4101

I’m not sure I can imagine things from Brad’s point of view, because he seems to be the type of person who takes great, personal affront when people say exactly the same things to him that he says to other people, whereas I’m a lot more water-off-a-ducks-back when it comes to personal insults. So presumably from Brad’s point of view Matt has a vendetta against him and stalks him everywhere he goes and is probably unbalanced on some level, possibly even dangerous, and who knows what he could do next? Whereas my view of Matt is that he’s a bit of an asshole and not nearly as clever as he thinks he is, but otherwise he’s just a regular forum denizen like the rest of us. Sometimes he trolls, sometimes he flames and sometimes he makes good points.

I don’t think anything Matt said was worthy of a hissy fit, never mind banning. But I’m the sort of person who has gone flame-for-flame with Matt and didn’t resort to cross-posting cherry-picked quotes on my own site to… accomplish whatever Brad wanted to accomplish there.

When I look at Brad, I see a guy who is not good at handling criticism. Period. Not just trolling and flaming and mocking, but any criticism whatsoever. When he saw Angie’s review, what did he do? Did he answer the criticism? No, he posted on Facebook, ignored everything he couldn’t refute and cherry-picked something to make an ad hominem attack about. Which has pretty much been his MO in every discussion I’ve ever seen him in here.

Does it matter why Angie decided to review his book? Even if she did it specifically because it was his, the fact remains that it is terrible. The more I pay attention to Brad, the more he seems like Derek Smart light. The ad hominem attacks, treating every criticism of his products as an ad hominem attack on himself, the sock-puppets and/or sycophants on his forums, the banning of non-sycophants.

So while I can sort of see Brad’s side of things, I still don’t respect him. Because when I’m in that situation I try to behave like an adult. When someone criticizes your work you either brush it off because there are always detractors, or you say why you couldn’t do it that way, or you tuck it away and try to do better next time. You don’t go on Facebook and claim there’s a politically-motivated smear campaign.

4102

But… isn’t that someone other than Brad posting on that thread?

4103

If you want a Fantasy 4X, you probably want the Fall From Heaven mod for Civ IV.

Speaking of which, Civ IV was a game with a lot of issues at release. Mostly performance issues and hardware-specific graphics issues, but it still took a few patches before the game was playable on my box.

4104

Brad posted on Facebook about it, and made the same pseudo-defense. Which may be where the sycophant found out about it, or they could’ve been talking to Brad elsewhere.

4105

OK, that makes more sense.

That thread’s swiftly becoming an idiot magnet (which is why I’m posting in it, hurf durf).

4106

I totally agree. Fantasy should have the fewest cliches of any genre, but instead it has the most.

4107

Um… a Stardock employee made those sorts of accusations about people, by name (regardless if they post with them or not), on Stardock’s message board??? Is he speaking for the company?

Better judgement says to shut up, but I’m more than a little shocked. I am not a lawyer, but isn’t that defamation?

Yeah, I went there.

4108

Wow.

I’ve taken part in a number of fairly unhappy threads regarding Elemental’s ghastly launch, but I’d like to think that I’ve kept the rancor level low and been constructive for the most part. I’ve spent most of my time posting in the “What are the major issues?” and “How can this be fixed?” kind of threads, yet I got a nice little surprise tonight.

Despite being a member of various Stardock forums for over 9 years, I just had my posting rights revoked. I’m definitely still logged in and have tried on multiple browsers to see if it was some sort of cookie issue.

Curious way to deal with dissatisfied customers Stardock.

4109

Please read the whole thread before retreading ground we’ve already been through. Any forum apologist could explain to you that Stardock is currently too busy solving launch related problems to deal carefully with customer service issues. In fact, they could tell you that beta multiplayer was so robust that the niggling detail of zero available multiplayer servers from launch day forward shouldn’t mar the reviews of ethical gaming journalists. Also, Stardock development efforts are so reliable and customer-friendly that you should take it as an article of faith that all issues will be perfectly resolved in the fullness of time, despite the apparent incongruity of cobbling together 11th hour, release day patches for a game that was stated to have no financial constraints, etc.

4110
4111

That’s really too bad about you getting banned. Your posts were detailed and thoughtful, in my opinion. I suspect that my days are also numbered, since Brad will probably go into a rage when he reads that thread about his vanity novel and ban everyone but Rune_74 and that guy who said that everyone should spam Amazon with positive book reviews. :D

Also, I’m new here. Please be nice to me!

4112

I feel lied to. You’re not very surly.

4113

He’s surlier than you might think. But not necessarily in a bad way :)

Then again, I own a proliferation of Grumpy shirts so I’m not a good judge.

4114

Kings Bounty is great, though - more like HOMM in its play.

4115

Truth.

On topic (sorta? cross-board drama is even better than cross-thread drama!): Apparently QT3 is (per the amazing Destiny’s Embers thread) the most prominent public forum for industry insiders. Everyone should be so privileged, and we welcome our new members from the Stardock boards? Probably.

4116

Stardock forum members have inside knowledge of what it’s like to be banned from the official forums for being critical of a botched game launch.

4117

You may know this…you may not…but HOMM was based on the original King’s Bounty. I just had to say that.

4118

I am in the same boat mate. Banned for being honest.

4119

He’s not as surly as the Bob we already have. But I guess this can be one of those ironic nicknames, like calling a big guy Little John.

4120

I registered just to say this comment is why I love the internet.

Sorry about that.

Go read this, maybe some laughts will heal your temporal exposition to unfamiliar fantasies outside safe-territory