Fortunately, doomsayers tend to be self-correcting. If you have been predicting doom and gloom, every day when the sky doesn’t fall is a defeat. Forum regulars can speed up this process by maintaining a FAQ that contains well thought-out and generally-accepted rebuttals to the most common complaints. Then, whenever a new troll pops up, just quote the FAQ and lock the thread. That way any innocent bystander can get a handle on the consensus without having to read long threads.

This is something we talked about with Mr. Roper on show 50 (still being edited – show 49 has been uploaded by not posted yet). Often a player who thinks some new game mechanic will “destroy the game”, upon actually playing the game will find out it doesn’t. At that point, rarely does that same player go back to the forums and say “hey that wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

Thanks for the comment…they are always appreciated.

Julie

What I dearly wish is that the simplest solution of all would occur to those forum trolls who seem bent on tearing down a game that the rest of us still enjoy playing…if you don’t like the game don’t just quit. Instead, go silently away into that good night and creep back under your rock.

To quote Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” The trolls enjoy strife, so they will not go quietly into that good night. Likewise, they’ll subvert the Hanlon’s Razor whenever they can. As long as you think they’re stupid, they know that they can always come back for some more strife.