HTL you have a problem

Since the EC was released I have seen a problem rising. Now I would never tell people they have to agree with me. However I will tell you this. I'm tired of watching people be attacked simply for liking the EC.
Having people here on both sides of the argument is a good thing. That way you can have good lively debate. However if every thread about Bioware or Mass Effect is going to be attacked with among other things (murder fantasies, rape fantasies, abusive language ect) This needs to end.

Rather we like it or hate it we are all still one community, or at least we should be.

What happened to the HTL we had before the EC we were one! Now we are divided and we don't need to be.

Pro EC, Anti EC we need to come together again and say as one that while we may disagree on this issue we are still united in our long time goal.

If were just here to bash each other then let me know.

This needs to be handled and damn fast. It not only weakens us all it weakens the ideal this site was created to embody.

Fix this now.

Vega-Goose out

Well said @Vega-Goose

Always remember:
The moment we start fighting each other instead of fighting together...somewhere, sometime a PR department has already won.

Have seen arguments, if they violate code of conduct, tell a mod.
And for the love of all that is good and pure, move things like Operation Biolove(and others) out of war room. Or is HTL all about the love for Bioware?, i read mission statement differently.

I agree, if HTL is to be the gamer advocacy site that we all want, it shouldn't be a flame pit. While people are divided over their opinion of the EC, it must be acknowledged that we won to at least an extent.



As I have said before the mission statement says:



“We believe the best way to win a conflict is to never start one in the first place, ergo; expend every possible avenue of diplomacy, to hear and understand both sides of a problem and to try to find and work out a compromise acceptable by everyone. In short, to engage in meaningful dialogue. This is accomplished by level headed, calm and thoughtful discussions. We understand the frustration, the disappointment and perhaps even anger on both sides. However the best solution is accomplished by those willing to work with each other.”

Regarding the war room its for initatives, possitive initatives like biolove help attract the atention of devlopers by diplomatic dialoge

HTL is about gamer advocacy rather it is pro and anti anything. HTL doesn't take sides we do.

Well a problem would be a site divided throwing crap at each other. So that would imply that a huge base of this community is actually attacking one side in the belief that the others opinion is wrong.
That isn't so, i have said it before and i will say it again. Do not blow things out of proportion.

I've been saying that we need to come together despite our differences of opinion since Chris Priestly joined us and I felt like peoples reaction to him being here was dividing us. I felt then like it was just swept under the rug and not dealt then, and I feel like it's worse now because of that. I have no experience dealing with these kind of problems so I don't know what to do but I do know that something needs to done before we lose people.

Edit: I'll admit that I can be pretty hot headed sometimes and that I'm not always a calming influence when emotions are running high, but even when I'm pissed I try to help.

I've made my peace here you don't have to agree with me anymore than I do with you but see you were able to disagree with me and yet not one abusive thing was said. Thank you

If only there was some sort of system where a majority could come to at least an accepted consensus on official response to the EC and future action of the community (continue the fight? Accost Activision? etc.). It's right on the tip of my tongue, so I'll elect to spend some more time thinking about it.

I think HTL is one of the most civil sites I've visited for a long time actually. BUT, gamer rights advocacy should be irrelevant of opinion of EC. What's important is how the majority felt mistreated before the EC. We shouldn't have had to start the Retake campaign in the first place. If people want to drop three months of struggling and poor communication on BW's part and act like it never happened, I can only tell them that I disagree. Hopefully, most others who either feel like me or disagree with me will do the same.

If someone goes overboard. Alert a mod. That's the way things work.

I think we should all stick together, and while I respect peoples right to have their opinion, I do want to ask people to question everything with a critical mind, if they do it or not, that is up to them. At first, I was so shocked by the ending in Mass Effect 3 that I couldn't critically judge it, I was just left behind my screen asking myself exactly what happened, but as I got to my senses I concluded that it was so bad that I felt I had to speak up, and that I had to get involved somehow, and reach out to people who also felt wronged by the Mass Effect 3 ending.

Part of the problem I'm seeing is people reading healthy, heated discussion as 'attacks.' There is a sizable portion of the community unhappy with the EC, and they are vocally expressing that dissatisfaction just as they always have. The difference between now and then is that some of the people who have made peace with the EC see hearty criticism of the things they liked as a personal attack.
It isn't. Giving a negative analysis of the EC isn't attacking the people who enjoyed it any more than this movement as a whole is an attack on the people who liked the original endings.

If people are bothered by criticism of the EC, there should be a safe thread for them to flock to...and there is. Likewise, the people who are still seething should have a place to vent their unadulterated loathing...and they do. If people can't debate civilly without getting butthurt by the opposing side, maybe they should stick to the threads that favor their chosen view and leave the arguing to the people with thick enough skins to recognize that a different viewpoint does not equal a personal attack.

I love everyone here, and I get that emotions are running really high right now. I would just encourage everyone to take a step back, and acknowledge that they might be reading too much into other peoples' posts. If there's anything truly abusive being bandied about, that deserves moderation; everything else should be read with the understanding that not everyone feels the same about recent developments, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I guess my experience is not applicable to that of the whole. I liked the EC, and everyone has been really chill about it. Has there been impassioned discourse elsewhere on the site?

What needs to happen is that someone (I'll consider it if I have time) needs to go through ONLY HTL threads and determine exactly what line we were holding, then compare it OBJECTIVELY against the Extended Cut.

For example, was the consensus that we needed some form of explanation on A, B, or C? Well, let's dig up A,B, and C and find out. Or perhaps the goal was the EC in of itself, i.e. the ability to make a large company crank out SOMETHING and prove it wasn't acceptable to release an unfinished product. That won't be a long post, as that's "Mission Accomplished".

Such a post then needs to be submitted to our mods to look over. They can make what edits they need. Then that thing needs to get stickied right into the war room as post-operation analysis. We need to get moving on to... something else. What it is, I leave to the consensus of either the whole community or our leaders. But stagnation leads to nothing but trouble.

Oh yes I didn't mean to imply it is a majority of folk. I meant to say it is happening even if only a small scale. I feel even a little unhealthy rage is bad for the image of HTL as a whole.

I have thought the conversation has been pretty civil. I don't agree with people who like the EC but I don't hate them for their opinion. I have a theory on why people do like the EC that may not be flattering to some but different strokes for different folks. They like it and that is that. So be it....

I know I don't like the EC, I find it insulting and less than adequate. However, people are entitled to their own opinions, even if I disagree with them. I find that seems to be the overall attitude on this site....

Same can be said for the opposite side of the spectrum.

I wonder though, is rage the correct term to use? I imagine that when most people speak of raging, they really just mean being angry, cause in my thoughts, to enter a rage is something very powerful, and something that most likely have built up over many many months.

When I last entered a rage I had been treated like crap by a staff of a server for a game for years, and at that point I was so freaking furious that I didn't know where to put myself, or where to went of the steam, so I basically just did a very, very vocally violent lash at the staff and told every player, still it didn't calm me down entirely cause I had remnants of that rage for a few weeks after.

Certainly the use of "rage" is a bit of a hyperbole, although some Pro / Anti EC posts have gotten quite heated. Hopefully it all tempers down though over a matter of days and we can plot our next course of action.