Patch Whiners: An Epidemic

It’s nothing new. It’s been happening as long as I can remember. If you’ve used the internet at all you’ve noticed. Perhaps, you’ve even been part of the problem.

Patch whining.

It happens almost every day for every single patch release for every single game that has a message board. The latest, and personally most annoying, episode seems to be surrounding today’s pre-map-pack Gears of War update. Epic’s list of fixes is pretty extensive. The one that seems to be causing the most controversy is this one:

• Removed host name from Ranked match server browser

It’s amazing really. The xbox.com Gears of War forums and Epic’s official Gears forums have been inundated with protests regarding this single feature of today’s patch. Read some samples:

“I promise you this… If they remove the Host Name and I have no way to play Gears in Ranked TEAM Matches with [my wife]… The game goes in the trash. I enjoy completing games… Completion Percentage means a good bit to me, especially if I love the games. But if I can’t play the game with in Ranked Matches with my Friends (and Wife) then I am done with the game and all achievements that I haven’t yet earned.”

“Getting rid of host name in the server browser????????!?!!?!?!?!? WTF is that about?!!!”

“I will go out of my way to make sure that I stack every game I create from now on. . . . I will drop the room and keep recreating until I get what I want. I don’t care how much bad feedback I get.”

“Oh come on…’stack teams,’ get a bunch of your friends together and do the same thing… without a party system, ranked matches just will dissappear…you will refresh your list and see like 5 matches going on now…great move Epic…”

And it goes on… and on… and on.

Whining without end. I haven’t seen this much whining since the Half-Life 1.1 update (the one that changed the netcode to support client-side hit detection.) The problem is, so many people are being vocal about this that the people that support this change are getting drowned out in a fit of internet cacophony.

But let’s face it. Team stacking happens. And recently, it’s been happening in Gears of War a lot. Unfortunately, merely switching to a party system like Halo 2 won’t fix things either. Halo 2 had been inundated with people who when split between teams, sabotage one team to pad the stats of other members of the party. So, I think Epic’s choice really is the best solution. As long as there are lots and lots of matches to choose from, it will be almost impossible to stack teams in your favor. This is a good thing, as it helps keep the integrity of the rank system intact, which in turn allows more tournaments to happen like on Emergence Day. If the integrity of the ranking system is destroyed, then you can forget about any sponsors providing prizes.

So, your desire to stack teams pretty much hurts the community as a whole. Thanks a lot, whiners.