I pre-ordered through the new EA Origin system so I could get some perks, so I waited. The release was scheduled at 2am on October 25th, 2011. To my surprise, I received an email that it would be released a day early, on that day. I tried to no avail and it turned out that I had to still wait till midnight eastern time zone. No biggy....
So, the time comes, and the irony all sets in. I've got Origin which is similar to the awesome Steam engine for managing games, licenses, purchases, accounts, etc. This was a familiar concept to have an app to manage that, and then the app for the game itself. Here is where it gets funky. I double click to play right? Well it kicked up another app that had to validate that the time to play had been reached before it would unlock it. Now we are at 3 apps.
So it was now the official release time and that app went away and my web browser launched to the "Battlelog" page. I closed it thinking that it was weird but nothing happened. So I waited a few, then told Origin to go again. Again Firefox pulled up the Battlelog site. Confused, I start reading. It turns out that I have to now install an ActiveX plugin to use the site. Make that now 4 apps including my browser + Active X = 5 applications to play a game.
After doing this and trying to get into multi-player (because I like to left-click on real peoples faces) I just get a prompt that spins saying it's trying to match-make. After about 10 minutes of waiting, I gave up and went into the campaign mode. This works like a champ from my browser, through my Active X plugin, to Origin to validate my license, to start the game.
The game content is amazing, beautiful, and impressive. I have fun for about 20 minutes in breath-taking terrific 3D and decided to try and play online again. This time, it works and I'm off to play. Again, the physics, graphics, and gameplay are terrific. I enjoy myself for another 20 minutes and then go to bed. Keep in mind, at this point it's about 12:10am central time and I'm a grown man of the average gamer age who has a job and real life responsibilities and needs to be professional. I can't just drag in there and half-ass it all day.
The day goes by and I get home, feed the kids, clean, and do all my grown up duties. It's now 7pm and I'm thinking I'll get in half an hour or so of gaming before I catch back up on email and all the other things I have to do. I'm assuming I'm pretty normal in this regard. Below is a screenshot of what I was greeted with upon trying to launch for the first time.
Ummm, excuse me? I just tried to play for the first time since I logged out and went to bed last night. This is a situation where a business it not aligned. The game is great, but the various silo's and business units apparently didn't work together very well to implement all of this. I like the ideas, but 5 different applications to play a game is a mess. You have the content and game creators, then the licensing people with Origin, then you have the marketing and social people working on the web interface.
I'm on a PC but I'm following dozens of others on the other platforms who can't play and are just as pissed about the Battlefail launch. With an open beta for all the pre-paid users, a timed release schedule and launch, you would think that this would be smoother. It's a great idea of how they are trying to bring in all the channels but it's a #battlefail in execution.
Those who know me know that I'm a very forgiving person, and I don't like to complain. I'm not even pissed but this is something that I had to point out as a very poor execution. I love competition and in that spirit, I don't even mind having to login to something other than steam for my games. You gave me a great way to import my friends through Facebook connect, etc. Coke wouldn't be Coke without Pepsi, but don't make us go through 5 layers of applications just to play our game and get access to the content we just paid $59.99 for.
Now I'm off to figure out how to get my account unlocked so I can left click on some face. :)
