Anti-Aliased: A few reasons to cage the nerdrage
There's so much anger in the consumer market these days. It seems like when a new product comes up, there has to be this bandwagon of people who roll in and start nerdraging over the product. Oh, APB isn't up your alley? Better nerdrage about that! You don't like Warhammer Online? Rev that nerdrage engine nice and loud so your neighbors can hear it.
Everyone's a critic and gaming consumers are far from an exception. Some of the comments around these parts are some of the most spiteful sentences that could be constructed. You have console hate, game hate, genre hate, even particular MMO genre hate. But, honestly, why? It obviously doesn't help anyone except maybe the person doing it. A catharsis, perhaps?
So what's this Anti-Aliased about? Honestly, I need rant article that's all about ranting. A hate article on game hate. Do two hates make a happy? I dunno, but I'm interested enough to try it out. So here's a few reasons why you should cage the hate and think twice before you open your trap on the forums you love so much.
5. Because this genre doesn't stay the same
This one is exclusive to the MMO genre -- we have updates. Our games never stay the same and are always being tweaked and improved upon. Certainly some updates never work out the way they were intended to work, but that's why we have hotfixes and rollbacks. We're also constantly adding things to the game, in the form of free expansions or just monthly content additions.
Either way, my point is that these games aren't stagnant. Lots of people like to pull out phrases like, "Back at launch game X sucked." Well I could pull out the phrase, "Back at launch, World of Warcraft was a piece of flaming crap," but I'm not going to boldly say that because things have changed. That's just how things roll in this industry.
Age of Conan fixed their client's stability, City of Heroes is getting a new expansion, Warcraft now has a tendency to crash on patch days, and Warhammer has a new dungeon coming out. These games don't stay they same. So when you start your sentence with, "Back at launch," or even worse, "I heard..." then you've already doomed your argument.
4. Because everyone is not you
You have your own opinions and your own tastes. That's wonderful, but not everyone has the same opinions and tastes as you do. One man's broken design is another man's treasure. Or, as I like to think, one man's Phantasy Star Online grindfest is another man's World of Warcraft. (Yes, I was totally addicted to Phantasy Star Online. For some reason, grinding the same 8 areas over and over again was awesome, but I know it certainly is not everyone's cup of tea.)
Many of our games have a specific focus -- the area where they excel and other games may fall short. Final Fantasy XI is all about the PvE content. Warcraft is all about raiding. Darkfall and EVE have their PvP/sandbox focus. Warhammer has a linear PvP focus. I could keep going on and on.
But just because you don't like it doesn't make it the worst game on the market. It just means you don't like it.
