I recently bought myself the new Criterion game Need For Speed: Most Wanted™. I opted for the PS3 version as I knew a few others getting it on there and the draw of Autolog is a strong one for me, always driving up gaming enjoyment and adding extended life to a title. It transpired however that at some point in the past I had linked my PS3 name to an old EA Origin account which was not the same one I had for the 360 and PC games. So I called up EA and eventually got my PS3 persona removed from this account and transferred to my more active account.
The joys woes of Autolog
Great I thought, now my Autolog will be picking up details from both my PS3 and 360 friends within the game. Alas no, after spending a few hours racing and earning a good hundred thousand SpeedPoints™ I opened the menu to see all those points disappear and my score reset to what it was before I started the session. More calls and chats with EA were unable to rectify this problem so I finally decided to have the old origin account deleted, this must surely remove all details of it from Autolog right and I can start over?
Drastic Measures
So after about seven days wait (I had requested the deletion over thanksgiving, which probably wasn’t smart of me for a US based company!) my old account was removed. I booted up the PS3 and deleted my saves and the game data file so everything was fresh. And indeed my score had reset to zero and all seemed well, I could earn points again and progress in the game. However, the game refused to connect to Autolog. I received an error 193 stating I had already connected Most Wanted to Autolog with another Origin account. Well yes I had, but now that account was gone and all I had was my active account, but no matter what I tried I couldn’t get past that error. Even creating another PS3 account, I have one for purchases in Danish Kroner, simply gave me the same error which seems very odd as that had never been added to an Origin account before. Something in Autlog is effectively banning my Origin account from the system!
#Fail
And so I find my interest in the game, for which I paid full price on launch, sapped. Without the heart of Autolog behind it the game feels like an empty shell. I have no need to finish a race better than in first place, my time is unimportant. Billboards loose their appeal as only seeing my own name, without even my own avatar makes them dull and uninteresting. EA at one point even told me to contact PSN support, how exactly they would be able to change anything inside of Autolog I’m not sure.
My only solution seems to be to rebuy the game on 360, effectively rewarding EA with a double purchase because they lack the control of their own systems to rectify the issue.
It’s not often I get mad with game publishers compared to most, but this is one of those few times.
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