I would like to be the first person to express my grave reservations about

[Fatcat]

First of all, can someone tell me why H ominem has been filtered? I added a space between the H and the o to prevent filtering.

This entire post is silly sensationalism from a poster known for nothing but. Something great has happened? How can I *possibly* rain on everyone's parade? It's absolutely no surprise that this comes from Fatcat rather than some respectable poster.

It's not even worth thinking about -- if you haven't played Academy or Armada, give them a shot, they're amazing amazing games. Arena is, too... and I can speak from experience when I say that the development team has been *very* interested in connecting this release to the preceding Wing Commander lore and experience.

That's just all there is to it.

Please, Loaf, I was trying to express my opinion quite seriously, but this whole statement is a fallacious Ad ~~~~~~~ argument. Please do not draw my previous squabbles with you into this in an attempt to discredit my sincere opinion.

Well, there's the problem with all of this -- in *your* mind. No developer who lived through Origin in the early 90s would call EA distant or unintrusive (even *before* the buyout)... and no current EA producer is rubbing his hands together and plotting how to best screw over *your* favorite franchise (be it C&C, Wing Commander, NFS or... whatever you have some small problem with). A public that knows absolutely nothing about the history or how games are made has invented their own set of increasingly paranoid and elaborate corporate conspiracy theories... and it's just so silly. It's unbelievable that someone could possibly react to a new Wing Commander game with 'how can I convince myself they're trying to screw me this time?'

I am not claiming a conspiracy theory in any way, shape, or form. EA is out to make money off of the Wing Commander name, not appeal to fans like us. Just because I believe that they have taken the wrong path for the game doesn't mean they're trying to screw me personally.

A quote suddenly comes to mind: "The ability to speak does not make you intelligent."

Wing Commander has been a long, long lasting gaming series that has had a wide range of different storytelling mediums. Simply because you're "debating" - which you're not, you're just pissing down everyone's leg to hear yourself speak - doesn't mean you have a valid point.

Here is another quote that applies: "Everyone has the right to an informed opinion." (Harlan Ellison)

You obviously are not informed in the slightest. Knee-jerk (emphasis on the second word) reactions to a brand new annoucement don't really fly, considering Arena isn't even 24 hours old, and yet here we have you throwing out the idea that simply because it's not in the same gaming format as (most) of the other WC games, it's a step-back or some other asinine rhetoric bullshit.

By your line of thought, the movie, cartoon series, CCG, novels, Armada Campaign Mode, toys and all other tie-ins are invalid as well - not because you can make a point of it, but because you don't like it, despite the fact that they're embraced by the community and part of the whole WC experience.

There are words that were once said of Skeet Ulrich that apply to you at the moment: "There is nothing good about you or anything you do."

Once again, I am not trying to troll or be a nuisance. Please stop your Ad ~~~~~~~ argument, as it is a logical fallacy. I have seen sufficient evidence of the game's nature to make my opinion on it.

I don't need to be better informed than you. The deductive logic is very simple - Wing Commander is a great gaming series built on (shock!) great games. Why would Arena be any different? If anything, it has to be better than average, as it now has to fight against 8 years of competition, a new gaming format and a generation of kids who've never chased a Krant with nothing but some lasers and a dumbfire.

This is a very Dogmatic argument. Just because it has the WC label on it doesn't mean it will always be good, especially considering what we've seen so far.

Yeah, that may have been a bit harsh. I just didn't like seeing our project being used as a justification for distrusting Arena.

That wasn't my intention at all. I was showing how devoted the Wing Commander fan base was to the game.

If you notice - it's because those people are saying very negative things that are shot down very easily. I'm not LOAF or ^Death - I'm not big brained like they are; consider me the pea-shooter and them the Guns Of Navarone.

And to quote a favorite movie of mine - "Mess with the bull, young man - and you get the horns."

I find this especially distressing. So far, we have only posted our reservations about Arena, and all of your arguemnts have boiled down to "We're the Forum regulars, we've been here forever...... we're on the INTERNET!" -Lowtax
I am not purposely being negative, and I hope that the initial awe of a new Wing Commander game coming out will wear off and you can argue past this. Pulling out lots of dubious quotes doesn't make you corrrect, LeHah.

Let that be decided by staff. I've been around here long enough, they know how to get in touch with me if they feel the need.

I would like to point out that most of your arguments so far have been personal attacks on myself and Steltek. I do not wish for these kind of hostilities, as I wish to be part of this comminity without people like you getting angry over our differing opinions. If you wanted Yes-men, go rent a couple of Adbots from Something Awful.

That's just plain insulting - I've spent a good twenty minutes explaining in great detail why I think what you wrote is insane. If I just wanted to "win", I would have done exactly what you've just done - post one sentence about you being crazy, and be done with it. God knows, that would probably have been a better usage of my time. But no, I actually wasted time explaining why I disagree with you, and why I think your arguments aren't merely wrong, but downright unbelieveable.

Now, if you have any reasonable response to what I said, feel free to post it - but don't try to play the "I declare myself winner by default, so I don't need to respond" card, because it really doesn't work around here.

He was not referring to you, he was referring to LeHah and Loaf.

User was banned for this post

That was uncalled for. Banning people who disagree with you is hardly fair.

User was banned for this post (rule 9)

Please, everyone, calm down. Loaf and LeHah, I do not seek to quarrel with you further, I merely wish to express my concerns over the path of the Wing Commander universe. I think many people have taken this argument far too seriously.

 

[KrisV]

That was uncalled for. Banning people who disagree with you is hardly fair.

There are a lot of people who don't agree with us, but only that one guy was banned -- for trolling.

9) If you believe that the CIC Staff have made a mistake in regard to various forum rules, policies, procedures or actions, protests are not to be done on the Forums. You should use E-Mail or IRC to contact the Administrators. Any messages posted on the Forums for this purpose will be deleted, and the person responsible may be banned.

That person is you.

 

[Jesus]

...well, it's either you or me next, Steltek. Fatcat said that you guys didn't tolerate posts that disagreed with what you liked very much. If I'm banned on a "Technicality" for this post, I'm inclined to believe him.

I'm not "protesting" anything. I just find it funny to see this unravel before us like this. Hehe, I guess I've seen everything I need to here then.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Fatcat likes to start fights, though. If he actually cares about Arena, then this would be the exact case of the boy crying wolf. He likes to stir people up, and from where I'm standing it looks like he got what he wanted. Good riddance, again -- it's our own fault for refusing to enforce permanent bans.

 

[Delance]

This is a very Dogmatic argument.

Oh yeah the evil dogmas are out to get you.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Someone should probably close this thread. It has served its purpose -- people are welcome to start their own threads criticizing the announcement, but the intentionality of this one makes a pretty gross environment to continue intelligent debate.

 

[Delance]

This entire thing is very silly. Fatcat doesn`t have a point other than attempting to portray himself as a victim of persectuion.

 

[Jesus]

Ah, see, this is like, the same scenario we were in earlier, but reversed!

You know how earlier, we didn't know the game was as strategy oriented, but you did? Well know, you don't know what Fatcat's really like, but I do.

Alright, a little history here.

Fatcat is a very picky kind of guy. He goes absolutely nuts when he loves something, but he won't really open up to much else. I suffer the same problem at times, some say we're probably diehard fans for certain games. I'm actually a huge fan for Star Fox, while he's a big fan for Wing Commander. One is a strategy oriented game, the other, an arcade game.

I did not understand until quite recently that I cannot use arcade games to introduce Fatcat to consoles. There are no shallow games out there that he likes, but this is a problem, because he cannot get "into" new games that are deep. Hence, he views deep games usually as being very "camp" and only appealing to people who are already fans.

From here, this leaves him very limited in what he can do in terms of video games. Usually, he sticks with the companies and the games that he loves so much. Half Life 2, Oblivion, Wing Commander, and a few others. These are very steady, reliable games that have done so well, there's no chance they will ever change... or, that was expected.

But now, Wing Commander has become an arcade game. It's no longer deep, it's shallow. It's no longer long, it's made to be quick and easy, accessible for everyone. If you're not a Wing Commander fan, this is great news. If you're reliant on the series for quality games however... not so good.

Obviously, this is a chance for WC to expand into the arcade market, maybe have more games if this one turns out well. That's fine, but, what if you don't like arcade games? I've never been able to get Fatcat to appreciate Star Fox, a perfectly fun, epic, really full of life arcade game, because it's still just too shallow for his tastes.

I understand you've run into problems in the past, but I don't know about those, and can't address them. What I know for certain is that Fatcat has a problem with this game for the above reasons. He has expressed his issues with it well, but he has not backed them up like this. I'm not sure I have a complete grasp of all his tastes, but over the years we have found these two to be very true. It also makes any chance of going from PC to console very hard, as all the games that he loves so much are PC games.

This is not Fatcat trying to start an argument. This is him expressing who he is as a person. It might be a friendlier community if sometimes, you guys had the eyes and ears to notice and listen.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

I know Fatcat, I've seen him do this before. He likes attention, that's the end of it.

 

[Quarto]

Arena is an arcade game, but up until now, WC games were NOT arcade games, that's my problem with it.

...Which would be something I would certainly agree with, if Arena was marketed as Wing Commander VII. But it's not. It certainly won't harm the WC franchise.

I mean, I'm no fan of the WC card game... but I never tried to argue that the card game would ruin any chance of a future WC game.

I thought it was obvious that EA did the least amount of work when it came to making games. Madden 04, 05, 06, 07. I fully expected to see Arena 1, 2, 3, 4.

People do criticise EA a lot about their sports series... but I honestly don't understand why. Each of these series apparently has a huge following - people who buy every new installment. They're obviously happy with what they get - so who are you to complain about EA selling people what they want? It's also a rather odd thing to complain about in any event, because of the very nature of a sports game. Just how innovative can you get, making another Madden game? You're not exactly going to change the way football is played . Taking that into consideration, it seems like EA really does try very hard to innovate in such series. To provide just one example, it's sports games that pioneered the idea of using motion capture to animate characters. Without dull, uninnovative Madden, characters in FPS games would probably still use unnatural hand-made animations.

Apparently, you think of the WC world when you hear the name Wing Commander. I think of a game series, on the other hand. You would be fine with a WC Board game being released, maybe UNO WC. I wouldn't mind Arena if WC was alive and well, but as it stands right now, spinoffs aren't the best way to revive a franchise, because usually, that's where the franchise then remains.

Well, yes - I am as attached to the WC world as I am to the games themselves. That's certainly not to say that I would buy anything with the Wing Commander name on it - for example, I don't have the WC card game, I don't have WCP GBA, I don't have the EA Replay compilation... and after finishing Privateer 2, I kinda wished I didn't have that one, either . Indeed, it's quite likely I'll never play Arena, because I don't expect to buy a 360, at least not in the foreseeable future. But even if there are WC products out there that I'm not interested in, I don't see how that hurts me or the franchise. EA isn't making Arena for itself - clearly, there are people out there who want the game. I just can't see what's so terrible about the fact that EA is financing the development of a product that many people will happily pay for. And, even if I might never play this game, I'm hugely excited about it - it's been ten years since I've last seen in-development screenshots of a new WC game. I love the simple joy of trying to figure out what each of the screenshots is showing - trying to identify each of the ships, trying to figure out how the game actually plays, and so on. Heck, I'm amazed at the game's graphics style - it looks like somebody has actually tried to combine the games with designs from the movie, and it's looking extremely neato.

At the end of the day, it's quality that matters. If EA decides to sell WC lunchboxes, that's fine by me too (though I wouldn't buy one ) - it's just that they'd better be the best damned lunchboxes the world has ever seen. In the case of Arena, I would be very cynical and angry if the game looked like crap - but if everything I've heard indicates that it's a fun and interesting game, why should I be concerned?

I never said we shouldn't buy it, I said we should make our voice heard that we don't want an Arena 2 when we have proven we're still around and active. After ten years of waiting, do we deserve anything less than a real sequel to the game? They've certainly had enough time to figure something out.

It's not about what we deserve - in point of fact, we deserve absolutely nothing. EA owes us absolutely nothing. The transaction has always been purely financial - they would develop a game, and we would pay for it in return. This is indeed one of the most terrible things about fans - how they eventually come to think that the developer owes them something, and how they take every decision they don't agree with as a personal attack. What's even more peculiar, however, is that once fans decide that the people responsible for the product they love are out to get them, they start coming up with the weirdest possible justifications for what they were thinking. Your previous post was an example of this (and to be honest, you haven't explained anything from your last post in this one - this post contains actual logic and reason, while the last one contained weird theories about how EA is out to get us, out to destroy the franchise, and out to make a lot of money in the process of destroying the very thing they're trying to sell us). So, it's worthwhile for you to remind yourself that you've always gotten what you paid for from EA - and that even if you don't intend to buy Arena, other people are happy to do so, and they *will* get what they paid for. So, nobody's trying to screw anyone - and for goodness' sake, cheer up! This may not be the game you're waiting for, but is it really something you should be upset about?