[eliteinfantry]

While I have frequented this forum for quite a long time even before registering, I never wanted to get caught in the crossfire of whining newbies, and have only bothered to post when I felt that something really needed to be said.

I will start with saying that while there are several people on this forum who are nothing but complete wastes of human flesh, whose only contribution to the community has been the hindrance of its flourishing, there are still many that surf the boards- whom prefer to remain silent- who truly and sincerely appreciate the time that you modders take out of your personal lives to add extra longevity to their favorite game.

You have to realize that the Medal of Honor series has been a mainstream franchise ever since the original game was released for PSOne. You must also realize that up until Allied Assault was released, consoles and PCs separated the boys from the men (monetarily speaking). So of course, once all of my console buddies heard that the PC was going to get an exclusive Medal of Honor title, they all wanted PCs.

And so it came to pass that they purchased crappy computers, and then MoH. But then they heard about these awesome games called Half-Life and Day of Defeat, and that they would run great on any crappy system. They started finding replacement weapon models for DoD and HL soon after being told about their existence in Gamespy Arcade's chat rooms. Then, somehow, they found their ways to aa.com, many of them following links from other sites such as Planet Medal of Honor to find this otherwise squared away website and the forums contained within it. Thus, the newbies (the "RELEASE IT NOW!" crowd that don't understand how modding and bug-fixing works) and the whiners (RIP! RIIIP! THAT MODEL IS SO FUCKING RIPPED!) were born.

Does that proposition sound a bit outlandish or assuming? Well, think about it. Quake III and every other popular-to-mod game before it did not have all the young, immature whiners and complainers that MoH now has. This is attributed to a number of things:
1) When Quake III was still highly popular (it is arguably only moderately popular to lucrative now), the high-end computers required to run it were still wildly expensive, unlike today when you can get a moderately powerful gaming system for $700 from "the folks at Dell," thus shutting out those of lesser means, chiefly the 10 to 15-year-old bracket. So you were either a mature (for the most part), hardcore FPS computer gamer who was willing to put up with troubleshooting your computer every other day, or were a wee lad who stuck with the less expensive, more user-friendly Nintendo 64 and bought Goldeneye instead.
2) The original Doom was EVIL, and so were all other PC FPSes. Ever since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold referenced Doom as their inspiration to kill everyone at Columbine High (as was hinted in their class project video), wary parents became aware of the violence in PC first person shooter titles. Indeed, once these games were brought to better light after the massacre, it became clear that such titles as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Quake didn’t exactly have a good rep sheet, further limiting accessibility of such games to younger audiences.
3) Medal of Honor is a more realistic and slow-paced affair than Quake III and the like. The fast-paced, run ‘n’ gun deathmatch of the Quake series was strictly limited to those with exceptional skills and reflexes, the supposedly “hardcore FPS gamer.” Plus they had that “old school” flavor to them that just didn’t prove popular with younger gamers. But MoH is accessible to many others, and looks much more desirable to console gamers, which, as I said, have a much larger, younger user-base than computer FPSes do.
When I was still in an MoH clan, our team leader picked up a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003, and then relayed to me how he couldn’t believe how the other players were acting. “They actually congratulate you on your kills,” he told me, then went on to describe in small details how the players were all real good sports, and most importantly, didn’t whine each time you killed them. Why is this? Because UT is fast-paced old-school deathmatch action aimed squarely at veteran FPS gamers. Relatively few MoH players actually play the game.

You understand where I’m going with this, right? I can safely say that many of the whiners in these forums were not PC gamers before Allied Assault, but were console gamers who just don’t know how this all works, and are of course not going to sympathize with modders, or learn how to model or skin for that matter. If there is any one group of people that is good at criticizing and dissing others without any consideration for the hardships they go through, it is the younger crowd, such as those who migrated from consoles to Allied Assault.

It is easy to diss the work of others through simple words of cruelty that are so easily accessible by preteen minds. It is, on the other hand, much more difficult to write a thank-you note, which may be attributable to the relative lack of positive responses that the modders of this forum receive. I was greatly disturbed when a particular modeler recently complained that all of the community that inhabits this forum is ungrateful for his works. This is simply not true. As I mentioned earlier, there are several who browse these forums that prefer not to be seen or heard, whom greatly appreciate such hard work, whether the works are entirely original or not. They simply don’t want to get involved with such juvenile behaviors exhibited by younger forum users that don’t understand the mod scene. These quiet users are the ones who have been playing PC FPSes for years, who have graciously participated in the modding scene since Quake and even before. I know I’m one.

So I say thank you, modders, for being so awesome to those who really care about your efforts, and to remember your target audience: you are not doing it for those who delight in tearing down and ruining great things, who only mean ill will toward the community, and whom therefore don’t deserve to have their humanity be acknowledged. Don’t give them the courtesy of doing so by heeding their words. It is more than they deserve.