What happened at RPGCodex?

I'm not sure how many remember, but I was banned from RPG codex a long time ago for pointing out some holes in a review of NWN by Saint Proverbius. I was annoyed, but not exactly gutted, because at that time the whole site was just a playpen for a handful of regulars.

Since then I've been back there about once a year to see what they're currently wittering about (kinda like I do here but with less affection ). Today when I did that I noticed a couple of fairly massive changes:

1) Their MMORPG hate campaign seems to have been a bit derailed by the current posters being into MMORPGs

2) The people who kept it a closed shop discussion wise (SP, Rosh, etc) don't appear to be posting anymore.

Sooooo ... what happened? Was there some electronically transmitted disease that only affected loud-mouthed twats or something? No, hang on ... that can't be it or the Internet would have died.

 

It seems like sometime this new year a lot of new people came and completely took over the forum.

 

Having never been there myself, I could not say. Although it seems that it was run by a bunch of dim-witted fucks to begin with. Why the hell would you ban someone for pointing a flawed statement? Can we say ego, self-esteem, and insecurity problems!?!?

 

I've noticed that every forum dies, eventually...the only reason that no-one really notices is because new ones pop up almost as quickly as the old ones die.

 

1. Not really, just Guild Wars (which isn't an MMORPG and isn't covered)
2. Rosh only visits when there's shit to stir up. SP became a whole lot mellower over the last year or so.

As for the ban... the holes were BS. The points you made were BS, given the light in which Codex is run (the single most important criterium for game critiques being game design - which makes editors or multiplayer capability a non-factor).
The ban, however, was also BS. Heat/kitchen and all that.
I remember you being disappointed in me for not sticking up for you. Well, when the site got off the ground, I made it pretty clear to the management that I didn't want to involve myself with actual content or forum moderation, so I stayed out of it. I made it clear I would quit if certain lines got crossed. This entire thing didn't cross my line.

Edit: Oh, and the pissing match on the subject of thin clients vs. dumb clients (which happened around the same time IIRC, was also basically you vs SP and Rosh and certainly factored into the ban) was pretty inane as well, but I freely admit that most of the blame in keeping that semanticsfest going isn't on you.

 

Exitium's private flaming grounds? Hah. Exitium left for a while, after some people made a Wiki out of all the stupid stuff he's gotten himself into.

 

Exit is still posting... He's gone from IRC though.
Rosh hasn't been posting much since people keep making fun of his "I killed a man. IN. REAL. LIFE." thing.

Sheriff, things change. That whole thing happened so long ago. I myself, became involved in a flamewar with SP and some others on the Codex and now I'm a news writer there. Things really do change.

 

Yeah, Jinxed, but your flamewar was even more clearly your own damn fault than Sheriff's.

 

Subjective.

 

True. Main reason I posted that (and the original reply to Sheriff, to some extent) though is that I've been in a strangely uplifted and nasty mood the last few days.

 

I don't know what flamewar you were referring to, but I have noticed that a large number of forums're slowing down. This one is getting less activity, and so is the LOA one, and so are most others. I think that forum usage is simply dropping into a bit of a blue-funk. Especially forums like this, where it's dedicated pretty fiercely to a series of games that's dying out.

 

Don't worry DE, they're always be some 12 year old with a browser and an inane agenda to open up another gay little bbs.

 

This says it all for me really. Guildwars is an MMORPG. It's marketed as one, it's played as one, it gets the majority of its player base from other MMORPGs. Rather than say Codex did a u-turn on MMORPGs, you'll try to pretend Guildwars is not an MMORPG.

As for my, ban, your perspective is a little different from mine. Whatever the stated mission of Codex, it's doomed to failure if you say that reasoned arguments are undesirable. My criticisms of SP's NWN review were reasoned, and it was only my disagreement with SP that got me in trouble. That's not about the mission of the board, that's about one mod's ego.

It was pretty laughable that SP eventually got the point where he more or less said to me "agree with me or I'll ban you". He may have eventually deleted the post (he did that a few times to save face), but the post was something to the effect where he asked me a really skewed question and told me I had to post yes or no or he'd ban me.

The thin client thing WAS inane, but it wasn't started by me and it was perpetuated as much by Rosh and SP as me, and as usual, I was the only one out of those 3 who refrained from infantile name calling.

DU, I still have copies of your PMs to me on that subject. If you remember, you sent me trying to get me to say silly things and I sent back to you saying I wasn't interested in flaming people.

Anyhow, I didn't intend to discuss my ban here. The Codex owners can set whatever rules they like and ban who they like. They don't need my approval. I was only commenting on the fact things seem to have changed a bit over there. Different people posting the news, etc, and a different attitude to MMORPGs

 

Enough with the "I'm still bitter" thing already. Guild wars isn't an MMORPG, simply because of the fact that the "massive" part is missing from it. The fact that it is built around a "lobby" idea where you can go multiplayer-game with a smaller group of people puts it outside the MMORPG genre. Yeah, gameplay is similar. Yeah, Exitium plays the game religiously. So cry me a river.

Also, we STILL don't cover it, because it lacks a single-player component. When a game doesn't have that, we don't cover it.

As for the ban: as I stated in my original post, I thought it was BS. However, I also think the "reasoned" part got lost on your side as well, and you got wholly stuck in trolling/"lern dem real good" mode. If you didn't intend to discuss the ban here, try not to make the fact that you're still bitter about it so painfully obvious.

 

Oh, and to get rid of the bad vibe in this thread:
Sheriff, dude, how have you been? Long time no see man! How's life and everything?

 

It's an MMORPG in my book. It has a massive user base, it gives the same opportunities to meet and play with a global audience, and it's an RPG.

I see your point about the lobby, but if you look around at other MMORPG titles, instancing is pretty common these days. It's not limited to guildwars, though GW is the first to instance all outdoors areas.

The forum users of Codex would seem to agree with me that it's an MMORPG, since it's being discussed (or was last time I visited a while back) in the MMORPG forum.

I'm not bitter about the ban. Why would I be? I stopped visiting T-A ages ago and haven't restarted in any regular way, and I certainly had much more attachment to this place than to Codex.

However, like you I thought the ban was BS, and I think it's pretty understandable that I would mention that in passing when making my original post. You're the one who elaborated and the reason it became something other than a passing mention.

I personally never understood how people bought the trolling thing or me having some kinda vendetta against SP. I fundamentally disagreed with SP on a lot of RPG issues, and naturally that came out when I posted. However, I also agreed with him on quite a few issues, and was never slow to say so

The combativeness developed over a period of time. On my part the agression stemmed from the fact SP kinda used Rosh (or Rosh did it and he turned a blind eye) to hound people with abuse in every thread if those people were not toeing the party line. I believe the agression on SP's part probably came simply form the fact he didn't like me disagreeing with him (I honestly believe this, I'm not just having a pop at him).

My main feelings about Codex were disappointment. I tried hard to support it when it was in it's infancy by visiting and joining discussions. Originally I thought the idea was (and I may just have got the wrong end of the stick, I admit) that it would be a place to cut through the bullshit of RPGdot, etc. A place where you could find an honest review of a game instead of something written to please the software makers.

It was sad to see when people put up reviews that were clearly more about fulfillling an agenda than assessing the software. Rather than honest information it was just information skewed in a different way.

Life's good. Ironically I am working for the police at the moment. It's an e-learning system development and pretty interesting, though a bit scary to see how tax money is so flagrantly wasted (e.g. they employ people like me).

Haven't played a single-player RPG in a LONG time. Troika doing a D&D one finally turned me off completely. I didn't play that and haven't bothered looking at new titles ever since.

Except Guidlwars, but I only looked at that because I was looking for a new MMORPG to play