Just when you think it is safe to go back on to the forums the as…er…unenlightened individuals start creeping out of the woodwork. (One name that pops into my head is meat head, meat hook, meaty greasy hands – something like that). In any case, try and compliment the Star Trek Online team at Cryptic for all their hard work and the trolls take it as a personal opportunity to show all around them just how horrible the game is that they are, for some odd reason, still playing. These are the individuals to whom the glass is not only half full of toxic waste, rather than merely half empty, but for whom the glass is buried somewhere beneath a mountain of crap that would take a team of Shirpa climbers a year to summit. Hopefully the trolls will soon find another bridge to hide under and let the rest of us enjoy the game.
Along with the picture above, I also found a nice little story to go with it. I wanted to reprint the entire story here just incase it went away from the web site I found, you can read the original story (same as below) here:
Nanny Goat Gruff and the Internet Trolls
Jan 23rd, 2009 | By Stephanie Zvan|
Once upon a time, there was a nanny goat who lived to wander from field to field, tasting the grass and bushes as she went. It was a simple life: wander, taste, chew, wander again. Sunshine and air and a million flavors were her world.
Most of the trolls were the sort that crouched under their bridges, calling out to all who went over, “Don’t go! Don’t go! No one likes the bushes over there.” These were easily ignored, their calls drowned out by the noise of goat feet trip-tropping across the bridge, but there were other sorts of trolls.
One day, as the nanny goat trip-tropped toward yet another meadow, a troll appeared in the middle of the bridge ahead of her. “You can’t go that way!”
“Why not?” asked the nanny goat, gruffly of course.
“Goats don’t cross bridges!”
The nanny goat tripped forward another couple of steps. “But I’m a goat, and I cross bridges.”
“Goats don’t cross bridges! Goats only eat!”
The nanny goat eyed the troll. It was small but otherwise unremarkable. It didn’t look poisonous, but she knew she couldn’t tell just by looking. Oh, well, she thought…and ate the troll.
It was strangely tasty, but she could tell it held no nutritional value whatsoever. On she went with her normal grazing. Still, she never looked at trolls quite the same way again.
The next time she had trouble getting into a meadow, it was the bridge itself that was interesting, rather than the troll. As usual, she ignored the troll that sat under the bridge and cried out aspersions against the flavor of the forage in the meadow. Trip trop, trip trop, she was across the bridge in no time. She took a step into the meadow…
…and found herself on the bridge again. Or was it a new bridge? It was hard to tell. Same trollish imprecations but a slightly different voice. She crossed again.
She was back at the beginning of the bridge once more, with the troll (or was it a new troll?) calling out again.
Clearly there was something strange about this bridge, so the nanny goat set out to find out what it was. She measured its length, its width and depth. She tested the strength of the timbers it was built from. She even listened to the troll, as repetitive as it got.
Then, when she had the full measure of the bridge, she paced it out, stepping hard in the weakest spots and leaving a trail of hoofprints behind. This time, the bridge let her off into the field.
It was months later when the goat met the noisy troll.
“Oh,” shouted the troll, “Look at me! Look at me!” It danced all over the bridge, shouting as it went. “I’m so much more interesting than any meadow. Look at me!”
The nanny goat looked, but all she saw was a troll. She was hungry, and she remembered that trolls weren’t very filling. She looked past the troll at the meadow. Her mouth watered.
“Look at me!”
But the goat didn’t look at the troll. Instead, she looked to the side.
“No, no! Look at me!”
And there it was. A log, needing only to be pushed across the chasm. The troll didn’t even notice when the nanny goat left the bridge. It danced and shouted as she pushed, danced and shouted as she tripped and tropped her way across, danced and shouted as she enjoyed the grass in the meadow. It may still be dancing and shouting to this very day.
Occasionally, the goat would come across trolls who didn’t know they were trolls. She pitied them, for they were young and inexperienced and didn’t know to wait for cloudy days or sunset to come out from under their bridges. Those that didn’t learn were turned to stone when the sun came out and shone upon them.
Admittedly, the nanny goat was not the patient sort. Sometimes she blew the clouds away herself.
Then there was the troll that insisted it was no troll at all, just a simple thing out looking for meadows like anyone else. The goat watched for a while, curious about what sort of creature she had encountered. She was a little sad when she realized it had no intention of leaving the bridge at all.
The nanny goat stepped up to the troll. “You’re in my way. That isn’t a good place to be.”
“I’m not in your way. You can walk around me.” The troll pointed down at the one board not covered by its warty feet.
The goat snorted. “A half-rotten board is supposed to support everyone who wants to visit this meadow? That little thing will break before I’m halfway to where I want to be. No. I will be taking this bridge whether you’re on it or not. I suggest you move.”
“Threats! Imprecations! Insults! You’re not a goat. You’re a monster!”
The goat stepped closer. “Move.”
“Oh, help! Monster!”
It remained planted firmly across the bridge, and the goat sighed. She had so hoped it wasn’t a troll. No help for it now, though. Head lowered, she took one step after another toward the noisy thing.
“Monster!”
Trop.
“Help!”
Trop.
“Monster! Oh, mon–ster!” This last was squeaked from the safety of the troll’s den under the bridge.
Laughing quietly, the nanny goat finished crossing the bridge. She couldn’t resist, though, one last noisy trop directly over the troll’s den.
Then she was out into sunny fields again, and she forgot all about the troll as she browsed and grazed. Of course, from time to time, she looked off toward the distant meadows and listened to their call. And as they called, she wondered what bridges she would have to cross to reach them–and what kind of trolls she would find on the way.
Great post!! I agree completely, and it’s refreshing to see someone else enjoying STO the way I am. It’s both amusing and irritating to listen to HOW out of touch the Trolls mostly are. They say “Game element X is the WRONG way to do this game” but the idea they think would have better could NEVER work, and frankly they would have complained about it anyway. Another one I see alot of is “This game is not StarTrek”… a statement that baffles me since *I* appear to be the only one who is having a riot with it and doesn’t feel the same at all. True, there are small things that could have been done differently, but I ask myself how much more or less I would have enjoyed it. Take, for example, sector space. While not the first design I would have taken, it’s actually suprised me how much it lends itself well to the game. Would actual Eve-style space have been better? Would we now be complaining that we are drifting through space about 60% of the time instead of going right to the fun? Plus for every way that a player “thinks” it could have been better if they had done “design-element X”, there are half the community that would have hated it.
I see, too, that many take the standpoint of “this game needed at least 6 more months of testing”, but most of these comments are made by people who understand little of being able to make use of an already tested engine and framework, and most of these people were moments ago complaining that the game would “never come out”. Maybe this game needed more testing and maybe it didn’t. MMO’s are so inherently massive in scope and scale that I think it’s become a standard to never assume a launch will go smoothly. Bugs will always crop up at the worst times. We hold everything to the standard of WoW, and yet so quickly we forget our precious WoW had database issues a month after launch that prevented us from looting anything.
On a sidenote, I have always found it amusing that most forum trolls are self-designated “MMO design experts” and yet cannot spell a sentance with full grammar. “Thz game sux” will always brings an amused to my face. “Oh, Troll, you nutty-nut.”
As for STO, I have friends who love it and friends who hate it. I constantly hear that’s it terrible because “it’s Cryptic”, terrible because “it’s Craig Zinkievich making it”, and terrible because “they did this and that and this and THIS wrong”. Personally, and this IS just my opinion, I’m having a blast with it. I love the random missions, I love the space battles, and I LOVE taking my bridge officers down to an away-mission and finding a group of Klingons down there. There are, of course, things that need improvement or additions to help make the game better, but I’m putting my trust that it will come with time. All and all, I’m pleased with what Cryptic did. And let us not forget what Perpetual ALMOST did with it. *shiver* Now THAT would have been bad!
The forum trolls are, as Sister Julie so aptly put it, the “unsilent minority”. The latest bitch is that by saying “One million accounts” that Cryptic didn’t really mean one million Star Trek Online accounts. Even if that is between both Champions on line and Star Trek Online that is quite a large number. It still baffles me why many individuals insist on comparing a game to an Activision/Blizzard product instead of simply concentrating on “does it pay the bills?”
As far as needing more time may be concerned, when the sisters interviewed Scott Hartsman he spoke of such complaints and indicated that people are asking the developers to repeat the most expensive month of development…the last month. The complaintants also neglect to take into consideration just how short a leash that publishers have the develpers on….and since this is Atari I will just bet there is a choke chain on the other end of that leash.
Thanks for the comment…want to come on the show and talk about it?
The Webmaster