I've been watching, and waiting for this one to run its course. I think burnout happens to everyone, in some way, eventually. Either the game changes in a way we don't want it to change, or the people change. When the pricing plan is designed to rake in any old sc****k who can afford 50cents/day, then sc****ks is what we'll get. I've been on the sidelines for a year now, and quite frankly threads like this make me realise that I may never return. I don't want to have teen trash talk going on around me, or play a game that requires a reporting tool to alert HTC to text or verbal abuse.
BUT....
AH is not alone in having the gameplay ruined by tardz. One of the other games I play online is Chess - and if skuzz thinks he's got his work cut out filtering the trash talk here, he should see some of the crap on the chess BBS! I don't even go to the forums any more, it's so bad.
Any online game with any sort of a ranking system or scoreboard has its share of game-the-game gottawins and general tardz. Just as some people in AH had a shades account, and would rack up kills by vulching their shades account, Chess has shades accounts too, and guys who play with themselves getting 4-move checkmates to boost their rankings, or guys who cheat by using a chess engine like ChessMaster9000 to suggest moves.
Nomak! I never knew you online, but if you're getting started with Silent Hunter 3, get ready for a major slowing down of the pace. If you didn't like the AH1 pizza map, you won't like SH3. Those submarine missions went on for weeks. The game has x1024 time compression, and you'll need it. I enclose a gift - a SH3 saved mission in the Scapa Flow area. There's a nice Revenge battleship for you to practise on, and a destroyer a little to the right. It took me many attempts to get right up there undetected. No dive possible - depth below keel = 6 metres! Download it from
here and unzip it to your SavedMissions folder.