[Gousgounis]

I have followed these boards since 2002 and I have only had the desire to post a handful of times, but either time would not allow it, or the site would not cooperate, so when a few minutes ago I had the rare urge, and the stars aligned, I almost felt obligated to finally post. A lot has changed since I first stumbled upon this site, back then I was still leveling and learning my troll shaman, and FoH was doing VT. Change is inevitable and as such these boards have also changed and in my personal opinion not for the better.
I cannot even put my finger on why, when and how things starting changing. Maybe I am older, maybe you can only read so many rants before they all sound the same, but FoH is not what it used to be. It has been mentioned before but Furor’s rants were intrinsically different than the ones we read today, and that’s fortunate since I don’t think anyone could out-Furor Furor, even though it seems some futilely try.

Honoring my first post here, I could write a book on my view of what I have seen (as a neutral party) in the last few years, but I am already exceeding the forum’s short attention span and some of you have already quit reading and replying with a random flame so instead I will touch on the subject at hand that made me want to post after 42 pages.

I don’t remember Brad ever wanting sincere and candid discussion here, at least not in public, where I could see it. It always seemed to be fluff or PR crap. I am not saying that the responses he got were warranted, so I agree with Duppin here, but, honestly he never tried, that whole honest feedback thing. I always saw Vanguard with (to quote penny-arcade) “cautious optimism” as I try to take any extreme opinion or obvious conflict of interest with a grain of salt so I didn’t really ever buy all the promises from Brad and company, but unfortunately most of the criticisms from the posters here came off as mostly dismissible as well (regardless of being right or wrong, if you wanted to convey a message to help, in the end you have failed because of the way you delivered it. It is funny and ironic that Brad is getting blamed for his delivery here, when I think the critics did not manage to salvage their own collective credibility, because of their delivery, before Sigil & VG were obviously in trouble).

In the end being blunt, belligerent, brutally honest, confrontational and expect the same from others is absolutely ok by me, as well as holding people accountable for what they say and do (hopefully in a perfect world, everyone would be, not just the visitors, but the residents as well). But that can be accomplished with class, civility, confidence in your knowledge and authority, but without having to resort to attention grabbing, cheap, shallow and meaningless remarks that honestly are quickly forgotten. Evidence of that is the constant need to quote “pwnage” from even a page ago, because honestly it does not have the lasting power to even carry through a click of “next”

Sorry If I sound condescending or bring a sense of entitlement, but I have not given up on these boards, there are many intelligent people here, that I value their opinions. Bandwidth and hits are not all that matters, if the material here is becoming less a discourse in gaming and more the equivalent of Gaming Jerry Springer.

Thanks for reading if you got this far,

Gous