn't even 2 years old will now become impossible to play multiplayer.
 
N

nyong

Banned
Canceling Mercs 2 is actually a very bad thing the more I think about it. I came close to picking it up (again) recently. It's not impossible to find someone else to play with, considering most of the game revolves around 2 person co-op.

EDIT: Just PC. Still, I would hate to think the console releases aren't far behind. Also, looking at the Gamefaqs messageboard (curiousity), there are apparently active clans playing LotR right now.
 
B

Barney

Neo Member
Is there multiplayer achievements in Godfather? wait ... Is there even a multiplayer mode in that game?
 
A

ahoyhoy

Unconfirmed Member
LOTR shutdown is ridiculous, especially for Xbox Live. I think in situations like this, Microsoft should look out for their subscribers and take over EA's server maintenance responsibilities.
 
Yoshichan

Yoshichan

And they made him a Lord of Cinder. Not for virtue, but for might. Such is a lord, I suppose. But here I ask. Do we have a sodding chance?
Fredescu said:
The thing that means they have a weekly MMO style system wide outage for maintenance. Dedicated servers or not, if that stuff is down, you're not playing.
Click to expand...
Oh... ok :(
 
pr0cs

pr0cs

Member
for all the flack P2P type gaming gets this sort of scenario should not exist. If they don't want to run Dedicated servers then shutting down 'service' for games simply shouldn't exist.

If all these games had dedicated servers then I would say that yeah maybe shutting the games down makes sense but why does EA require ANY overhead, or enough overhead in terms of server usage that requires them to shut these games down.

To me, this is why companies like EA et al should NOT have anything to do with the their own online service. This should be run entirely by the platform holders. Why do obscure launch games (on 360 for example) still work yet games that EA released only last year no longer function with the next update.

Fucking ridiculous.
 
G

Gully State

Member
Yoshichan said:
What's that?
Click to expand...

I believe he means that you still have to go through EA authentication servers. For example, in BF:BC2 beta, you have to login to your account (that's probably handled by an EA server). If they shut that down, you'll no longer have access to your character.
 
G

Gully State

Member
pr0cs said:
for all the flack P2P type gaming gets this sort of scenario should not exist. If they don't want to run Dedicated servers then shutting down 'service' for games simply shouldn't exist.

If all these games had dedicated servers then I would say that yeah maybe shutting the games down makes sense but why does EA require ANY overhead, or enough overhead in terms of server usage that requires them to shut these games down.

To me, this is why companies like EA et al should NOT have anything to do with the their own online service. This should be run entirely by the platform holders. Why do obscure launch games (on 360 for example) still work yet games that EA released only last year no longer function with the next update.

Fucking ridiculous.
Click to expand...

or allow the community to run their own dedicated servers without requiring to authenticate. Thus, they no longer have to pay to maintain servers.
 
V

Vorador

Banned
Sectus said:
The solution is pretty simple... just add a damned direct-ip function! LAN multiplayer would be good enough too. Although if a game already has netcode which works well for online, it's a waste if you can't use it. It's ridiculous how I can play PC games online which are 13 years old, but a game like Mercs 2 which isn't even 2 years old will now become impossible to play multiplayer.
Click to expand...

With a little luck it will be patched for unofficial servers.

But yeah, the last trends of this generation related to online play are awful. Basically they're allowed to cripple the game you bought at their leisure. Once they shutdown the servers, you can't do a damn thing.
 
O

Owzers

Member
Paznos said:
And EA wants all of their games to have MP? ugh
Click to expand...


They want multiplayer to get you to buy the game, giving you more "value", then they shut the servers down to push you on to the next game.
 
pr0cs

pr0cs

Member
Gully State said:
or allow the community to run their own dedicated servers without requiring to authenticate. Thus, they no longer have to pay to maintain servers.
Click to expand...
For PC maybe, though I expect this would cost them money (to create a patch or community friendly server app) which they'll likely not want to create.
For closed systems like PSN/XBL this will likely never happen.. which is totally retarded.

Shit, patch the game to ignore authentication altogether. Just let me play the damn game, I don't care if I don't show up on leaderboards, etc.
 
F

fizzelopeguss

Banned
Yoshichan said:
What's that?
Click to expand...

"pinging master server"

Server browsers usually retrieve a list of game servers from the master server, measure latency, player count etc. They can shut it down at anytime rendering a server browser useless.
 
N

nexen

Member
I don't regularly play any of these games but the precedent EA is setting here is just horrifying.

Sectus said:
For fucking fuck's sake fuck fucking fuck fuck. So Mercenaries 2 will become completely impossible to play multiplayer now? Why the heck can't they just add a simple direct-ip function? Making games rely completely on matchmaking for multiplayer is completely idiotic when they shut down servers so quickly.
Click to expand...

Agree 100%

I played Tribes 1 online a few months ago just for nostalgia. Worked fine. According to Mobygames that game came out in December of 1998. Thats over 11 years ago. *sigh*
 
P

Palette Swap

Member
This might sound silly and overdramatic but that kind of shit actually heavily weighs in on my purchases.

I've never cared for all the "hate EA" bandwagons but they're going out of their way to be assholes.

The only good news about that is that they're poisoning the well for every other "pay to play online" business model out there and this might eventually raise awareness among consumers.
 
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