Gamers, despite all their wonderful traits, sometimes suck - myself included.
I suck b/c despite having my shiny new Pathfinder core rulebook on my desk I still took the time to wade through 17 pages of opinions about WotC's marketing blunders for 4e.
Why? Hell if I know, probably for the same reason I like my running workouts to include steep uphill climbs... I'm a gamer, I know I'm not wired according to the manual.
The 4e ship sailed some time ago. I saw the preparations, surveyed the snippets, and listened to the marketing campaign. I was doing research and thus I knew well before departure day I wasn't going along for the ride. And, in a traditional gamer's-passion, if I'm being honest with myself, by the end I was so pissed off that I was probably standing on the dock when the ship sailed, hand held high with middle-finger extended.
Of course I'd sworn off D&D altogether years before. Before the OGL and 3rd-party publishers brought me back. So I still flipped through the books, read the forum posts, to see if maybe I was wrong. Rather than changing my mind, what I saw vindicated my choice.
And then I won. Or at least I also won. The Pathfinder RPG was announced. Green Ronin announced 3rd Era versions of their 3.x library. I wouldn't be playing a dead game and still had purchases for my gaming dollar.
So for quite a while now, I've only been occasionally lurking in 4e posts, mainly in the hopes to glean an idea for my own games or just to pass the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.
But after going back and reading the marketing thread from the beginning, I've realized what bugs me most about 4e. Granted, I ultimately didn't care for 4e as a game - but it's a solid game. I still think the marketing campaign was a poster child for what not to do - I think the D&D brand made the success a foregone conclusion. The GSL -- it sucked then and sucks now, just a little bit less. DDI - not my thing -- at all. So clearly, I'm not in WotC's "desired customer" bucket. That's ok. I've moved on, just as they moved in the direction that made the most sense for them.
No, today, what I can't stomach are the 4e zealots that continue to attack, belittle, assign motives to people that they've never met aside from posts in a message board. Did WotC issue a Psionic Browser in the PHB? 'Cause I'm really unsure how these people are able to ascribe the motives to people that they do.
(Paraphrasing)
"You wanted to be offended, so you were."
"Do you really play your game that way? Really. 'Cause everyone I know focus on combat and dungeons."
"You never gave 4e a chance. If you really played it with an open mind, you'd be a 4e fan."
"If you were really honest with yourself, you'd see the flaws of 3e and move on to another game."
How in the FRAK would these people know? I didn't see them at my game table.
Let me put it this way. Those kinds of comments weren't even directed at me in the thread. You were able to offend me when I was just an observer.
Azgulor's list of ENWORLD objective facts:
1. There are a5$hats on both sides of the Edition Wars.
2. 4e if a fully developed, professionally produced fantasy role-playing game.
3. Azgulor would only play 4e if all other RPG options were taken away from him.
4. The WotC marketing campaign leading up to the 4e lauch was riddled with mistakes.
5. Despite #4, 4e was/is a successful product line for WotC.
Azgulor's list of ENWORLD subjective opinions:
1. While a5$hats reside on both sides of the aisle, my completely non-scientific anecdotal evidence suggests that for every 3e zealot that attacks 4e on a message board, there are 4 4e zealots who will attack the 3e fan.
2. I don't like it when professional rpg designers imply that the games and campaigns I run are not fun. I like it less when total strangers with no rpg developer/author credentials tell me the same thing as if they are Moses descending from the mountain with 2 stone tablets.
3. There are some people who wanted to like 4e and didn't. There were some who didn't want to like it but ended up fans. There are other people who were never going to give 4e a chance. There are others who were on the fence and fell on one side or the other. And there was sure as you-know-what some people who were pissed off by one or more of WotC's blunders, marketing or otherwise.
4. When I discovered ENWORLD, in the early days of 3e, the majority of posts were discussions of campaigns, adventures, character backgrounds, etc. More than 50% of 4e posts are mechanics-oriented: how do I massage the mechanics to restore a 3e feature, why such a feature was a problem and shouldn't be put in, why minions rock, why minions suck, etc. etc.
5. I really long for the days of the ENWORLD community, rather than the camps we have now.
Ultimately, yeah, this is just a rant and I really don't expect too many people to care one way or the other. It helped to get it off my chest. But this rant aside, I try (really, really hard) to respond with opinions on fluff, campaign stuff, etc. I try to focus on saying "here's what works for my group" rather than ascribing motives to someone I don't know. I try to highlight that I'm offering an opinion rather than dismissing someone else's opinion whilst presenting my opinion as fact.
To date, I have never utilized the IGNORE function. I'm getting really tempted, though. And hey, if I'm on your Ignore List...well, you aren't seeing this anyway so what do I care?
P.S. If someone can confirm that by getting a DDI subscription I, too, can get the mind-reading Psionic Browser, I'll pay for a year's subscription.
I suck b/c despite having my shiny new Pathfinder core rulebook on my desk I still took the time to wade through 17 pages of opinions about WotC's marketing blunders for 4e.
Why? Hell if I know, probably for the same reason I like my running workouts to include steep uphill climbs... I'm a gamer, I know I'm not wired according to the manual.
The 4e ship sailed some time ago. I saw the preparations, surveyed the snippets, and listened to the marketing campaign. I was doing research and thus I knew well before departure day I wasn't going along for the ride. And, in a traditional gamer's-passion, if I'm being honest with myself, by the end I was so pissed off that I was probably standing on the dock when the ship sailed, hand held high with middle-finger extended.
Of course I'd sworn off D&D altogether years before. Before the OGL and 3rd-party publishers brought me back. So I still flipped through the books, read the forum posts, to see if maybe I was wrong. Rather than changing my mind, what I saw vindicated my choice.
And then I won. Or at least I also won. The Pathfinder RPG was announced. Green Ronin announced 3rd Era versions of their 3.x library. I wouldn't be playing a dead game and still had purchases for my gaming dollar.
So for quite a while now, I've only been occasionally lurking in 4e posts, mainly in the hopes to glean an idea for my own games or just to pass the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.
But after going back and reading the marketing thread from the beginning, I've realized what bugs me most about 4e. Granted, I ultimately didn't care for 4e as a game - but it's a solid game. I still think the marketing campaign was a poster child for what not to do - I think the D&D brand made the success a foregone conclusion. The GSL -- it sucked then and sucks now, just a little bit less. DDI - not my thing -- at all. So clearly, I'm not in WotC's "desired customer" bucket. That's ok. I've moved on, just as they moved in the direction that made the most sense for them.
No, today, what I can't stomach are the 4e zealots that continue to attack, belittle, assign motives to people that they've never met aside from posts in a message board. Did WotC issue a Psionic Browser in the PHB? 'Cause I'm really unsure how these people are able to ascribe the motives to people that they do.
(Paraphrasing)
"You wanted to be offended, so you were."
"Do you really play your game that way? Really. 'Cause everyone I know focus on combat and dungeons."
"You never gave 4e a chance. If you really played it with an open mind, you'd be a 4e fan."
"If you were really honest with yourself, you'd see the flaws of 3e and move on to another game."
How in the FRAK would these people know? I didn't see them at my game table.
Let me put it this way. Those kinds of comments weren't even directed at me in the thread. You were able to offend me when I was just an observer.
Azgulor's list of ENWORLD objective facts:
1. There are a5$hats on both sides of the Edition Wars.
2. 4e if a fully developed, professionally produced fantasy role-playing game.
3. Azgulor would only play 4e if all other RPG options were taken away from him.
4. The WotC marketing campaign leading up to the 4e lauch was riddled with mistakes.
5. Despite #4, 4e was/is a successful product line for WotC.
Azgulor's list of ENWORLD subjective opinions:
1. While a5$hats reside on both sides of the aisle, my completely non-scientific anecdotal evidence suggests that for every 3e zealot that attacks 4e on a message board, there are 4 4e zealots who will attack the 3e fan.
2. I don't like it when professional rpg designers imply that the games and campaigns I run are not fun. I like it less when total strangers with no rpg developer/author credentials tell me the same thing as if they are Moses descending from the mountain with 2 stone tablets.
3. There are some people who wanted to like 4e and didn't. There were some who didn't want to like it but ended up fans. There are other people who were never going to give 4e a chance. There are others who were on the fence and fell on one side or the other. And there was sure as you-know-what some people who were pissed off by one or more of WotC's blunders, marketing or otherwise.
4. When I discovered ENWORLD, in the early days of 3e, the majority of posts were discussions of campaigns, adventures, character backgrounds, etc. More than 50% of 4e posts are mechanics-oriented: how do I massage the mechanics to restore a 3e feature, why such a feature was a problem and shouldn't be put in, why minions rock, why minions suck, etc. etc.
5. I really long for the days of the ENWORLD community, rather than the camps we have now.
Ultimately, yeah, this is just a rant and I really don't expect too many people to care one way or the other. It helped to get it off my chest. But this rant aside, I try (really, really hard) to respond with opinions on fluff, campaign stuff, etc. I try to focus on saying "here's what works for my group" rather than ascribing motives to someone I don't know. I try to highlight that I'm offering an opinion rather than dismissing someone else's opinion whilst presenting my opinion as fact.
To date, I have never utilized the IGNORE function. I'm getting really tempted, though. And hey, if I'm on your Ignore List...well, you aren't seeing this anyway so what do I care?
P.S. If someone can confirm that by getting a DDI subscription I, too, can get the mind-reading Psionic Browser, I'll pay for a year's subscription.
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