Such is also the case with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and so I have recently started trawling through the SWTOR forums in order to squeeze a little more Force juice out of my lightsaber (ewww..).
Visiting forums on the internet is usually a dubious pleasure as they tend to be populated by around 20% normal human beings and 80% beings of pure satanical evil and stupidity.
But even with this classic 80/20 split in mind I still found myself riled by the level debate on the SWTOR forums, which frankly makes the patrons of the Mos Eisly cantina seem like a bunch of well mannered girl scouts (hell, even Mr. "oh-no-there-goes-my-arm" had the politeness to explain to Luke that he didn't like him before he attacked).
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| "Well, some of the side missions are a little boring, if only...OH GOD, MY FACE!" |
The prime offender on the SWTOR forums seems to be a bad case of Fanboyism, a condition that is commonly seen in early MMO adopters and dedicated Star Wars fans.
This condition, commonly contracted through large amounts of social isolation and/or repeated blows to the head, renders the person completely unable to tolerate any sort of criticism leveled against his or hers object of love.
Indeed, even a slight questioning of the incredible awesomeness of their personal fetish is met with withering stares and guttural grunts of warning.
And so it is that the SWTOR forums are filled with people being absolutely demolished for attempting to question any part of the game.
It really matters very little how the original poster tries to frame his criticism, everything from the most politely and rationally presented argument to the most obvious piece of trolling flame bait gets treated with the same broadside of hate and denial from the raging fanboy community.
The worst example I saw was a thread about rumors that BioWare were banning players for using the in-game auction house (which is a terrible design, but may be able to make you rich, btw), where they were buying up lots of high level items cheap and then reselling them at much higher prices (you know, like you do on an open market).
Rumors were going around that this was somehow inappropriate behavior and some players had already been banned. Naturally this concerned some members of the community quite a lot, since this didn't seem at all like something that you should reasonably get banned for doing.
But throughout the 19 page discussion thread there was an amazing show of trying to justify this absurdity.
People were claiming that since the items that the players were buying and selling were not items that they could use themselves, they had no business buying them and so it was completely fair that they be punished (which is the sort of reasoning that would get me arrested for buying tampons for my girlfriend at the supermarket).
Another interesting argument to defend BioWare banning these people was that they were manipulating market prices and "harassing" players by making them pay more for the items than was necessary (I'm not sure you understand the basic principles of capitalism, friend..).
This lovely quote from a SWTOR forum user is just golden:
"You were banned most likely for price fixing. To illustrate this:
20 Stacks of Resource A sell for 1000 credits
20 Stacks of Resource A sell for 1500 credits
17 Stacks of Resource A sell for 750 credits
43 Stacks of Resource A Sell for 1800 credits
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notafanboy buys all 4 of these sales.
New Listing:
100 Stacks of Resource A sell for 10,000 credits
You have increased the price of this resource for the intent to make a huge profit. You are exploiting the system. Period."
WHAT THE HELL?! What are you even saying?! That you're not allowed to set your own price for the items you sell on the auction house? Why would there even be a possibility of setting your own price if that was "exploiting"? The mind boggles.
In the end BioWare jumped into the thread and clarified that they were actually *not* banning anyone for their actions on GTN. They underlined that "playing" the GTN is a normal and accepted part of SWTOR, so there was no reason for people to worry about getting banned for using some basic free market methods of earning some credits.
*Awkward silence*
So it turns out that the rapid fanboys were defending BioWare for actions that they didn't even commit and would not be in line with their governing policy of SWTOR.
Honestly, I swear that if someone posted that a BioWare employee had just stopped by their house and killed their dog, there would be people on the SWTOR forums posting "serves you right for creating characters on more than 2 servers. Clearly that's a severe exploit and an unwarranted drain on BioWare resources".
It is my great hope that once we get a few more months into the life of SWTOR we'll see the worst of these fanboys leave the forums as they remember to start taking their medication again or their mothers demand they leave their room in the basement.
If we can't have an honest discussion about the things that need to be improved on SWTOR because all criticisms are immediately drowned in fires of hate, then it's just going to be that much harder for BioWare to improve on those rough edges that still need attention.
And as someone that has enjoyed SWTOR a fair bit so far, but also as someone that can see that there is still significant work to be done on the game, I think it would be a real shame if a passionate and vocal minority's blind love for SWTOR ended up being a hindrance to getting that work done on the game.
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