[quote name='Matt Young']Good news on the demo, but this worries me:[/QUOTE]
Yeah, Matt, that's pretty much become "the way of EA". It's not just NHL. It's practically everything EA makes (remember in Madden 07, they'd tried making people pay for the alternate uniforms and everybody went apeshit? I guess they found their golden egg by instead letting you pay to cheat).
It makes me wish that 2K would actually make better sports games so people would have an alternative to EA's money machine. But sadly, even paying for equipment upgrades is a more enjoyable prospect than playing NHL 2K10.
The only way I could think to get around this is taking your BAP character and simming as much of the seasons as you could to get the upgrades quickly (play 40 games, sim the rest). It sucks that we have to even consider something like that, but if anybody wants to compete with the people on Live whose only enjoyment in gaming comes from figuring out how to exploit the game, it's either that, or buy the damn upgrades (which I'm sure many chodes will do)
What bothers me most is that for the love of money, EA allows (and even encourages) their games to be exploited. It's bullshit and is the number one reason 2K needs to step up and make better games. I seriously doubt many gamers have "loyalty" to EA, and if 2K could make games at least on par with EA, they'd steal at least 50% of EA's business. The only solace I can take is that hockey isn't as popular as football, so there will probably be less asshats in NHL than in Madden. I'm still banking that the game will be solid though, so that should help.