It's impossible for the entire world to talk about something without me butting in. Informed or otherwise, people have felt the need to talk about Mass Effect 3 and how they feel cheated in some way by experience BioWare charged them $60, so much so that their hatred has spanned the length and breadth of the internet.

I wrote far, far too many blogs before the release around the internet on the folly of BioWare and how their desire for mainstream ubiquity was going to cost them the devotion of many a fan, and the fact that BioWare managed to break the things gamers had thought the had nailed back in the first Mass Effect is possibly more disturbing than them getting wrong what we expected them to do poorly.

That being said, did you expect anything more than what you got? It took 3 whole years to make Mass Effect 2, yet the internet assumes that 18 months should yield a product of greater quality and scope than its predecessor. And even if BioWare did have the time, to go along with money EA was throwing at them, nobody can say that they were up to this kind of challenge.

Mass Effect is a cultural phenomenon. Whether you like the fact or not, people care so very much about its amalgamation of Star Trek, realistic themes and alien sex. Given the sheer ambition of the first game, it's a miracle that Mass Effect 2 was as good as it was. Yet we expected BioWare to do something that nobody else has done on the same scale before, which was to put a wrapper on an entire universe.

Yes, we had expectations. But from 2007 to March 20th 2012 those expectations became entitlements in the minds of ordinary people. The anger that is being hurled across the webspace is now coming from both the rabid idiots who think that an having an email address means people care about their opinions, and everyday people who would say "so?" under any other circumstances.

We have been spoiled, lavished with quality to the point where we forget that the people who worked on this series care about it just as much, if not more so, about Mass Effect as the the people demanding that the ending be changed because it didn't fit their personal standards. BioWare has the right to stick by its writers and the people who worked on that game, and they should do so. The sentimental "For the Fans" doesn't ring true when those fans begin demanding changes to the product they already paid for, and do their utmost to make the people at BioWare's lives a misery.

Death threats, hate mail and demands to change art are all symptomatic of a culture that thinks the industry owes it something. Against all odds, a group of real people had to work against the clock building something so immense in scope that nobody has ever attempted to tie up so many threads before, and they didn't do a perfect job. They did a great job by all accounts, but that isn't enough for those people who are firing off salvoes of virtiol against people whom they would have bought a drink for a year ago.

This is internet entitlement at its zenith, the point where people call on a company to change their creative endeavour to suit whatever grievances those fans have worked up over what is still a quality piece of entertainment.

If you think paying $60 for what believe is a disappointing product entitles you to insult somebody's creative vision and harrass the people who made it happen, then you are entitled to nothing but the disdain of people who know the value of human decency.

There's something I don't understand. Where IS the place that's considered the "internet of the people"?
What I mean is, is there a certain place that is considered the big lobby of the internet where people's opinions matter and result in YOU saying that THEY have gone too far?  
 
Are we talking forums of websites such as Giantbomb and Gamespot? I doubt it, only the visitors of such forums care about what the members have to say. Are we talking 4Chan and Reddit? Pretty sure everyone considers them massive trolls, so I doubt their opinions and rage matters. 
 
So seriously, when you say people have gone too far with the hate, and Alex writes about Bioware changing the ending because of the outcry, where IS that outcry happening? I thought developers didn't care about the whining on the internet and did what they thought was best for their titles, but apparently not, and apparently there are places that everyone frequents and takes note of the complaining in that place, from you to Alex to Bioware to EA, so where is that place?

I agree, but I also don't think we need another one of these topics.

There are 4.6 billion already.

People sending Bioware death threats is scum no matter what. Unfortunately, this kind of stuff will happen and there's nothing we can do about it except call the police on them and move on. They're just like any other movement as well. Take a look at the Occupy movement. You have the real people that protest in the most sensible way without hurting anyone and they follow every law possible. Later on in the movement comes the ass holes that trash everything and provoke the riot police.

As far as everything else you say, I'll just post this:

Given that we're utterly overloaded on these sorts of threads, I'm going to lock this down and request any further conversation be picked up in one of the countless other threads or articles discussing the ending. Nothing personal, just...we're up to our eyeballs in this ME3 ending stuff.