Final Fantasy Soft vs Enix

[Abriael]

He seems quite cogent to me. As for beating a dead horse; forums are fluid creatures. People may read them every day, once a week, disappear for a bit and come back, etc. If they haven't seen this discussion before, or have evolved their opinion, or the world has moved on since the last time the discussion was active, there's most likely a new perspective to be had. You've tried to stifle that with your post. If the topic was indeed dead, it would have dropped down the boards of its own accord.

That's why we have a search function. You used it yourself. It works.

Being realistic (which you weren't, as per below) does not preclude being condescending and patronising. Besides, I was making a callback to the other exchange of posts we've had recently.

There's nothing "patronizing" or "condescending" in telling someone that he's stating an incorrect concept and why.

Hang on a sec. PSXpert compared the story with a struggle against the tyranny of Rome. You suggested that such a struggle didn't happen outside of Hollywood. I pointed out that it most certainly did. You respond by listing a lot of unrelated "Rome stuff" which neither defends your position or bears any relevance to the point? It is ok to admit you may have been mistaken (humility is a good quality).

I'm not exactly sure what kind of discussion you're used to, but normally "your arguments don't apply because I say they don't apply so I'm right and you're wrong" doesn't exactly work in "civilized discussion" (since that's what you paint yourself as upholding).

Tyranny is a form of government. And Ancient Rome (besides a few very limited and transient periods of its long history) simply never adopted that form of government.

Rome was actually one of the most democratic nations of antiquity, both with its citizen and with annexed populations.

I suggest reading on it. This is a good place to start and it features a tons of sources if you want to go deeper.

Ancient Rome was, for the majority of its history, a mix between an oligarchy and a democracy, even more democratic (especially with annexed nations) than the oft popularly-praised Greek city-states. Check here for a good summary and then expand to the sources if you so wish.

You're simply confusing military expansion with tyranny. But they aren't the same thing.

If you think military expansion is the same as tyranny, then you'll be hard pressed to find many nations that aren't "tyrannical", as a vast majority of them sits on territories conquered with arms, even recently.

Again, you're judging the Roman civilization according to modern moral values, and that's simply inappropriate when studying ancient history.

Well if we're dropping FFXIV-lifetime into this, I've also been around since day one too (quite literally; I was in the very first wave of 1.0 alphas). I brought that up because it's only been in the last couple of weeks your posting style has changed from having strong opinions on topics to posting needlessly negative or derogatory comments in certain threads.

Aside from the fact that my comments are never derogatory towards individuals in this forum (they can be at time towards external individuals, but never without cause), my attitude never changed. I always attack the argument (even very firmly), not the person making it.

Maybe you recently found yourself on the opposite site of the moat, and that made you think that my attitude changed, but that's simply not the case.

Simply put, being on the receiving end of my arguments is quite different than when you agree with me.

I don't consider them half-abandoned. There's a hundred or so active posters and a few hundred more posting intermittently. This community is still here, even if there's not much in the way of FFXIV for us to discuss (thank the mods for allowing the social threads here to prosper). There's an FFXIV forum I've seen recently which has dozens of posts made every minute. The majority of people may be logged in there, but the sense of community is non-existent.

Even assuming your numbers are correct, I'd say it's a tad ridiculous to assume that I'm staging some sort of "advertising campaign" (wasting a crapton of my time) for such small numbers.

I never meant to say that the sense of community is not here, and I agree with your vision of that, but the numbers simply aren't.

Quite a lot? The only thing that I've posted that could be construed as a personal attack is me theorising on your reasons for making rude, derogatory comments. I'm sorry if you took it that way, but you denied it to be the case, so I don't know how you can consider it an attack. Again, quite a lot? No, maybe once, maybe, and for that I apologise. My intention was to discuss a reason for your current attitude. I'm not aware of any personal attacks I've made toward anyone else on the forum (well ok there was that one time with fusional, but I think we resolved that...). If there is, you should probably take this opportunity to highlight them. Else perhaps apologise for that statement, if it's incorrect.

There's no "reason" for my current attitude other the fact that I enjoy frank, honest debate. if someone is wrong, I'll tell him, and explain why at length. Some may not like it, but that's always been the case.

I'd go easy on him if he went easy on others. I know you can stand up for yourself (and create half an hour of light reading in the process!), but others don't. Posts like those add weight to the opinion expressed on the fan-site forums that here we are all trolls and fanboys.

Your idea of "going easy" on someone is simply different from mine. In this forums there are some people expressing concepts that make me triple facepalm by how absolutely nonsensical they are. Most would simply scoff, throw in a personal jab and leave.
I prefer to explain why they are wrong. Even at length if necessary. I would say that's a lot more productive than a lot of what I see around here, but to each his own.

When someone decides that they have no need for humility and courtesy in a public place that I frequent (online or off), it goes against my being to sit by and accept it without challenge. We're a community and a certain level of respect and decent behaviour is required to keep it together. And yes, for a large part there's no maliciousness, but taking the time to produce an interview with Yoshi-P and offering commentary on new hardware doesn't give you a right to deride other posters on your whim.

I would say that your behavior isn't exactly that respectful to begin with. considering that you're attacking the person instead of his arguments, proceeding to go as far as to second guess his motives for posting.

think comparing the Garlean Empire to Rome is a reasonable allegory, as better explained by those who have become much more involved in the lore than I (do a forum search on "Rome" to read some good posts on the comparison).

Rome is an historical nation. The Garlean Empire is a fantasy nation. That alone makes them quite incomparable.

Rome has for the vast majority of its history a nation with strong elements of democracy in its form of government. It was expansionistic, like pretty much every nation in its age, but factually treated annexed nations very fairly for the standards of the time.

While, as far as we know (as information is direly scarce) the Garlean Empire is a full fledged autocracy with some limited elements of military oligarchy, that has no problem committing untold (literally) atrocities on conquered populations.

The parallel between the two civilizations is limited to the use of iconic names (legion, legatus and such) and designs.

The simple fact of the matter is that Hydaelyn is a fully fictional world in which there are good nations and evil nations.

There are the evil invaders and the peaceful victims that would want nothing else than sit on their nice island and not hurt a mosquito.

That kind of black and white setup did not exist in antiquity, where warlike culture was the norm.