CountChocula
Keeper of the Watch
I had only the highest respect for the good doctors when BG1 was released. Ray occasionally posted to the usenet csipg.rpg group at a time when that was never done at least as far as I was aware. They made a couple of great games but time has passed and the inspiration has also passed I think.
I'm not sure I care what they do but maybe the best thing would be for them to leave EA and start up a new company. Perhaps their souls will be filled again after having EA suck it dry and they can inspire some designers to make something cool the RPG lovers of the world.
I had never even heard of Bioware when BG1 was released.
The first Bioware game I tried was Dragon Age: Origins, which was a lot of fun, and I liked the Awakenings expansion. Mass Effect 2 was OK, but a little too linear, too much hallway-cutscene-hallway-cutscene for my tastes. I can't speak to The Old Republic, as I only tried the beta for a few hours. Mass Effect 3 seemed to be a much better game than ME2 in many ways. The level design was much more interesting and improvements to the dialogue and reputation system made it feel a bit more like an RPG than ME2. Dragon Age 2 on the other hand, had some huge flaws, and suffered a lot from a very short production schedule.
Perhaps Doctors did not do the best possible job producing their massive MMO project, and perhaps they have stumbled a bit in their PR approach to dealing with fan complaints. However it's not quite accurate to characterize them as being "in over their heads." Since the time of their acquisition by EA, they successfully developed and brought to market several high profile games with large budgets. That in itself is a significant accomplishment. On top of that some of those games have been commercially successful. I highly doubt there is any other executive at EA that would have done a better job with the games they've produced in the past few years.