You are perfectly entitled to your own opinion of course. But Verbal Abuse is a well known and insidious form of abuse, just as damaging as physical abuse and a lot harder to counter because it leaves no outward signs. I have plenty of personal and intense experience with Verbal Abusers, both the aggressive and passive versions, and there are plenty of respected psychologists and counselors out there whose works on the subject I respect. I do not just toss out the term, lightly or otherwise. And I don't call someone a Verbal Abuser until they've proven themselves as such, and not just with one post, but with a series of incidents. I would also add that you have no idea what went on behind the scenes of the boards in PMs.
I think you might have mistaken my post for something that occurred immediately upstream in this thread. It was a reaction to something that was posted several pages earlier than that. It involved someone who was clearly attempting to browbeat and castigate TonyV, was, based on other entries by the same person (many deleted by mods) and PMs to me personally, entirely deserving of the title.
Being the person this is aimed at, I'll be happy to either forward this private exchange or post it so everyone can see how "abusive" I've been. The reason why the "pessimists" are having trouble offering positive solutions is because in truth, we are unable to force NCSoft's hand on this. This is their property, and we can't legally or forcefully take it from them. The fans of "Firefly" convinced the studio to try again, but they didn't get the rights to anything. I also haven't seen the numbers they had, does anyone know if they were comparable, fewer, greater?
While I was all for some kind of movement to get things going (the reason I came here in the first place), what I saw being discussed alarmed me and honestly made me concerned that not only would the efforts not work, but many of the tactics being discussed might have actually interfered with more sincere and plausible attempts. I also witnessed things that were let's just say inappropriate, and tried to speak out against such actions or viewpoints.
Not once have I really ever made personal attacks on anyone here. Saying someone is acting in a way that's not appropriate is not the same thing as calling them names. What did my comments get me? People made derogatory comments about me on a personal level (VV for instance).
FrankTurk didn't get into name calling either, but people sure are projecting that behavior onto him, Most of his posts have been articulate and reasonable. If someone says this path leads to a bad place, regardless of how they say it, they're going to be met with almost violent opposition. Well, what if they are right? What if it's obvious to someone who isn't emotionally charged that taking certain roads will not only be unsuccessful, but will close the door for other roads which may have had a better chance of succeeding?
While I don't think the magic number is $50 million, I see the amount needing to be more than what they would get as a loss from their deductions. I also see the purchaser needing to be willing to assume all liability and to hold NCSoft harmless from any claims of liability. Being someone who has purchased a business, I can tell you this is standard operating procedure for doing this.
So how do you stop these corporations from raking you over the coals? For me this fight isn't just over City of Heroes.
Simple, you don't give them the ability in the first place by refraining from doing business with them. Either that or you lawyer up and sue them after they do something wrong. The problem here is legally they didn't do anything that would have consequences. This is one of those things that sucks, but unless we find out that something illegal happened, then we can't do anything about it. The only recourse is to try to permanently damage their reputation (which people already started honestly), but this really should only be considered if you're willing to burn the bridge and don't want anything from them.
If you guys don't believe me or the others who have spoken up, fine. Go talk to businessmen that aren't attached to this. Go talk with a lawyer. Go talk with another software company and see what it would take for their customers to force them to do something they decided against doing. You have the power to make waves, but you can't control what the waves will do. Tony has done a decent job at trying to contain as much as he can, but in reality it wasn't really us that had the shot, it was Paragon.
Once more, if anyone sees what I'm saying as being abusive, go ahead and speak up. Look at what I'm saying, not what you want to take offense to.