[fistofrage]

This is the first year I haven't bought NCAA at launch since Bill Walsh Football. Fight Night Champion was the straw that broke this camel's back. Not only were there freezing issues and glitches at launch, they totally ignored them and patched and tuned the game from pretty decent to a pile of broken code removing things like cuts and swelling and totally frogging up the judging. They actually broke things that were working and removed items essential to a boxing game.

I remember NCAA last year, the qb accuracy was pretty good out of the box, 3 weeks later Robo QB was patched/tuned back in. On top of that there were so many other changes that the sliders I had worked on for weeks were no longer applicable.

I think that EA now caters to the online crowd. The online crowd tends to be "win at all costs" so they won't tolerate things like innacurate QB's or missing FG's. Actually alot of the offline crowd must be win at all cost too because little Timmy needs the 4 vertical bailout money play in case he is losing late. Its no longer about realism, its fancy graphics first and realistic play second.

Anyway, I have saved myself a ton of frustration by passing on this game this year. The best thing you can do is wait 3 or 4 months until they are done tuning and patching and come back here and ask a few trusted members what they think of the game or renting it. In the end, you will have saved time you can use productively elsewhere, saved money because its usually 39 or less after October, and if enough of us do this, it will put a blip on EA's radar that releasing buggy/glitchy products will not be beta tested for free and purchased at a premium.