Account Management

[Doubleplay]

It would help if someone could explain what they are trying to do in the account management migration/restructuring. I mean, if I play one EA game, namely UO, do I have to sign in to a Mythic Master account with associated passwords and account name, then drill down to an EA account page and then drill down to a UO page to access my account? It would help if we had a simple map of the desired process.

I pay by credit card monthly. When my month was up, I got the end of service notice like everyone else. I gotta say it took an hour or more of creating passwords, account names and such before I was able to enter my card info and set up a new payment plan. After I was done, I am still not sure that I did it right. Waiting now to see if my character becomes disabled, or worse, stolen.

With the confusing password situation, someone can easily enter the wrong password several times, resulting in denial of access. What a mess.

Anyhow, if someone has figured out the intent of Mythic/EA/UO, could you please post a flow chart showing the nodes where password/account names are required?

 

[Woodsman]

Anyhow, if someone has figured out the intent of Mythic/EA/UO

I thought it was a lot more security related because of how Sony getting hacked scared the **** out of the industry and the infamous billing problems last year with Warhammer, but it would have happened regardless of whether Sony got hacked since the plans for it were apparently around from the beginning of the year and it's much bigger than any billing issues that Warhammer players suffered through. It is very possible that the Sony hack sped up the Star Wars/UO/Camelot/Warhammer migration though, but regardless of the hacking, Star Wars was definitely going to be fully migrated to the new system before it launched.

As to the whys of the new system, short summary: For once EA saw the way things were headed, or they were watching their bottom line, and they are rolling out a competitor to Steam while taking control of distribution of their games where they can and creating a huge portal complete with Facebook goods and other social networking crap to try and keep people playing EA products. They even spent $750 million on PopCap for more browser/social games. For instance, if you want Star Wars digitally, you will only be able to get it through Origin.com. That means EA gets 100% of the revenue from digital downloads of Star Wars, rather than only 70% if it was through Steam. EA has been pulling their software out of Steam as well.

Eventually EA wants anything you do with EA products online to be driven through Origin.com or at least powered by Origin.com, even if the website branding doesn't necessarily scream out Origin.com (SWTOR.com registration, accounts.eamythic.com, etc.).

These are pretty good summaries of where they are going:

Gamasutra - News - EA Details Strong Digital Growth, Sims Social Numbers

Gamasutra - News - EA's Origin Hosting Third-Party Content 'Very Soon'; 4M Client Installs

 

[Woodsman]

A little more information, and some that concerns me slightly:

Origin (digital distribution platform) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Origin features social features like profile management, networking with friends with chat and direct game joining along with an in-game overlay, sharing of game library and community integration with networking sites like Facebook, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Origin is targeted to match its' leading competitor by the end of March 2012, by adding cloud game saves, auto-patching, achievements and rewards, and cross-platform releases.

Origin users are identified by their unified Origin account, which supersedes an EA account and may be canceled if left unused after 24 months. As of September 2011, Origin has been installed by 3.9 million users.[3]

http://tos.ea.com/legalapp/WEBTERMS/US/en/PC/

I can't find the reference now so maybe that was changed on August 25. Shouldn't be a problem for any of us unless you completely quite UO for two years and don't log into your main account within that time. Even if your Origin account was deleted, your UO accounts should still be okay, you would just have to relink them.