Calling all FIFA Ultimate Team gamers! This week we’re giving you a chance to test your team against the Football Live Team, the producers working on the game here at the studio. Between the hours of 9pm and 10pm CET (11am to 12pm PST) and 6pm to 7pm PST (4am to 5am CET) on Thursday, 18 June our very own John Shepherd, Producer, will be online and challenging all-comers lucky enough to match-up against him.

Our inaugural event will be on Xbox 360 with a future event on PS3. When playing look out for i5KYW4LK3R and make sure you have a headset if you want to chat.

As a bonus, we’re going to be recording your games against John and posting the highlights on Football World (easportsfootball.com) plus our Facebook and Bebo group pages.

Please note that not everyone is going to get a chance to play John but if this is a success and you guys want to do it again, we’ll make it bigger and better for the future.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EAFootballLive
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FIFA-Ultimate-Team/76974959758
Bebo: http://www.bebo.com/FIFAUT

To all the FIFA09 gamers who haven't tried FIFA 09 Ultimate Team yet, we want to make it a little more tempting.

For a limited period, starting 22nd May, all new Ultimate Team gamers will find a special surprise in their starter pack - a gold player! Yes, you heard it right, if you're a new FIFA Ultimate Team gamer your very first pack of cards will include a gold player that you can immediately integrate into your team or put up for trade to try and earn points to buy additional card packs.
 
The card will be randomly assigned from the database of gold players and even we don't know what you'll potentially receive when you unwrap that very first pack.
 
This is also a great opportunity for any existing Ultimate Team gamers who were thinking about starting from scratch to build their new championship winning team. You can start again by selecting Delete Team from the settings menu - but be warned: there is no going back once completed, so ensure you are committed!

We look forward to seeing you online!
 
Twitter: http://twitter.com/EAFootballLive
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FIFA-Ultimate-Team/76974959758
Bebo: http://www.bebo.com/FIFAUT

I’m excited to be able to announce our plans to reward some of the early adopters of FIFA 09 Ultimate Team (aka "FUT") – we’ve had the plan in the works for a good time internally and it’s great to finally get the word out now.  As a quick intro as to who I am – I’ve been at EA for almost five years and most recently had the pleasure of working on FIFA 09 Ultimate Team with a great group of talented people.  Since the launch of FUT I’ve been working with the Football Live Team, which is an internal team at EA SPORTS™   put together to support our FIFA online products. It was an exciting day when we launched the game, but it quickly turned in to the busiest three weeks of around the clock work.  As some of you are probably aware, the launch of FUT was immensely popular with our FIFA fans, and because of this it challenged our server capacity for the first three weeks.  That was unfortunate for our consumers and we want to make it up to you. 

Now the day has come where we want to say thanks to all the FUT early adopters for their patience and feedback during those first three weeks.  To that end, every fan who purchased Ultimate Team before April 10th will receive 10,000 coins (equivalent to two gold packs).  For every fan who tried FUT but didn’t buy it prior to April 10th, they will receive 5,000 coins (equivalent to one gold pack).  In reality, you can choose whatever you wish to do with these new coins: go pick up that rare player on the trade pile, make a more beefy trade offer, or buy a few packs and roll the dice on getting some awesome players!  Starting on May 15th coins will begin getting distributed automatically to all eligible users.  If eligible, all you need to do is log on to FIFA 09 Ultimate Team after this date and you’ll notice your coin balance has increased accordingly!

And that’s not all, we have a number of other fun ideas coming up for the FUT faithful.  To get all the latest updates we encourage you to sign-up on one of the many different communication channels below and we’ll be in touch on how you can continue to build your FIFA 09 Ultimate Team:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/EAFootballLive
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FIFA-Ultimate-Team/76974959758
Bebo: http://www.bebo.com/FIFAUT 

We arrived in Barcelona last night through distinctly bouncy turbulence and a solid English-style downpour. The weather, we were told, would be pretty rubbish on Friday, too. There went our vision of a pleasant jolly in the sun, then.

But as the day has gone on the sun has got its act together and it's looking better for tomorrow's main event on the beach: The Grand Final of this year's FIFA Interactive World Cup. More than half a million people took part in the qualification rounds for this event, online and off, and what we're left with now is the final 32 - the cream of the global FIFA 09 crop, ready to take each other on for a $20,000 prize haul and the title of FIFA 09 world champion.

A champion of an altogether different variety is Stevie Morgan - the voice of the FIFA 09 Top 10 videos and podcasts. He'll be leading the charge for EA SPORTS in covering the event, fronting a series of videos that we'll upload right here from the venue tomorrow.

Previous FIFA 09 Ultimate Team Blogs on EA SPORTS World

Blog 1 – Overview
Blog 2 – Types of Cards

FIFA 09 Ultimate Team Blog 3 - Online Tournaments

Matt Prior, Producer

Before I talk about Online Tournaments I wanted to inform you that we have confirmed the pricing for FIFA 09 Ultimate Team.  It will be available beginning March 19 for 800 Microsoft points or $9.99. In addition, for those of you who don’t want to play their way to accumulate packages of cards, bronze packages of cards can be purchased for 20 Microsoft points or $0.25, silver packages for 40 Microsoft points or $0.50 and gold level packages for 80 Microsoft points or $1.00. It’s important to point out that this is only a shortcut and won’t buy you anything that you can’t already earn in-game; it’s simply a shortcut for those who want to use it. Silver and Gold packs are locked out initially and can’t be purchased during the free trial period. It takes 6 and 12 games, respectively, before the Silver & Gold packs are unlocked.

One of the questions I get asked most often is, “What are the differences between league matches and tournaments?”

League matches earn leader board points that are the ranking system for the leader boards but the points awarded are not just tied to the result.  Like the coins, leader board points are also awarded based on your in-game performance. There are 5 leader boards in total: Overall, Online League, Offline League, Online Tournament, and Offline Tournaments.

Tournaments are knockout format that go to extra time and penalties if undecided by the 90th minute.  Lose, and you’re knocked out of the tournament and must start again, so there is a lot of pressure. League games add to your standings on the Ultimate Team leader boards and can end in a draw.  League games tend to be used as a means to earn coins and skill points while resting players in an effort to strengthen the squad or to try out new formations and players.

The online Knockout Tournaments are where gamers will come up against each other and will be where the true champions are decided. We implemented an advanced match making system that should allow for much better matchups and increase the ability to find an opponent. The format is the same as the offline: 16 gamers face off in a knockout format with only one winner taking home the trophy.

There are 18 online tournaments in all. The lowest of these is the Bronze Divisional Cup which will be the first tournament most gamers will unlock. The tournaments are unlocked by skill points which are earned by playing games.  The better the performance, the more points are earned. Skill points do not decrease, so once you have unlocked a tournament, you can enter it as many times as you want. If you want to advance and fill out your trophy cabinet however, you’ll have to win it. Winning a trophy will fill in your trophy cabinet as well as earning the tournament banner. Tournament banners are hung in your training arena so you’ll instantly be able to see a measure of your success when you go back. A truly successful gamer will have a completed cabinet and an arena festooned with banners.  Additionally, winning a trophy then unlocks the Silver versions and winning that unlocks the Gold. Each level of tournament will feature progressively better gamers so at the Gold level it will truly be a battle of the elite.

We have implemented advance matchup logic that should ensure more chance of matching up in an online game. Online gameplay is a key part of Ultimate Team and not having an opponent to play can be very frustrating for online games, so we have tried to create a ‘match up anytime’ system and hopefully gamers will have less wait time to match up and will match up against someone near your ability.

Quitting out is one of the most frustrating things about playing online, so we have tried to combat this by ensuring that quitting out is the worst possible course of action for gamers. If a gamer quits out, they will not be awarded any coins or skill points and all their players will be deducted a contract. If the gamer decides to finish the game, even if they are losing heavily, they will still be awarded coins and skill points, as there are set values for just finishing an online game. We hope that gamers will soon realize that quitting is the worst thing they can do and that by playing out the game they will be rewarded. You’ll definitely grow your team much quicker if you finish games.