This is pretty much called game as a service.

Shame, they keep making games with this type of business model, it's tremendously annoying as hell for many reasons.

When 5g hits the market, you wont even know you are online, thats how promising its looking. That fast its incredible.

I don't like AO. I've done a spectacular job of avoiding it though. I think.....the only game I've purchased AND played in my entire collection that has it is......Bionic Commando 2 on PS3, which I knew had it, but bought it because it was very cheap. Like 3 bucks or something.

Do you really think a game that is online only really is the same thing as Microsoft’s original vision for Xbone that gamers rejected? There’s a big difference between a game requiring online play, and an entire system being always online, and locking down your physical games through DRM.

Sure, EA might have an always online title like Anthem, but they also have lots of titles that don’t require online. Same with Activision. Same with Ubisoft. Just buy those? A lot of the games you mentioned are shared world games designed around online play. Why would The Division or Anthem be playable offline?

You live quite the charmed life then!

But yes, always-online sucks, and needs to go away.

Than games like MMORPGs will be crap.

That's one of the big reasons why I'm mostly retro gaming, indie gaming and Nintendo gaming and ignoring the big publishers for years now. The other big reason is that they try to nickel and dime you at every single corner

I'm very much on the move, and often can't get stable internet. With AO I couldn't play games anymore, but that doesn't bother my Switch or my GOG backlog on my laptop in the slightest.

What you mean "then"?

Yes it is bad.

Internet has not done the world of gaming any favors. It’s not because of my connection, I mean that’s excellent here, but it’s the fact that other players, unless they’re on the couch next to you, in any capacity always ruin a game. I don’t want or need to interact or be social with anyone. When I want to do that, I’ll contact a friend.

Then, there’s the fact that you’re basically enslaving yourself to the publisher, a more pressing concern. They decide when and for how long you can actually play their game. When support stops, or servers shut down, it’s all over. This means there are games I can buy now, for full price, that I couldn’t potentially play anymore five years from now. Meanwhile, my 2600 games from 40 years ago still work exactly as intended and as if they were just bought. In fact there already are games that are no longer playable. People will find out soon enough though, and if publishers putting more and more crap into games, a bubble will burst at some point.

Luckily for me, and us, there’s still good publishers out there and there are plenty of games to still play from generation’s past. No need to bend to a publisher’s will.

Games like Apex Legends, World of Warcraft, League of Legends and many more wouldnt exist or be great without the always online platform.