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| Thread: Death threats |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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MagniBronzeb...
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 06, 2017 04:58 PM |
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Death threats
I'm posting here because this is indirectly connected with 3rd heroes game, but it may not be the right place. It has to do with Forge town, but not the town itself, but the reaction of the fans. It still baffles me how an email threat in 1998 could shape development process of a rather large game. I'm sure such things happened in many cases after and probably before it. I don't doubt big game companies like Blizzard, EA, Bethesda get such messages sometimes too. Death threat over an email about a game is just harmless, many gamers are unable to perform acts of terrorism anyway, especially about a company miles away. It was most probably some overreacting kiddo as gamer community was much younger back in the day. In the worst case, if the company was so much worried about it, they could just denounce it.
Are there still such cases in game industry that few overreacting fans influence the company what to do? I mean, many newer heroes stuff is very crappy, but I don't recall developers making any changes in development because of some angry fans.
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Phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted July 06, 2017 06:05 PM |
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I don't really think they were worried about a few threats from some overreacting kids back in the day. But they were probably worried about the general reception of Forge as it was much more futuristic and alien, than the other factions. Even though Conflux was incredibly overpowerd and in some ways a bit boring (similar heroes for example) I'm glad we got Conflux instead of Forge.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted July 06, 2017 07:02 PM |
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Forge is available in VCMI.
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted July 06, 2017 07:15 PM |
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There was some info about Forge-related threats posted by J. Bullard about a month ago.
Quote:
The Forge town made it pretty far, we had the entire town, all of the creatures, an entire set of campaign maps and were balancing everything. Once unveiled the community HATED it. To the point that the development staff received snail mail death threats. The community forums set themselves on fire and screamed against all things Forge. The Lead Designer Greg received the brunt of the attacks. Some of the threats were pretty credible; one guy was a Marine living just north of San Diego. He sent us pictures of himself in uniform kicking the crap out other marines and one where he had just gutted some giant fish about the size of himself. Complete with explicit details on how to flay a human.
That was the final straw, so we scrapped the Forge; [...]
Forge cancelled
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 06, 2017 07:22 PM |
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i wish i would have known about that stuff at the time, but i wasn't even online then. i'd've loved to meet those fanboys. especially that p.o.s. marine. 
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MagniBronzeb...
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 07, 2017 03:24 PM |
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But has that marine been ever identified? It could be just someone taking pictures from somewhere else and about details about flaying, he could just get it somewhere off internet.
Because I wonder if I could make cancel for example the last c&c game sending a single email pretending to be a marine flaying humans.
Because I cannot recall any other death threat mail making game developers changing their game before release.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted July 07, 2017 03:42 PM |
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I think is not so much death threads but the fact NWC really cared about all of their players.
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/forgetown/index.php?cat=interview
Quote:
Q: DO YOU THINK 50% OF THE HEROES FANS WERE AGAINST THE FORGE?
GF: No. Total, the number of emails we received asking to remove the Forge were less than 100. I doubt 3DO received much more. As a series, Heroes has sold over 750,000 copies world wide. I would be surprised if more than 5% of the audience would have 'boycotted' the product. However, I still felt 5% was too high.
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 07, 2017 09:27 PM |
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Galaad said:
Quote:
Q: DO YOU THINK 50% OF THE HEROES FANS WERE AGAINST THE FORGE?
GF: No. Total, the number of emails we received asking to remove the Forge were less than 100. I doubt 3DO received much more. As a series, Heroes has sold over 750,000 copies world wide. I would be surprised if more than 5% of the audience would have 'boycotted' the product. However, I still felt 5% was too high.
so what about the other 95%, ffs? by those numbers, he left 749,900 fans in the lurch; due to only one hundred dumbasses with their opinions and threats?. that's snowing retarded. 
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted July 07, 2017 09:47 PM |
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fred79 said:
due to only one hundred dumbasses with their opinions and threats?. that's snowing retarded.
One hundred vocal opinions could screw a company's best efforts to publicize an expansion. At the time I remember to feel they had made me wait for too long for very little innovation.
Now, Heroes IV... Yeah!!! That was some improvement. Until you start learning to play and get how broken it really was.
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EnergyZ
Legendary Hero
President of MM Wiki
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posted July 07, 2017 10:04 PM |
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What'd you expect? That they'd release the game and start cowering in fear of their lives? I wouldn't, even if one could say to those people "it is just a game". You never know who these people are, anyway; it could as well be some sort of a psycho.
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Come and visit the Might and Magic Wikia!
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 07, 2017 10:35 PM |
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if i was head of a company, and my employees were receiving death threats, i'd just turn those death threats in to the fbi and have them handle it(because that's part of their goddamn job). that's the logical response. NOT submitting to threats, like 5% of your fan base suddenly whining like crybabies and throwing tantrums mean JACK snow. that's utterly retarded. a company has a responsibility to put out a quality product for consumers. if they had a track record of putting out quality products, the consumers could have just waited and played the game after it was released how it was intended. THEN they can snow about it, after they had given the company who had given the quality up to that point, let them down. they didn't even bother giving it a chance; they just chimped out like monkeys throwing poo.
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MagniBronzeb...
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 08, 2017 01:35 AM |
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Because if these threats were legitimate, half of EA company would be already dead. 
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 08, 2017 03:39 AM |
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MagniBronzebeard said:
Because if these threats were legitimate, half of EA company would be already dead.
yeah, no snow. and so would all of ubisoft-in-the-pants.
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Stevie
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 08, 2017 03:16 PM |
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Edited by Stevie at 15:23, 08 Jul 2017.
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Quote:
Some of the threats were pretty credible; one guy was a Marine living just north of San Diego. He sent us pictures of himself in uniform kicking the crap out other marines and one where he had just gutted some giant fish about the size of himself. Complete with explicit details on how to flay a human.
That was the final straw, so we scrapped the Forge; [...]
So let me get this straight: they knew he was a marine, where he lived and even had pictures of him, but instead of alerting the authorities, they took it as the last straw and scrapped Forge? Does this sound strange at all to anyone else?
It never made sense to me how they cancelled Forge because of some death threats. Seems more like a convenient excuse to point the blame at the community. I find it more likely that the devs realized that Forge was a mistake and that the expansion wouldn't be a success. The uproar on the forums was clear indication of that. So the real reason was probably more along the lines of bad business and less about concerns for the staff members' physical integrity. Sure, the community hated Forge, but it's not like they hated it for nothing. What they hated it for was entirely the devs' responsibility.
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Guide to a Great Heroes Game
The Young Traveler
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted July 08, 2017 03:29 PM |
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Stevie is right imo. I smell they just lost motivation once the fans started whining, then combine this to the money problems they had, probably they just chilled out. Which is unfortunate, I think, as those guys had the talent to make an hippo stomping flowers look gracious, so whatever the people can think about Forge being right or now, it would have looked simply great, as everything else they made.
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Era II mods and utilities
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted July 08, 2017 11:44 PM |
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i'm with you both. Notice I never said nothing about death threats but about slayed expansion profits.
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Dyekrai
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 21, 2017 08:19 PM |
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I'm glad they removed the forge faction from the entire HoMM franchise. :3
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted July 21, 2017 09:42 PM |
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Dyekrai said:
I'm glad they removed the forge faction from the entire HoMM franchise. :3
well good for you cheers lol
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Dyekrai
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 22, 2017 08:50 AM |
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verriker said:
Dyekrai said:
I'm glad they removed the forge faction from the entire HoMM franchise. :3
well good for you cheers lol
U too mate <----------- reply to your perfect reply 
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2017 09:54 AM |
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Dyekrai said:
I'm glad they removed the forge faction from the entire HoMM franchise. :3
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