My opinion begins are 'displeased'

A lot of people know I'm a gamer. Not just a gamer, a game connoisseur. I don't buy games often, but I tend to buy the very best. My personal fetishes seems to trend towards games with moral choices and RPG elements.

First, a bit of backstory. Since highschool I've been a fanatic for a certain game company: Bioware. They ensnared me with the original Baldur's Gate, and from then on if they made a game, I purchased it or at least played it through. Have I been disappointed? Not really. Bioware makes the best role-playing games, period. Even if I hate Star Wars, I played Knights of the Old Republic. Know why? The games they make aren't for kids. They have romantic subplots, dark and realistic elements. Mature ideas, to be honest. You will be forced to 'shake hands with the Devil', even as a scrupulously good character. You will be faced with bureaucratic failures, good decisions that cost lives. Most of the characters in every game will be scrupulously realistic- down to political opinions, personal objectives (you aren't the hypercharismatic leader- these people follow you because doing so gets THEIR job done).

So, naturally when I saw that Bioware was putting out a new RPG in the same style as Baldur's Gate and it's sequel (which ate up hundreds of hours of my life which I can see now would not have been better spent), I jumped at the opportunity and pre-ordered Dragon Age Online, the Collector's Edition. I got all the DLC and stuff, I got the soundtrack, and the best part, I got it on the cheap because I ordered through a game system I trusted. I got the collector's edition for the price of the regular box edition because I got it via direct download through Impulse.

Now, the last game that Bioware put out was under the EA umbrella. EA is the villain of the game world. Worst of every world- rushed games, destroying venerable franchises through mismanagement, and horrible tech support. They make some lousy games, work their employees damn near to death (100 hours a week, apparently), and otherwise act in ways you would expect from Sierra Leone and not a game company. So, when I bought said game (Mass Effect, a fantastic game...once I got it to run), I was a little leery. Then it didn't work for six months. Then it worked, I played it, and I was happy. The game itself was brilliant. But the tech support was abysmal. All I ended up needing was a patch from Nvidia.

Back to the present- I bought Dragon Age awhile back, and yesterday I spent a nervous four hours getting it downloaded and installed. First thing I did was put my codes into my Bioware account. After that, I registered my game with Impulse so I could get DECENT tech support, and then I started it up. It asked me to register again...and then said my code had been used already. Now, I didn't use it yet with the main EA registry. If it was in there, it should have been under the same email address as my Bioware account...since EA owns Bioware. And there's more than 11 pages of complaints of a similar nature in the Bioware forums.

WTF. I pay 50$ for a game and it's screwed already?

Deschain