You see no value in purchasing games so how would your opinion ever have traction for someone who does?

You seem to conveniently forget that I do buy the games I like. Of course, whether or not you believe me is a whole other matter but that isn't really my concern.

You can setup a shitty little third party server but you can't clone the WoW experience - relatively stable server platforms, millions of players and so on.

I think the MMO experience is inherently shitty regardless of server, so this is a moot point for me.

Who are you to judge what their intent and goals were when designing the game?

Um, I'm the consumer. For an example of developers compromising their artistic integrity, refer to the Bioshock postmortem on Gamasutra. They state very clearly that they drastically changed the game in order to appeal to a greater market. Similarly, why do you think so many former PC developers have jumped ship to console? Why do you think so many PC franchises have become console franchises? Why do you think R6 turned from a realistic, tactical shooter into an arcadey console shooter? Why do you think Bioware focuses on console action RPGs rather than traditional cRPGs, despite their Black Isle heritage? Why do you think Deus Ex 2 was designed (and dumbed down) for the Xbox instead of the PC, where it's core fanbase was? Why do you think FO3 is Oblivion With Guns instead of a turn-based cRPG? Why do you think we will never, ever see a game like Planescape: Torment again?

Honestly, if you can't see how business interests compromise artistic integrity, you must be blind.

The Witcher has the most basic, dumbed down combat I've ever seen in an RPG and several of those games are console ports.

It's a good thing RPGs aren't focused on combat, huh? The most important part of any RPG is meaningful choice and consequence. The Witcher has that in spades.

As for the console ports, they were all platformers, a genre that works well on consoles. If a game's genre isn't best suited to the PC, I don't care if it's a port. Conversely, if a game is best suited to the PC, like shooters, strategy games or RPGs, I sure as hell don't want it to be a console port.

We won't even mention the bug ridden mess that was STALKER where users had to downgrade patch revisions just to avoid crashes and design mods to overcome basic gameplay flaws.

Oh yes, STALKER had many flaws. However, despite all that, the game had great atmosphere. Keep in mind that I mentioned that I praised these games. That doesn't mean they were flawless. It just means that the good far outweighed the bad.

Practice what you preach, though I suspect you didn't buy any of those either so it doesn't matter I guess.

I do. I've bought all the games I mentioned except for The Witcher. I'm waiting for the Expanded Edition, which I'll buy at full price despite the fact that I already possess and have beaten the game.

This comment was edited on Sep 11, 01:48.