Late To The Party: RtO Fails To Launch, Again
Jan 14
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View all posts by CaK (218 Articles)
Chief-in-Editor. He has been involved in the Online Community since 1996, and established several successful European gaming websites. Among them were projects for Neverwinter Nights, WarCraft, Diablo and Quake--just to name a few. In late September 2009, he started to develop this blog with the support of BioWare/EA.
We have just been informed that the unexpected early release of Return to Ostagar on the Xbox Marketplace has now been pulled after a few hours of availability. Several sources can confirm that the DLC is no longer listed for download. Meanwhile, there is an official statement from BioWare.
Hello Dragon Age fans. This morning a title update on the Xbox 360 for Dragon Age: Origins was made available in preparation for the release of Return to Ostagar. This title update introduced a previously undetected issue that causes specialization classes to not work correctly in Dragon Age: Origins. We are removing Return to Ostagar from Xbox Live until the issue is resolved and are recommending that you do not download the title update. If you have already performed the update, we apologize for this and are working hard to ensure a fix is available as soon as possible.
Stay a while and listen … oh wait a minute … nevermind; The drama continues …
We’ll keep you posted. As always.
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31 comments
Comment by Omegakain on January 14, 2010 at 3:20 am
i dont even know where to begin to comment on this one.
Comment by Dawson on January 14, 2010 at 3:28 am
I do not mean to sound ungrateful or rude, because i understand where Bioware is coming from with wanting to keep this a high quality game and to remove the bugs…
but seriously they need to step up their game, because this is getting ridiculous. I mean I love Bioware, but honestly I would prefer if they didnt keep getting my hopes up.
But I do understand where they are coming from and I am sure they are probably more unhappy abut this than any of the players.
Comment by 202121 on January 14, 2010 at 3:50 am
This one disapproves (-10)
Comment by CWagner on January 14, 2010 at 3:54 am
*sigh* this is really getting ridiculous -.-
Comment by thehistorysage on January 14, 2010 at 3:59 am
I love Bioware too. Still, I think from now on, they should announce content as released 10 minutes after it goes up on the server, and even at that we might be foiled as some xbox late comers are probably finding out right about now. This is getting to be like like a mildly psychotic gf/bf. Stop saying "yes," when you mean "I don't know".
Comment by Aladisa on January 14, 2010 at 4:10 am
Sorry if i missed it somewhere but does this affect PC version also or will it still be available tomorrow ? Thank you!!
Comment by Patrick Talbert on January 14, 2010 at 4:16 am
I've already paid my $5 and downloaded it. I was going to get it anyway, and I'm not in a rush to play it because I'm finishing up a few Mass Effect characters before Mass Effect 2 comes out. I'll then be bouncing between Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age until Alan Wake hits in May.
Comment by Illiani on January 14, 2010 at 4:23 am
No announcement has been made yet–as far as I know–so, unfortunately, nobody has a clue.
Comment by Aladisa on January 14, 2010 at 4:25 am
Ok ty! Nice to get a response without all the Chaos going on in bioware /social i appreciate you guys very much^^
Comment by Darkorpse on January 14, 2010 at 5:42 am
well if nothing else this confirms it isn't just me, I kept trying to dl it and it wouldn't work, and was on the phone with xbox and they couldn't get it to work either, so now I know it's bioware not my xbox. it will be availble when it's done. I will hope i get to play it in the next couple of days. oh well if not, I will play it when it's ready. really saying this out loud helps me calm my nerves as i do really want to play it now.
Comment by Keslus on January 14, 2010 at 5:58 am
I got it and it locked the specializations as though none of the books were read..other than that it will be nice to play near the beginning of the game, not near the final battle like I did.
Comment by Aladisa on January 14, 2010 at 6:05 am
True i have a char waiting lol just finished lothering and put her on hold for the dlc. I haven't played it yet but the excitment is building
Comment by Bio-Boy 3000 on January 14, 2010 at 8:52 am
Its a funny thing that I initially wasn't interested at all in purchasing and playing RtO when it was first announced. But seeing how it seems the only thing anyone is talking about in the last couple weeks, I want to play it more than ever. :-)
Comment by Dawson on January 14, 2010 at 9:50 am
perhaps all these delays are a clever market ploy? :P
Comment by Marauder on January 14, 2010 at 11:57 am
My God, what a disaster. Brings backs memories of Pinnacle station…
Comment by Illiani on January 14, 2010 at 12:33 pm
See, I've gone in the completely opposite direction. By this play in the game; I just want RtO to get out so we can just move on. This whole 'comedy of errors' is just growing painful to watch, especially as its occurring to a much loved and supported company.
Comment by thehistorysage on January 14, 2010 at 12:39 pm
Yes, I agree completely Illiani. You summed it up perfectly.
Comment by DrEagleBarrett on January 14, 2010 at 1:32 pm
So your not releasing the conent you promised twice and now you are messing up our current content with your title updates! Seriously BioWare WTF is going on with you guys?! This is unbelievable, why cant you get this right? Where is the corporate accountability?
Comment by Aladisa on January 14, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Well, I hate to say it i have taken all this with a grain of salt Thus trying to be patient and understanding but we are bordering on the ridiculous now however lol
Comment by DrEagleBarrett on January 14, 2010 at 3:22 pm
How did they release a title update that screwed up the specialization classes. Is that not the reason they have delayed RTO so many times, because of it not working right? How did this update get passed through certification at both Bioware and MSoft? *sigh*
Comment by Krovikan on January 14, 2010 at 6:29 pm
The funny thing about this entire thing is I downloaded it and finished the entire thing in half an hour and I explored everything, including the side stuff… and I sat there at the end cut scene saying to myself… that was it, over a month in delays, 5 dollars and 2 and a half months of excitement for one of the biggest disappointments ever. I am not regretting the download; however for a company that I am a HUGE fan of… very disappointed, this was almost as bad as the PvP mod for Residence Evil 5. Very bad job Bioware all around I expected better, at least with Capcom I expected it, this was like a sucker punch to the face by my best friend. Oh ya, I hope they fix whatever they broke too.
Comment by Perky on January 14, 2010 at 7:15 pm
good job i already have mine…still not fixed my achievements though
Comment by siense on January 14, 2010 at 8:17 pm
While Bioware is clearly struggling with software development and testing issues, like any organization building complex applications that require extensive regression testing, this little mess is largely a failure of product and community management. They need to make significant changes to how they are managing DLC. This is a new line of business for Bioware, so I'm willing to give them time to work out the issues. But I won't be downloading any DLC until it's been out for a bit and thoroughly vetted by the hordes of devoted players who dive right in.
Comment by DrEagleBarrett on January 14, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Half hour of content? Thats really dissapointing to hear. Did you run through it really quickly or slowly? I think I am going to wait to download it until the Add on pack is released in March. Hopefully by that point in time they will have fixed the issues and things will be smooth. Was the half hour at least good. Were there any good items that would be useful in the main quest line?
Comment by Moriarty on January 14, 2010 at 9:41 pm
I heard you get some type of armor though i am not sure what it is.
Comment by Krovikan on January 14, 2010 at 10:40 pm
only one piece is worth it, there are exteremly sub par other then that one piece. two good weapons, one sort of good. Went through on hard with my level 19 mage. Only thing that mad things difficult was when I turn on my blood magic. I didn't really go through it, I got everything but one chest unlocked (not sure if you can get it unlocked and explored every nook and cranny I could find). Oh ya worst ending cut scene ever. Most of the cool stuff was reused content that we already seen. Last two mobs were way too easy too (well they all seemed simple to me)
Had Allistair, Zevran, Wynne and my mage. If won't recommend it to anyone and I would still download it even though I know how disappointed I was in it, but thats more because I am hard core (own 2 copies PC and XBOX, all downloads, pre-order the pen and papper stuff along with the expansion, going to buy the shirt for download when I'm in vegas next week and even bought my avatar a shirt). However I could see a lot of people being very angry over this content.
Comment by Kyrone on January 15, 2010 at 12:03 am
Lol sucky, downloaded the update and it locked all my specializations
Comment by DrEagleBarrett on January 15, 2010 at 1:51 am
Krovikan, I could def. see that happening. For only a half hour to hour at the most of content and its been delayed this long it really makes you wonder what the hangup is? I sense that if this continues things are going to get really tought for them over at BioWare. People losing their jobs or worse.
Comment by Illiani on January 15, 2010 at 5:03 am
(5am posting, be warned)
Took one of my friends an hour to do–don't forget that different people play at different speeds. For example, it took me something horrible like 6-8 hours just to finish Lothering.
Something else to think about–and something I'm getting slightly bored with repeating myself on–the length of a product should not define it's quality.
PoRTaL was a damn fine game; took me very little time to complete; I loved it.
Neverwinter Nights 1 was a pile of horse feces sitting in the open on a hot day; it took me forever to finish; I hated it.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of The Earth was an amazing atmospheric game with a few ignorable flaws; I can complete it in one sitting–if bored; its' my favourite survival horror.
Oblivion was a step backwards (preferably towards a burn pit of the above mentioned horse feces) when compared to Morrowind; while the central storyline can be finished in no time at all, if you explore a bit you could play this game till Rapture; due to it's many game design flaws I loathed it.
I am not trying to say that you shouldn't take length of play into consideration when deciding on a products' quality. Rather that it shouldn't be the soul deciding factor.
Comment by Krovikan on January 15, 2010 at 4:12 pm
I am in no way saying that price is equal to length of content, what I am saying is that when everything is put together length of content, development time, delays, hype (bioware specific, the way they advertised is what I'm taking into count here), previous experience with bioware, the core game and not price. I expected more out of it then what I got low level content, short and awkward cut scenes. The only thing I found good was the placement of the reused content (which I got to say if the rest of it was done to my expectations would of really pushed it over the top).
By the way I got to say, I completely disagree with Oblivion, I played and loved morrowind. However the game had major flaws, you could lose a key game item and never be able to complete the main quest line. You could easily cheat, ie enchanting a ring with levitate 1, right away you could steal the top level armor and many more. I sunk 2000+ hours into oblivion, I literally would turn once in a while and just get awed for a few minutes with the landscape. Even though they did disappoint me with the horse armor, they didn't make that mistake again at least I didn't feel they did. Oblivion is still a game I pop in every few months and play.
Back to the original point, I agree people should not take length into count, however I was hoping for a hard grueling, level 20 equiv short upgrade quest with some cool cut scenes and they could of really done a nice cut scene like they did in Red Cliffe Village. I would of loaded up every one of my characters about 5 right now and turned that 1/2 hour into 2.5hours+. Length isn't the only factor, or a good factor overall quality is the factory, and particularly with Bioware I expect this to be high just because of it being Bioware.
Heck, maybe my standards are way to high and everyone else will enjoy it. It's 5 dollars, try it out see if you have the same opinion and if everyone does let us let Bioware know so that they pick it up. If everyone likes it, I'm some random guy on the internet with an opinion :)
Pingback by UPDATE: DAO-Return to Ostagar Pulled from XBL | Platform Nation on January 16, 2010 at 7:40 pm
[...] Sources: Anne Kenney first saw statement on this Joystiq post which received that information via Eurogamer. I saw this statement on GreyWardens.net. [...]