Are you allergic to message boards and game reviews, Lord of Conquest got plenty of feedback from consumers on how it feel short. A lot of people like SimCity 4, and SIm City Societies has series technical issues late in teh game. You also need to lay some blame on the developers. Hey, I am not an EA lover by any stretch of your imagination, but it sounds to me you are throwing your money around without any research. Maybe this is the part where I should tell you the City XL is boring as hell and not getting much good feedback. My favorite part is where they say you don't have to pay to play the game but you don't get mass tran without paying their monthly fee. It's a a slow boring game that tacks on a monthly fee for fun. No thanks.

Lord of Conquest was 15 dollars, and I have plenty of money. I'm just talking about the Quality of Games from EA games is poor. Besides if I Listened to half the reviews I have seen on the internet, I wouldn't have most the games I really like, or watched half the movies I really liked. 

Actually, I see glimmers that EA is starting to move in a positive direction. And at least they're willing to try creating some new material, as opposed to Activision.

I see no change in EA Games' behaviour so far. They recently released a new Need for Speed that's actually good - I bet they churn out over-priced downloadable content for it, and then release too many sequels. They seem to throw cards at a dart board, and once one sticks in, they go with it until they can't milk it any more.

SPORE is a shadow of it's former self. I bought Galactic Adventures, which at least makes Space Stage bareable, however it doesn't change that the game in it's BETA demo SPORE had more features and content than the retail release. Considering Will Wright left Maxis after it was shipped, and he created that company, and they recently fired off a load of Maxis employees, I'm guessing the fans weren't the only ones unhappy with SPORE. It had potential to be the greatest game of all time - the annoying part is they already pulled off the impossible part of an entire Galaxy of content at your finger tips and failed at pretty much everything else.

I'm with the OP on this one. I try to read up on games before I buy them, like at least one review, but see the EA logo as a gigantic warning label, interpretable as "this game is NOT suitible for people with an IQ higher than a glass of water"

I can't think of a single company/franchise/game series they've bought out and subsequently failed to completely ruin. They're like a gigantic killer slug, snatching victims and sucking the creativity and life out of them.

Awww... I had my eye on City XL and on paper it seemed like an interesting premise.  Pity.

Sim City 4 is a good game for me, but I would like it if neighboring territories were a little more automated.  Not easy making fully self sufficent lots yet.

As for LotR: Conquest, I was interested at first but was turned off as soon as I found out about the details.  From what I heard it sounded like SW Battlefront 2 with some LotR characters and pretty much nothing to do with the series at all.  The moment I heard about the character classes I promised myself I would not buy the game.

EA does still have a few good IP's left. Sadly though for the most part they make crap. I'd say one out of every 8 or 9 games they put out is decent. My wife is big into the Sims so of course I had to get her Sim 3. I's decent for a Sims game. EA's lost my respect for their decision to stop porting a lot of titles to the PC. Even a crappy port of some games is better then not being able to play the game at all. Lately I've solved that problem though. I have a Wii, a X-Box 360, and two PC's, so I'm good across all the platforms except PS3 exclusives.

EA has been making an effort in the last couple of years to do better. While they still put out lousy licensed IP games, they've also been working at putting out more original stuff. Sometimes that doesn't always pan out (Mirrors Edge could have been better then it was), but thats the risk of doing new stuff.

They did pick up Brutal Legend after it was abandoned though, and for doing that they got a +1 from me. At the moment Activision is trying to become what EA was in the past: buying stuff and churning out sequels until its run into the ground.

My guess is for many independant game developers EA was the pot at the end of the rainbow.  Developers were creative, worked hard, developed solid IPs; then, "cha ching" EA swoops in and buys the whole company.  Now the original owner has to serve out their contracted time which is maybe a year or two.  Then what do you know they leave and open up a new studio to start all over.  Except now they have a big house, sweet boat, hot wife, and for some even a trip to space.  Think about it.  Peter M. at Bullfrog - Richard G. at Orgin etc. etc.  They've all cashed in thanks to EA.  So while EA has a unique talent for killing successful IPs and Development teams they have been a boon for CEO's of development companies.  I'm with all of you though I miss some of those old companies.

I hate EA too. You know that they are the reason we haven't been playing Dragon Age for the past 6 to 8 months or so. Since EA is publishing it, they made Bioware wait till the console versions were complete to launch them at the same time. Bioware initially was going to release the PC version first and then put out the console versions at a later date.

Well this certainly sounds like EA, they are not the only one doing this sort of thing. Seems like a lot of companies are giving consoles preferences these days.

Need For Speed: Shift would be the arrow I'd broke for EA at this moment. What a cool game, man!.

Just my current 2 cents