Lets see if I can get downrepped.

DRM is great! (especially Securom)
I'm Wakalo!
Nice shoes, you buy now! LOOK!
Blah blah, politics, blah.
Blah, blah, religion, blah.

That aint no way to taunt!
Threaten to fart in their general direction, or wave your private parts at their aunties. That should work.

It's really too bad you can't view other's post histories here. That feature alone can come in handy when someone pops up and you have no idea who it is that you're talking to. You can just look back and read what they've said in the past and get a general idea of who you're engaging in conversation with. I used to use it on myself quite a bit just to see what I had been up to the previous nights before on other forums during my online drinking sessions (as we'll refer to them here). That was yeaaaaaaaaaaars ago... -__-

Searching on user names on the search engine or using Google's site: function works just fine for this, if it's something you want to do.

Ah, here it's mainly if someone writes out of the blue wanting to trade or such. I don't dig through post histories here unless I feel there's a good reason. It is a neat feature that I grew accustomed to in vBulletin.

Rep now shows for people in the PM page, I'd only worry about it for sub-100 rep folks.

Yeah, fortunately I haven't had any bad trades. I keep a list of good traders. But yeah, someone popping up in PM with -100 would make me a little suspicious. :D

Like that tinyE fellow.

kidding :P

My "blinded by nostalgia" argument has yet to be defeated. Noone has set up the blind trial of gamers isolated from gaming media, who have not played any of the DE games, to play the three and rank them.

I cannot imagine how any self-respecting gamer could possibly rank the series in an order other than:

1) Human Revolution
2) Invisable War
3) Deus Ex

...unless they were blinded by nostalgia/sentimental attraction to the first/groupthink.

I could perhaps see switching 2 and 3, but I think the case for Human Revolution is so strong that it essentially jumps the small gap between its overwhelming subjective superiority, and becomes objectively better. How is that so hard to understand and accept? Just because *I* said it? You people tend to make the grave error of antagonism for antagonisms sake with me. The messenger is irrelevant, only the message matters.
So we are agreed that this communities cultish devotion to Deus Ex is Klan-like? How very evolved of you ;)

That is sort of the point. No one cares that you rank them the way you do, it's the way you present that message. For example, just like you did: "I cannot imagine how any self-respecting gamer.."

And I have never seen anyone promote Deus Ex the way you make it out to be, it's sort of like SimonG's personal vendetta against Baldur's Gate 1. Get over it that some people enjoy a game you didn't.

Then again I don't know why I bother, I should take keeveek's brilliant advise that people are allowed to be wrong and just let it go but maybe I'm just curious to see if you're either full of it and only wants to make a meaningless argument out of it or it somehow bugs you that some people, for some reason you can't understand, enjoys Deus Ex more than Human Revolution.

Just answer this: Does it bother you that some people rank Deus Ex higher than Human Revolution?

Not really. It bothers me that people won't accept that their opinions might not originate with them. All this slavish praise heaped on the game as if it was the undisputed king of the medium, by a bunch of people who only played and liked the game in many cases because an internet list told them to.

It's like film snobs who talk about Felini this, and Bergman that, just because Criterion told them they were the pinnacle, or music snobs who extol the virtues of the Foo Fighters just because the singer is a kickass drummer from one of the most famous bands of the 90's. It's like people don't have their own opinions anymore, there is this massive groupthink, spawned and maintained by popular internet critics and sites, and while noone can pinpoint why exactly this status quo is preferable to any other, dissent from this dogma is met with instant ostracizing.

I just find is sad how rare it is to find an interesting person with an interesting set of interests/opinions. Everyone is so homogeneous. The fact that this is a forum mainly populated by lovers of videogames, particularly those from the past, should not result in the homogeny of opinions on particular subjects. It's like Bill Maher said about the US political system, there are no alternative candidates. No anti-war, no anti-corporation, just slight contrast shifts of the exact same dogma.

Where was the dreadful part? How about we look at some "dreadful gameplay" videos of the original? Or "dreadful graphics"?

This is getting kind of ridiculous. A few members have been downvoted on some posts, and now they:

- claim that they are being targeted personally
- claim that GOG is a "cult" which is less inviting of dissenting opinions
- demand that the (-) button be taken away
- demand that it be shown who used the (-) button on a post
- and so on.

What I see is some people are childishly pointing their fingers and blaming an entire community, doing anything they can to explain why they might be downvoted. But the one thing they haven't considered is that maybe they've been downvoted if their posts come off rude or immature, or if those posts don't add to the discussion at hand. Or maybe they express themselves negatively too frequently. Constructive criticism is good, but some people tend to whine about the same things on a consistent basis. After awhile it can easily be interpreted as trollish behavior.

It seems some members feel that their status should be above that of others, and that no matter what they say or do, people shouldn't downvote them. I might not have been around long, but it seems that GOG is growing and some people who might have been "elite" posters a year or two ago can't cope with the growing community and wider range of opinions.

There's a saying:

"If you run into an a**hole in the morning, you ran into an a**hole. If you run into a**holes all day, you're the a**hole."

If people find themselves in a position where they are being downvoted, maybe they should think more carefully about what they are saying or how they say it. It's almost as if some people want to be abrasive and contentious, but they can't handle it when the community responds negatively. So they take to blaming everyone, blaming the system, blaming the site, and basically blaming every single thing except for themselves.

Just my two cents. I think the forum and +/- system are fine. They are there for a reason. Some people simply can't handle it when the feedback comes in their direction.

Can I put this in my signature when they're turned back on?

Also, to those who say I should man up and reply to a post instead of downvoting it: Has arguing on the Internet ever accomplish anything? Ever?