Wisdom Penalty said:
That being said, how can the pro-4E guys be nasty and negative? I just don't see it. What's wrong with a guy posting that he's very excited about 4E and looks forward to running a game using that version of D&D?
By responding to any concern about 4E by attacking the poster as a hater, whiner, basement-dweller, troll, grognard, lying hypocrite who is going to buy the game the second it hits the shelves despite saying that they aren't, irrational and / or a 'religious fanatic.' All from the supposedly anti-4E Paizo boards, where a small selection of trolls hurled venom and abuse at anyone who didn't support 4E sight-unseen, and then had the freaking balls to post threads about all the 'negativity' and 'name-calling' from those who still liked 3.5. (
Removed unnecessary political reference - Rel. Throw poop and then complain about all the poop stinking up the place!)
The pro-4E camp was in a minority, roughly half the size of the pro-3E camp, so perhaps they felt it necessary to put their backs to the wall and start spewing venom as fast as they could, while begging for moderation to stop the mean nasty 'haters' from responding to their flames.
*Some* pro-4E people are cool and reasonable and *many* 4E ideas are neat-sounding#, and I'd like to hear more, but the pro-4E crowd (and this is from the designers on down) have an unfortunate tendency to say, 'Well, 3E is boring, broken and unplayable, and if you like this, your games are boring, too, so here's what we are doing in 4E.'
Any interest I have in 4E is *not* based on how much 3E may suck, and I *really* don't need to hear that the product I paid thousands of bucks buying is unplayable, broken and I am boring for liking it, from *the same darn company* who sold it to me, and now want me to buy something else from them! That's some quality marketing there, Bubba...
"Oh, sorry, our last line of Bleem trucks tend to explode and if yours hasn't yet, it's only a matter of time, and you'd be *crazybadwrongfun* to keep driving it. Wanna buy a Bleem 2?"
#With the obvious corollary that *some* pro-3E people are totally out of line and *also* get abusive and down with the name-calling, and I cringe to see them 'on my side,' just as I imagine that the serious pro-4E camp cringes to see pro-4E posters insulting and belittling others, since it does nothing but get knees-jerking and people starting threads complaining about the negativity and factionalization and all that jazz... Additionally, 3E has a *bunch* of stuff that could be improved, which doesn't mean that *any* change is going to automagically be better, just because it's a change.
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