[SinisterAlex]

I've finally caught up with all today's new on here and on the official EA NHL Forums. Glad Rammer came on here and EA NHL Forums to answer our questions. I know it's most likely damage control for them, but some of Rammer's answers really did resonate in my mind. I do sympathize with them for having little over a year to build the game, but on the other side the FIFA team made FIFA 14 with ALL features in probably the same amount of time. Rammer said they didn't want to say anything because it would've caused more questions to be asked and what not, but this whole blow up over OS, EA NHL Forums, and even on Twitter could've been avoided if they would've came out and said "EASHL won't be in the game". Then at least the community would be at ease somewhat and not angry, frustrated and left feeling betrayed like we all have been this past week.

I'm also glad they'll be adding in OTP as a free update shortly after launch. From what I was reading it will be drop in first with the possibility of adding a simple lobby system at a later date. I'm fine with that and if what Rammer said is true, then having OTP in the game via patch will setup the ground works for EASHL for NHL 16. They said they want to make it bigger and better than it ever was, especially when it was first introduced in NHL 09. Time will tell. As long as they acknowledged that OTP/EASHL is a huge part of the game and they're making an effort to put OTP back into the game. Will be like NHL 08's OTP I imagine which I'm fine with. I'm not expecting them to port over EASHL magically into NHL 15 on next gen. I do believe what Rammer said about complications with code, latency, desync, etc is true. 1 v 1 games are different from having up to 12 people playing live on different consoles, from different provinces/ states. My only hope is that this OTP patch doesn't take long to come out, I'm hoping before December in all honesty.

Overall, I I'd say 80% at ease right now with NHL 15. Am I still frustrated, yes as will many others. I'll be buying it because I'm a die hard hockey fan and have been without an NHL video game since November 2013. Rammer said he will be more active within the community on the EA NHL forums and will give more insight and thoughts into development along with getting community feedback. Whether that holds true remains to be seen but I think this whole EASHL commotion has made the NHL dev take a step back and see how passionate this community is for this game whether they were aware of it or not. When we all complain it's not because we "hate" the game per say. It's because we all know this series has potential to be great if a few issues would be corrected/fixed.

In this day in age with social media the giant that it is, you simply CANNOT get away with stuff like this like you could've pre mid 2000's before Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, heck even MySpace. The community spoke, and the dev's reacted and listened.

All in all, I'm relatively happy. Looking forward to the demo based on what Rammer said about the A.I and Doc's commentary being a lot better than shown in the overhead gameplay videos.