First of all, I know that nobody cares and people announcing what they're doing like this is annoying, but whatever.
Anyway, on the occasion of getting (which didn't come as a surprise) a warning for being a little too aggressively honest in a Dragon Age 3 thread, I figured it's about time to do what I've been meaning to and take a break from every community on the internet that I don't already trust to be at the level of sensibility that I want to expose myself to, including this one.
Not to say that you're all terrible people. Most of the power users are some great guys, and I wouldn't have stuck around for over two years and 4000+ posts if I didn't like it around here. But I don't think anyone hasn't noticed that the entire online gaming community is getting really, really, really, really, really negative. Inhumanly negative. And I figure I'd be better off avoiding it, because you can't apply reason to something completely unreasonable, and if you try, you'll just end up really frustrated.
Everything is terrible for some reason. A while ago I made a post looking at high-profile releases from the last two years, and how, for every single one, I've heard a significant amount of people say it was "ruined forever". Halo, Zelda, Star Wars, Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, Deus Ex, every other first party Nintendo franchise, Sonic, Crysis, and more recently and specifically, SSX, Pokemon, Silent Hill, The Darkness, Resident Evil, etc. Almost every one of these (probably excluding AC, DX, and Skyrim) has had an extremely vocal or sometimes overwhelmingly negative reaction, usually over the tiniest shit. Some of it's justified, but not to the point of calling it "ruined forever" and filing fucking FTC complaints.
This is something I've said before, but ten years ago, the lead-up to a game was excitement from the fans and reasonable doubts. Now it's a huge mess of hate and dismissal with a little bit of hype (and those people are now, very ironically, called "sheep") off in a corner. I fucking love Zelda. When Skyward Sword was getting nearer, I couldn't go into a thread about it without reading "ZELDA IS RUINED FOREVER" over and over and over and over. And then one person might say it doesn't look that bad, and instantly regret it. It's like trying to be a Centrist in Congress. And then when the game came out, the same thing. In a completely unsurprising turn of events, it was received by the community as "the worst Zelda game ever".
I'd love to get into social psychology, how bias in groups and predispositions and all that work, but that would honestly be a waste of time.
Now, I'm not a confrontational person at all. I haven't gotten angry at anyone in real life since puberty (to their face at least, including passive-aggressiveness). Someone could hit my car and I'd probably be the one apologizing for some reason.
But like I said, a couple days ago I made a warning-worthy post in response to the... pessimism toward Dragon Age and Bioware. I'm not the type to be shallow pessimistic and this whole year most of my experience reading through these forums, and others, has been frustration and disappointment over the pessimism. I keep saying that something'll change eventually since this pessimism can't grow forever, and until it does, I'll stop trying to be reasonable optimistic in a place that runs on the opposite.
It was fun, for the first year, when I could still confidently call this place one of the most intelligent forums I was a part of. I'm a bit sad that it had to change, but that's the will of the masses. So good luck. I'll just be over here letting myself enjoy things. Maybe I'll play through Dragon Age 2 again.
inb4 "No one cares", "good riddance", etc. I already know that.
Also inb4 me getting another warning for this post. At least I'll still be clean enough for Neo, if I end up coming back to do that.