ZOMG DRM!!!!1!

Uplay also does a weird thing with Might and Magic Heroes VI Complete Edition where it only shows the Shades of Darkness cover in your library. I was informed by a support staff member of the store from where I got it that it's the CE, but it just has the wrong cover.

Been meaning to check it out, but it takes like 6 hours to download on my internet, so I keep postponing it.

edit: about cloud saves, I don't mind them as long as I get to keep/have on-file saves as well- makes it easier to deal with games where you want to selectively delete/keep stuff for branching decision paths in the game; RPGs aren't the only games to make you do that, I've done that for many strategies as well.

The free stuff is nice.

I just wish EA's catalog had more games I actually liked.

I've found that Steam downloads much faster for me, and when Steam does a download it installs it too, while Origin downloads install files. It's not bad, I'd say, I just prefer Steam. If there's a game you really want that's Origin exclusive, by all means go ahead and get it.

Origin has been slowly getting more Steam-like in how it installs and handles DLC and whatnot. I would assume it will eventually match up in those areas.

That's good. I had trouble with Crysis and they told me to redownload and install several times, which was a pain since it took like, three hours to download it each time.

I have DA:O UE on Origin and yes, mods work. You can even launch the game without Origin after downloading it.

DLCs tied up to your Origin account* are automatically downloaded but there's a DLC authorization problem and you have to manually install the 1.05 patch.

edit: *I meant BioWare account

Thanks for asking, and I will message you later once I purchased the game later on.

The authorisation problem is easy to fix, it's just an xml flag that does not get set. Official EA fix instructions. It's also present in DVD versions of DAO: UE, so it isn't really anything to do with Origin per se

Well, the Germans weren't making a fuss, a German was. A german who didn't know how to use the monitoring software he was using and somehow had his medical records in the programdata folder, which is a... very, very odd place to have them. Mostly though, he confused something that scans file names, in a few specific folders with something that reads files. There's a world of difference, and literally hundreds of pieces of software- including steam, which said German was happily using- scan file names perfectly legitimately. Indeed, 'add a non steam game' and steam will merrily scan your entire hard drive, not just selected folders.

It was FUD, basically.

Yep. All versions of DA:O have that problem, which was fixed by the 1.05 patch. It's just that one would expect that the Origin version would be updated with the latest patch, the same way that Steam games are automatically updated whenever a new patch is released.

I apologize for misinformation, my bad.

If you have Steam installed, then there is no good reason not to install Origin.

The pre-order stuff for DA:O and DA:O Awakening is available for free on the Bioware site ( only for registered users, though, so you need to make an account there and register the game ). The Ultimate Edition does not include most of the pre-order content, nor the Collector's / Deluxe Edition content. For a full experience, you need DA: O Ultimate, DA:O Deluxe and the pre-orders. But, you can live without those ( most of that pre-order content is made up of items and the 2 pre-order story DLC's are included in the Ultimate Edition ).

P.S.: to activate the extra-content you need a Bioware account and log into it from the game. Lovely, i know. Meanwhile, the bloody pirates have access to the whole content and they don't need to jump through so many hoops.

I think the online check could be disabled by editing the XML file in each DLC... unless they corrected that loophole in a later patch.

It'd be nice of them to actually patch out online check completely. It 's pretty much obsolete for a 2009 game.