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Subjective Trope
They Changed It Now It Sucks
"With the release of X-Men 2 this past weekend, fans of the comics have already found reportedly over 40 flaws within the film. And yet they can't seem to find the flaws in their own lives."
--Saturday Night Live

We all hate Adaptation Decay, right? When they dumb your favourite book down, or "spice it up" with a whole pack of made-up romantic plots and chase scenes, or just change the tone and characters so much it might as well be an entirely new entity.
In cases where as long as it's still the same basic story and keeps all the best bits and characters intact, then it doesn't matter too much that Bob's bald, Alice doesn't die, the football game was changed to a horse race and they cut the watermelon scene, right?

Wrong!

...or so you would be told by many, many a fan.

To some people, the very act of adaptation is decay. A Film version of something should be a direct word-for-word transcription, with utmost care that the sets, costumes and people be reproduced in every detail. If a character who wears a homburg in the original now wears a fedora, that will be enough to ruin the character, and therefore ruin the film. It will be all you will hear about from these fans on message boards, with them going on at length to explain how his homburg visually defined his entire personality in a way that a fedora never could.

Oh, and it just gets worse the bigger and more complicated the original work is. Make a film version of a popular comic book, and you had better not contradict a single thing that took place in any of the three-hundred issues of the comic, or the comic's spin-off, or indeed the entire Expanded Universe that the comic took place in. Yes, even if the comics contradict themselves.

And don't you dare suggest that in changing it, they made it better. The Fan Dumb isn't listening.

All That said, however, not even this trope is all bad. Sometimes, the disappointment can be genuine, especially if the thing(s) that was changed or removed was what drew you to the series in question in the first place. Sometimes, the change really doesn't work for you for whatever reason. The problems and negativity around this trope come from complaining about a change before you experience it's effects, or complaining about the removal of something you had complained about the existence of before.

See also Translation Style Choices, Replacement Scrappy, and Ruined FOREVER. Contrast Woolseyism and Unpleasable Fanbase.

A common complaint about The Film Of The Book. See They Just Didnt Care for the times when this is a legitimate complaint.

Examples:

First, a special note to tropers: please, please resist the urge to add Justifying Edits and/or Natter below. They're unnecessary, unwelcome, and likely to spark an Internet Backdraft. Remember, Smokey The Bear says, "Only you can prevent flame wars!"

Anime
  • Inverted on Anime Nano Podcast. Hinano complains that the Genshiken anime and manga were exactly the same, and that watching for changes is the only reason to see the same story twice.
    • A bit more patience would have paid off, since the second season of the anime diverges from the manga quite a bit.
  • In the Digimon fandom, the torches and pitchforks came out when, in the dubbed version, Takato Matsuda's name had been horrendously Macekred into the horror that is... "Takato Matsuki." I Am Not Making This Up. And the fact that "Takato" is pronounced with the stress on the wrong syllable, well, that's "rape" and "butchery."
    • And on a semi-related note, it's stylish to call something by its Katakana spelling (eg; the cool kids know it's "Dejitaru Monsutaa," not "Digital Monsters." You see it most with attack names, though.) when it comes to names and attacks, even the ones written in English. But let the dubbers do it (eg. Diablomon becomes Diaboromon) and again... butchery.
  • This editor ran into someone who was totally unhappy with the fact that Naruto Uzumaki is, in the dub, voiced by a female. Then this editor pointed out that, in the Japanese, Naruto is voiced by the very female Junko Takeuchi...
    • As are MOST preadolescent male characters in anime, and also many in Western animation.
    • Naruto as a whole is practically littered with Fan Dumb (they don't call 'em "Narutards" for nothing). This Troper ran into one who was upset that the dub pronounced the main character's name "wrong" - apparently the fan had been calling him "Nuh-ROO-doh" and was upset that the dub (and the Japanese version, for that matter) didn't conform to his preference. Another was a Yaoi Fangirl and was absolutely livid that the dub didn't make explicit the Ho Yay between Naruto and Sasuke, the "Official Couple" of the series as far as she was concerned. Still another tried to tell me that the dub was an even worse Macekre than the 4Kids dub of One Piece, and I had to try not to punch him in the face for being so totally delusional.
  • The infamous "ball cabbage" scene from the third episode of Yoake Mae Yori Ruriiro Na ~Crescent Love~ was cleaned up for the eventual DVD release. Some viewers think it actually looks worse done realistically.
  • Readers of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga can be horrifically cruel towards the anime. Even the slightest deviation from the manga plot is bitched about (They killed the Buttmonkey? NOOOOO!), and several Fridge Logic moments that only become apparent once you read the manga are declared as massive Plot Holes, any and all changes to the characters are deemed Character Derailment, and god help you if you mention the Gecko Ending or The Movie. To be fair the last two are often complained about by people who have never read the manga.
  • By far the largest complaint against dubs are the fact that they don't sound the same as the sub. Meaning that no matter how good the dubbing is it can never be as good as the sub simply because the viewer saw the sub first.
    • It may be too early to tell, given that only a few episodes have aired, but fan response on several forums seems to indicate that the English dub of Code Geass has fallen into this hard. Lelouch/Zero's voice, in particular, is a point of contention, due in large part to his English VA "not sounding enough like" his Japanese one.
      • It has. What makes this ironic is that while portions of the American fanbase seem to hate Johnny Yong Bosch for not attempting to mimic Jun Fukuyama's performance, many Japanese fans, upon hearing clips from the US dub, stated a preference for Bosch due to the fact that his performance is more natural (whereas Fukuyama's performance was considered more forced and "draining").
      • Which in turn is an example of Mis Blamed, because it's the director that ultimately controls how an actor delivers his lines, not the actor himself. As Spike Spencer put it, "What I do is deliver the line how I think it should be done, then the director tells me that I'm wrong."
    • On the flip side, there is a large segment of fandom that immediately jumps on people who prefer to watch subtitled anime as idiot purists that should just learn Japanese instead of "reading" the show. Regardless of the fact that, unless they're just pirating fansubs, these people are buying and supporting the *exact* same release the dub fans are watching, therefore nobody is forced to watching anything they don't like. Sub vs. Dub wars - they never end.
  • Can the Prince Of Tennis fandom PLEASE stop bitching about how the Rikkaidai team was changed in the anime and how anime Sakuno sucks for being a Dojikko and not a Yamato Nadeshiko in training?
  • This troper admits to bitching about the second season of Gunslinger Girl, especially since the original Mangakka was involved, which boosted his expectations of it. What part? The art and animation style, which made the male handlers, Giuseppe, in particular, look more Bishonen, switched the girls' appearances from Troubled But Cute to Sickeningly Sweet (particularly their eyes), and gave Franca fanservice scenes involving Male Gaze, amongst other visual horrors, all of which ruined the dreary, melancholic, tragic atmosphere of the series. Also, the only seiyuu from the first season to make a comeback is Rie Nakagawa (Farro, a relatively minor Recurring Character), while all the others were voiced by somebody new. The only thing that offsets all this is Badass Normal Pinocchio, but still... Let's hope that FU Nimation will use the same dubbing cast, at least.
  • A purely ridiculous example is Knuckles being referred to as a "mole" in Sonic The Hedgehog: The Movie. Ignore the fact that it was only said once by The Ditz (who probably didn't even know better). Ignore the fact that the appearances, elements, etc. were more faithful than any sonic adapation up to that point.
  • Actual comment made at an anime forum: "It's one thing to say 'Sorry, but if we don't cut it we can't broadcast it. Take your pick.' And a competely different thing to have the chutzpah to actually sell changes as improvements. I'm asking everybody to imagine for a few seconds a Japanese licensee of a Hollywood movie on a press conference going like 'Well, we had to make some cuts but one the other hand this allowed us to fix some stupid mistakes this Cameron guy did, so in the end it all balances out.'" For the record, we're supposed to think that it would be bad.
  • There are many Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann fans that go absolutely beserk anytime the official translation has the name or pronunciation of any person, mecha, attack, or other terminology deviating from what has become popular among the fandom, even when 90% of the time they're at least as accurate. Strangely there are some people that realized this (thinking the fan-sub ones were simply better, not more accurate) but are still mad that the official translation didn't adopt them just because the fandom was accustome to them.

Film
  • The X-Men movie, based on possibly the most sprawling, confusing and self-contradictory comic book franchise in all the land, had an infinite number of complaints leveled at it, from "Wolverine's like six inches too tall!" to "Magneto's too old!" to "Rogue's too young!" to "Since when is Jean Grey a doctor?!" to "How come Storm didn't freak out when she was in that elevator shaft, she's supposed to be claustrophobic!" to...well, let's stop while we're still young. Subsequent films in the series have just made things worse.
    • Storm actually did freak out in the elevator shaft. That's her Big Scene, when she blasts her way free with lightning, and flies for the first time in the film, before delivering the worst line in the movie. But even so, Storm in the comic doesn't have claustrophobic freakouts on the regular either. She struggles with it depending on how severe the confinement is.
    • One of the most ridiculous examples of this is fans complaining about Juggernaut being a mutant. Nevermind his relationship with Xavier being removed. Nevermind that his character was poorly used. How he got his powers is more important...even if those powers came from the magical, cursed artifact of a heathen God in the comics. They're wondering why the filmmakers didn't stuff a subplot like that into a movie canon that a) has never mentioned magic or any kind of superhuman powers other than mutation and b) is already staggering under the weight of Loads And Loads Of Characters?
    • Don't even get fans started on the Rogue/Iceman relationship with Gambit nowhere in sight.
    • You're forgetting the complaints that the movies focus on...mostly Wolverine. And occasionally Rogue, and a even a bit of Jean Grey, but it's mostly The Wolverine Show.
      • ...the trope is They Changed It, Now It Sucks, remember?
  • This phenomenon has caused many Harry Potter fans to have the exact opposite reaction to the film adaptations as many critics do. While film critics generally agree that the films got better from Prisoner of Azkaban (largely because of Dave McKean's art direction), when they stopped being obsessively faithful to every single scene and line of dialogue in the books, a lot of fans think that Christopher Columbus was doing a bang-up job and that ever since then it's been garbage, with Azkaban the worst offender ("They left out the Fidelius Charm! They left out the Marauders' backstory! Harry gets the Firebolt at the end! Nyaaaargh!!!"). Never mind that, with the length of the books spiraling out of control, something had to be cut.
    • Or not, the last book has been split into two films. About damn time.
  • The film versions of The Lord Of The Rings have suffered from their fair share of this, notably with the removal of the last part of The Return of the King and the complete removal of Tom Bombadil (walking Deus Ex Machina, quintessential Wacky Wayside Tribe and unplayably strange person that he is) from the story.
    • Jackson stated in an interview that Tom Bombadil was deliberately left out because he figured that he would never be able to please the fans with a film representation of him (which is a fair point). To say nothing of the fact that it doesn't contribute much to the plot, except to know in the Council Of Elrond chapter that even this being who scares wights away with his presence and can soothe even cranky Old Man Willow would eventually be crushed under Sauron's heel.
  • Batman Begins is commonly agreed to be the best film adaptation so far, but some die-hard fans are very, very angry that Scarecrow ran Arkham Asylum instead of teaching psychiatry, while others just accepted the Rule Of Scary. Others disparage the new tank-like appearance of the Batmobile...despite the fact that it's Batman Begins and it's a prototype vehicle he hasn't had any time to modify into something more "battish". And that he loses it in the sequel and shows he's quite adept with high-performance sports cars, too....
    • Likewise, many hardcore fans decry Burton's decision to have the Joker be the murderer of Bruce's parents in the 1989 film adaptation. More reasonably when the sequel rolled around, many fans were outraged at the Penguin's change from an eccentric professional criminal that was only slightly penguin-like in appearance to a deformed subhuman that ate raw fish, had flippers, spewed black blood, and otherwise looked exactly like Dr. Caligari.
    • This Troper knows of a fan who complained after seeing Batman Begins because Thomas & Martha Wayne were killed outside of an opera house instead of a movie theatre.
      • ...which, as Shortpacked points out, makes a lot more sense. Who, in this day and age, dresses up and wears pearls to go to the movies? Unless it's like Cannes or something, but they're clearly still in Gotham.
    • There were also the changes to the character of Ra's al Ghul and the total ommission of his daughter Talia. Ra's convoluted (to say the least) backstory would have been very hard to fit into the movie, of course.
    • On a similar note, certain fansites had some ongoing - and utterly hilarious - flame wars about whether The Dark Knight was going to suck... based on the fact that the Joker's appearance is from make-up rather than being "permawhite" due to falling into a vat of chemicals.
  • It's amazing to see how much criticism the Watchmen movie is receiving, when you considering it won't be out until 2009. Since this is a comic book movie we're talking about, there's still a good chance it will suck, but it seems people can't even wait to see it to start complaining...
    • This is, of course, because the movie is based on an Alan Moore comic book, which have traditionally been subject to Adaptation Decay (or, Distillation, depending on your viewpoint). Moore himself is quite vocal about how much he thinks the previous movies based on his works suck, which doesn't help matters. Furthermore, Watchmen especially has been long considered a work that any adaptation would struggle with effectively bringing to the screen whilst remaining faithful to the source material. However, this doesn't prevent the complaining from being very premature.
      • Moore has said that even though he's seen one script (the David Hayter one) and can't imagine a better film adaptation, Watchmen is a graphic novel, not a film, and so something will be lost in the translation no matter how good it is, which is perhaps the ultimate example of the They Changed It Now It Sucks attitude.
  • Fans were extremely riled up to discover the huge changes and cuts that had been made to the 1984 Dune movie. The movie bombed due to this (and it could have been worse if the internet was as prominent back then). Twenty years or so later, the miniseries adaptation of the first novel changed plenty of things, but pretty much none of them were complained about by anyone. No, I'm definitely not bitter.
  • The new Dragonball movie has already had fans starting to complain about the fact that Goku now goes to school, even though it's a minor plot point and the film is still very early into production. Then the animal characters were taken out, which is a bit more understandable, although still pretty minor. (It makes you wonder if they'd have been able to make them believable though.)
    • Fans have also complained that Goku isn't played by an Asian. Was there any indication he ever was Asian? He's a freaking space alien.
  • It's not coming out until summer 2009, and already a segment of StarTrek fans are already frothing at the mouth that the producers aren't exactly re-creating the crappy cardboard sets and cheesy 60's costumes of the original series (and I'm saying this as a Trekkie).
  • Most of the criticism of the Beowulf movie was based on this. The DVD includes an interview with Neil Gaiman explaining why he made these alterations, and they're pretty decent reasons.
    • This troper still doesn't get the logic of giving Grendel a classic Achilles Heel, as he sees it as both needlessly inserting a horribly overused cliche and undercutting Beowulf's Crowning Moment of Awesome from the poem, where he beats Grendel up by nothing but the sheer power of Badass.
  • The Resident Evil movie series. Never mind that it's not meant to take place in the same world as the games, or that it might actually be GOOD in its own right, as soon as they added a character one of the most blatant examples of a Mary Sue ever and a backstory for Nemesis, people wanted to kill ANYONE involved in this movie for taking a new story and plastering the Resident Evil name on it.
  • Inversion: Most of the film critic complaints about the 2008 Speed Racer film was that it felt too much like a kid's action cartoon. Let me repeat that - they were complaining about a movie remaining faithful to the source material. This is no doubt due to the Wachowski brothers being bandied around as the directors, which meant a lot of people probably went in expecting The Matrix with (more) cars or a goofy racing show adapted into deep religious symbolism, even though they're on record that they always planned this to be a family film.
  • This Troper has always been annoyed at the way Spike Lee adapted The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Most of the substance is the same, but a lot of details were changed (including the addition of an important character who was just made up), quotes from the book were used verbatim but taken out of context, and so on. He feels his ire is somewhat justified because 1) this is messing with actual history, and 2) although history obviously needs to be dramatized for the big screen, the original book was dramatic enough.
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Since the period of the film shifted from the 30s to the 50s, the villains (Nazis > Communists) and film influence (old Republic Film Serials > science fiction) changed, and some fans weren't happy.
    • Not to mention the serious Fan Wank about CGI gophers. Goddamn CGI gophers.
  • The upcoming remake of The Warriors has fans in an uproar, even though almost no details about the film have been released. It's worth noting that the original movie was an adaptation of a novel, and not a particularly faithful one at that.
  • Wanted may or may not be this trope. The original comic of the story presents all the characters as former super-villains who finally joined forces, kill all the superheroes, made humanity forget about them and rule the world from behind the scenes. The film adaption is about a league of assassins killing people who could possibly become the next Hitler.
  • This troper knows many people -- and IS one of them -- who were peeved at the changes made from book to movie in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. While many of the changes were good or at least forgivable, the one that has stirred up the controversy is the insertion of a romance between Caspian and Susan, culminating in a non-canonical kiss at the end of the film. "Tacked on and pointless" is the troper's description of the development.

Western Animation
  • Any of the Robo Cop cartoons will do. Hell the second one gets more flak because murphy simply has more gadgets, and he gets called "go go gadget cop".
  • Transformers has gotten this pretty much since Beast Wars. Despite the fact that the fandom itself has its own self-deprecating phrase for the trope: "TRUKK NOT MUNKY", regarding the complaints over Optimus Primal being a gorilla, which isn't actually a monkey at all. The more general term is "GEEWUN".
    • We'll never know how the fans' heads exploded when they first saw the character designs for Transformers Animated, or when they found out it would have human villains, with the Decepticons being a recurring threat and not the only one, or the fact that Optimus Prime would be voiced by David Kaye (who before has primarily voiced Megatron), Or that Optimus was a firetruck (until they realized he was technically a semi-truck outfitted as a firetruck. Then some were upset that he didn't have smoke stacks...), and let's not forget about Optimus not being the leader of all the Autobots. There are even people going berserk that the new Soundwave doesn't sound exactly like the old one (Frank Welker is expensive nowadays, one presumes). Transformers Animated, however, has managed to convert many of those same naysayers (such as This Troper) through much story, design, and casting Shout Outs that show that the writers had indeed Shown Their Work. Even so, some Fan Dumb just won't quit.
    • In the live-action movie, many were pissed that Optimus was a Peterbilt instead of a regular trailer (which was done to prevent large amounts of mass-changing between vehicle and robot modes).
  • The recent episode of The Simpsons episode "That 90's Show" is hated by many fans entirely because it was a an alternate backstory for Homer and Marge. This despite the fact that it has never had anything even resembling continuity and has always operated on a sliding time-scale. What's even more ridiculous is that a lot of professional reviewers were actually getting away with massive amounts of Fan Dumb, like Robert Canning who literally spent four-fifth of the review bitching about this instead of the actual content of the episode, gave it a 3/10, and called it "an abomination". Simpson's "continuity" is Serious Business.
    • Another thing is that this is a massive exaggeration of the effect, claiming that it RetConned away every past event established to have happened. If you except that the show has a sliding timeline (which it very obviously does), the only thing this changes is that Marge went to college for a short time and Homer formed a band between them graduating and Marge getting pregnant. So it's more along the lines of :"They made their Expansion Pack Past and use of Comic Book Time come with somewhat more obvious Ret Cons and they've thus thrown out all other previously established past events, now it suck".
    • The seasons when Mike Scully was show-runner (9-12) are often denounced as a Dork Age for simply being weirder then the most. This also leads some fans to make the ridiculous that claim other episodes were "realistic" instead of just not as strange.
  • Toonami gets a lot of this, fans themselves are a broken base as to whether it sucks now because TOM has a childish look and a face instead of a helmet (being a robot, it was assumed to be his whole head), the unexplained disappearance of SARA, her replacement robots (with a similar design to TOM), or the fact that the setting inexplicably changed to a jungle planet instead of the usual spaceship. Of course, there was a similar reaction way back when after TOM replaced Moltar.
  • Lampshaded by "Yahtzee" Croshaw when the introduction of an original theme tune and new intro sequence for Zero Punctuation created predictable backlash; the weekly update to his website was titled "You Changed It Now It Sucks".
    • In fact, every week, the video thread is evenly divided between "best one evar!!!!!!11" and this complaint.
  • Winx Club: Here's a YouTube discussion which has quite a few complaints about 4Kids cutting what amounts to a Filler scene. Your contributor has a friend who refers to said scene as useless and is thankful it was cut. Can't say I disagree...
    • And just in case you don't think your contributor knows what he's talking about, mind you he's made his fair share of complaints against 4K's changes, even somewhat petty ones like this.

Video Games
  • While almost universally regarded as an improvement on at least the last couple of games before it, Tomb Raider: Legend saw a lot of contention among both the fanbase and others, for very linear level design, easy puzzles, too much action and spoon-feeding sidekicks. Along with some considering Lara's changed personality too much in the direction of Lighter And Softer... And accusations of her getting too much character development.
    • Tomb Raider: Anniversary went a long way to satisfying those irritated by most of the above things, but causes some division over certain character design and storyline changes from the game it is based off. Plus there are certain room cuts that are near-impossible to defend as anything other than being due to time constraints; especially when they contrast with brilliantly remade sections.
  • When Final Fantasy VI was ported to the Game Boy Advance, it featured a new script. The script that Ted Woolsey wrote for the SNES release is generally well-regarded, but because Woolsey had to work within the limitations imposed by the need to fit the game into a 24 megabit cartridge and Nintendo of America's censorship policies, the GBA script is, for the most part, an improvement.
    • Similarly, Final Fantasy Tactics got a new translation with the PSP port, with the original script having been notorious for Engrish and riddled with translation errors and widely criticised at the time of release for how utterly inept it was in light of the serious subject matter. Fast-forward to 2007 and the new script was immediately derided for not being as "campy", and the corrections to the numerous mistranslations and language errors completely ignored.
    • More validly, they changed the lyrics to the aria.
      • So that it actually rhymed and fit the meter.
    • Final Fantasy XIII isn't exclusive!? AKLDGASLDNGALSLDHN!
    • Then again, Final Fantasy has always had an Unpleasable Fanbase.
  • The official forums for Starcraft 2 are constantly flooded with complaints about changes being made to the graphics, army unit rosters, and interface. Most of the released changes are improvements to make the game simpler and more efficient to play, but a very vocal segment of the player base thinks of compensating for the slow, clunky interface as part of the challenge of the game, and that the changes will remove physical skill from multiplayer. Another segment thinks that strategy games should be about strategic decisions, not about who can click faster. Keep in mind, this game will not be released until fall 2008 at the earliest, and is nowhere near finished, yet complaints appear daily.
    • This editor thinks that the Paradox (Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, etc.) model of very short turns is a good compromise between RTS and more traditional turn-based strategy. And for the record, if you want to test your physical skill in multiplayer you might like another genre better.
    • This troper recalls quite a few complaints over the prospect of an optional blood and gore filter.
  • Diablo III Is already getting this with people complaining that it's now Too Colorful. They've even started a petition wanting to replace the entirety of Diablo III with Act 3 of Diablo II. Numerous Counterpetitions have already been launched, and Blizzard has pointed out why Darker And Edgier graphics would be implausible or unplayable.
  • Here's a fun experiment - go into a games forum and loudly claim that the remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, has superior voice acting because Mei Ling was never supposed to have a Chinese accent anyway. Actually, maybe you're better off not doing that.
    • Above is altered because there's legitimate signs of Adaptation Decay in Twin Snakes, such as shoving MGS2 gameplay mechanics into MGS1 levels without changing anything else, or the whole Cutscene Power To The Max thing going on.
    • Although Kojima actually ordered the cut scenes to be changed because he didn't want them just copied from the original version. Try getting the Fan Dumb to acknowledge that, though.
  • The Fallout fandom is particularly notorious for this. It's probably the ultimate Unpleasable Fanbase. Go to No Mutants Allowed for a more up close and personal look at the horrors lurking in its depths.
    • Granted, the game is being developed by a different developer changing the gameplay style dramatically, but yeah, the fandom still is crazy.
  • This troper was very fond of Final Fantasy Adventure but hated the remake Sword of Mana.
    • Giving every single villain a Freudian Excuse and moving Vandole's big reveal 2 whole acts earlier didn't help it.
  • When it was announced that, to accomodate the fact that most gamers play with the Wiimote in their right hand, the Wii-version of Twilight Princess was to be flipped horizontally, Purists hat their pants in a jiffy over the fact that "Hyrule Geography has been destroyed". In a series, nontheless, with had the producers admit that they created the gameplay first before deciding on a story most of the time.
    • This troper seems to remember that most of the fantastic panty-twists were over the much more trivial fact that this flip made this the only time when Link was canonically right-handed, as he had always been left-handed in all of the previous games. This troper must admit that this bothered him as well. Thankfully, they soon announced that they were still releasing the GameCube version, in unflipped form.
      • Left-handed players were quite justified in hating this change.
  • Star Wars Galaxies was once a thriving MMORPG with lots of devoted players. Right up until the Combat Upgrade which essentially revamped the entire core mechanic and almost everyone quit in disgust.
  • The Halo series. The bitter rage and hatred the most hardcore Halo fans showed at the relatively minute changes between Halo and Halo 2 is nothing short of embarassing. For some fans, making the Elites speak English or adjusting the graphics on the plasma pistol overcharge are unpardonable sins.
    • Ironically, this troper, amongst others, (although he loved Halo 2) was greatly disappointed by Halo 3 as it seemed too similar to its predecessor.
    • Let's not even get started on the people who still demand the return of the first Halo's Pistol, ignoring the fact that it was MASSIVELY overpowered.
  • The Super Smash Bros series deserves a special mention with Wavedashing, which, no matter what anyone tells you, was a glitch. When removed from Brawl some players naturally complained.
    • It gets worse. People are so angry at the changes made in Brawl that some of them are trying to hack into the game and, essentially, turn it back into Melee. Anybody who questions their bizarre monomania is flamed and called a "noob". Perhaps they should get a different game, but that would end what has to be the funniest thread on the internet anywhere.
      • Oh, it gets worserer. Where this troper lives, a vocal part of the Smash community has begun to spread anti-Brawl propaganda and are working hard to try and bring Melee back as the de facto tournament Smash. Their reasons? Brawl lacks the exploitable glitches that made certain characters gods in Melee- meaning that you'd have to fight normally (which, they imply, takes the skill out of Brawl). They also complain about how dominant Snake and Meta Knight are in Brawl, despite the fact the fact that the only way to reach the top in Melee was to use either Fox or Falco. A lot of 'serious' Smash players have apparently given up on Brawl in spite of the fact that, as of this writing, the game is not even six months old. Melee, on the other hand, had seven years to warm up to people.
  • The world's best Ikaruga player complained that the Xbox Live Arcade port of the game was "horrible" because it slightly altered a few of the bullet patterns and enemy placements that he had probably spent months meticulously memorising. Of course, he regained his high score and then complained.
    • But then again, high scoring in Ikaruga consists of memorizing every single enemy and every single thing to do in a stage; it's a game of very precise movements and actions. Like performing music, the slightest mistake will stand out and be very costly, and a slight change in enemy or bullet placement can generate such a mistake.
  • Inverted if unbeknowsted to the fanbase with the official translation of the GBA rerelease of Tales Of Phantasia, which is hated by the fans of the DeJap translation of the SNES version for being more accurate, and not containing a bunch of adult humor that was never in the original. Also played straight with the reaction to not use the romanization in the Japanese version (like insisting on "Cless" instead of "Cress", even though the later actually means something). There's also the whole "Ragnarok/Kangaroo" thing, but other then a couple error it's a largely faithful translation (almost boringly so).
  • The first sequel to Legend Of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, received a lot of flak for going from an overhead perspective to a side-scroller with RPG Elements.
    • Wind Waker received many of a fanboy's outrage for changing everything, from making Link into a kid in a cel shaded style, to using a boat instead of a horse, etc. Basically, it wasn't like Ocarina of time, so now it sucks, according to the fans. Twilight Princess brought back the horse and the realistic adult looking Link, but fans choose to find other things to complain about.
  • Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, a game which isn't even out yet has already begun to receive vast amounts of flak from various elements of the fandom for making alterations to the plot of Warhammer Fantasy, ostensibly to facilitate gameplay. In all fairness, Warhammer Fantasy/40K players are possibly the whingiest anywhere, complaining when any change is or isn't made (the Rhino Rush was a huge example of this. Players didn't like the fact that it was possible in 3rd Edition, and then when 4th Edition came around and removed it, the very God Damned same players complained at its removal. [sound of this editor banging his head against a brick wall])
  • Mario Kart Wii. Oh no, they changed snaking! Now it actually takes skill and effort to get a turbo boost in curves! I spent years perfecting my shameless boosting through straights and now it's gone! They even added an Auto mode for all the Noobs that need everything handed in a silver platter! RAAAARGHRRGJHGJHGRJHGHGHHHGH
  • Resident Evil fans were outraged when Resident Evil 4 didn't have ink cartridges, obscure camera angles, Umbrella, or difficult controls. Resident Evil 5 looks to fix some of the problems, but is unlikely to completely close open wounds since they're sticking with RE 4's game engine.
  • To keep with the whole Magic to Steam Punk shift in the game's background, Thief 2 : the Metal Age replaced the scary zombies of Thief : Dark Project with extremely creepy automatons. Gameplay-wise, they fit the exact same niche : both made a lot of creepy noise, both were very hard to kill, and both were very slow (to be fair, the automatons managed to be a real danger since some were fitted with canons, while zombies only had creepiness to their name and could be outwalked). Then the game was released. Then the forums started spewing toxic ash and lava. Also, they completely removed the Burricks (cute little acid-spitting dinos), but that's a goddamn crime.
    • The zombies weren't even actually absent, they just had no role in a plot and were only in easily missed areas.
  • If you are to believe the forums, there are only three groups of Total War players : those who played the first two games and don't like the new engine because they're anal-retentive wrinkled tossers who can't deal with change ; those who discovered the series with Rome and are therefore braindead console jocks and SEGA fanbois who wouldn't know bad design if it shat in their eyes from a great height and should therefore go back to Counter Strike ; and those who are adamant that only ''Shogun'' exists and anyone who disagrees with them most probably walk on their knuckles.
  • NS13 in Kingdom Of Loathing was disliked by many players because, despite adding content, it basically nerfed every efficient (perhaps too efficient) strategy people were using as well as one or two that weren't actually that efficient. Most people have gotten over it, however. Some of the success of the recent "Hobopolis" content dump was in fact attributed to it not "pissing in anyone's bowl of Cheerios", to quote Jick.
  • It's almost a given that any time a new update is made to Urban Dead, any of three groups (the pro-survivor faction, the pro-zombie faction, and the PKer faction) will complain about game balance. Of course, given the high regard most players hold the game's creator in, they'll instead tear into one another for having made "bad suggestions."
  • Burnout Paradise. Circuit racing was replaced with an "open world" city layout, races were point-to-point affairs that required an in-depth knowledge of the city layout just to give you an idea of which road to take, and the fan-favorite Crash Mode was replaced with the compromise "Showtime" Mode that didn't feature the exact same kind of fun puzzle mechanics as the previous games. Oh, and you can't restart a race you just lost; instead you have to drive all the way back to the starting point, which is miles away. Sure, the car selection may be the best the series has ever had, Stunt Runs are enjoyable, the open world lends itself to lots of wicked jumps and fun secrets, and there's the promise of (rumored to be free) updates, including new sections of the city, a day-night cycle, motorcycles and even airplanes -- but enough longtime fans of the series were angered by this shift in gameplay focus to swear off the series entirely.
  • Team Fortress 2 was getting a lot of flak for the inclusion of alternative weapons, especially to the Pyro class - which some players deemed "overpowered" after a new feature was added to the flamethrower, and the alternate weapon to the flamethrower was revealed to be a better flamethrower without the new features but with more health and a higher crit chance. And the Pyro was given range-capable harrassment abilities. Somebody pointed out what the Internet Backdraft would be like if Valve had only just recently introduced the game-essential Ubercharges (limited invincibility) ability, and that combined with a good deal of players actually having fun with the new changes managed to get the Fandom to quiet down and get back to blowing one another to smithereens.
    • Team Fortress 2 was already subject to flak as soon as its final graphic style and game design decisions came public - namely the new cartoony graphical look (to draw attention away from the game's less realistic aspects) and removal of grenades (to emphasize individual class abilities and make it easier for new players to get into the game). These changes soon gave birth to Fortress Forever, a Half Life 2 mod which seeks to undo these changes...and basically just remake Team Fortress Classic on the Source engine.
      • Fortress Forever was in development before TF2 was announced. Granted, it was still just a TFC remake (made by dedicated fans who wanted to play the same game on a new engine), and it's still nothing compared to the real Team Fortress 2. Speaking of the "dedicated fans" of TFC:
      • They hate TF2 on general principle. Much like the Smash Bros brigade, high-level TFC play relied on exploiting physics and mechanics. In the early days, TFC was fairly close to the game's intended design. However, as time went on, more and more exploits were found. For example, the "Medic" class was more likely to be found flying around the map running the flag than actually healing people. Valve's Team Fortress 2 is essentially an attempt to recreate Team Fortress Classic as it was originally designed, not as the game became after exploiters ran rampant. Having played TFC in the days before bunny hopping and the like took over, TF2 is more like TFC than Fortress Forever or any other attempt by the old guard to recreate Team Fortress.
  • Initial D (Arcade Stage) 4 is a matter of debate among fans. Some welcome it as a fresh reboot of the series, but many others find it a pain in the exhaust pipe to get used to the weird physics. Worse yet, the game punishes high-speed cornering by "locking" the player's steering and making his or her car crash into the wall and suffer an acceleration penalty, and to fix this one must perform a "Penalty Cancel," which consists of releasing the gas, tapping the brake, and pressing the gas. Many players think of Penalty Cancel as a stupid technique--who the heck brakes on a straightaway?
    • As if that isn't enough, the "Version 1.5" patch of the game almost makes a new game out of an existing one by removing said exploit and steering lock, and replacing it with oversteer. This troper played one round of ID4v1.5, and will never play it again.
  • Purists of Puzzle League / Panel de Pon / Tetris Attack should stay very far away from Planet Puzzle League, which, in addition to providing the tried-and-true directional-pad-and-buttons gameplay, also offers the much easier stylus control.
    • The stylus controls aren't really a problem since one can use the d-pad anyways. The REAL problem (According to This Troper and maybe a few others) is the fact that Planet Puzzle League is inferior to Pokemon Puzzle League. No 3D mode, no custom puzzles, WTF?
  • The citybuilder series that started with Caesar' has about 10 titles, all similar in theme. Ever since the release of Pharaoh'' in 1999, each and every new release has elicited cries of They Changed It Now It Sucks and Ruined FOREVER from the community.
  • While admittedly some complaints are legit, the sheer number of Fan Dumb in Sonic The Hedgehog is downright embarassing. Some people hate everyone but Sonic, ignoring the fact that there were plenty of characters before the game went 3D and are certainly a heck of a lot more characters in something like Mario at that point. Some people even hate everything but the first game, whining about all the characters. Mario started out with more characters in its first few games! From this logic, idiocy like ''Sonic Underground'' would be a ''faithful adaptation''.
  • Heroes Of Might And Magic IV made several changes to the format of the series. You could now have armies without heroes, you could have multiple heroes in one army, heroes were actually vulnerable to damage within a battle and could directly enter combat, towns now had multiple choices between different soldiers to hire, soldiers appeared in their dwellings daily instead of once-a-week and the highly useful caravan structure was introduced, allowing you to hire minions from across the map without running a hero there and back. However, because it wasn't like the very popular HOMAM 3, fanboys whined and as a consequence all the changes were reverted for the next sequel. HOMAM 5 could just as well have been titled HOMAM 3 with new graphics!
  • Metroid sparked fanboy backlash when Metroid Prime was shown to be a pseudo first person shooter.
    • Metroid Prime: Hunters focused on Multiplayer. Even now, go onto an average forum and say anything remotely positive and prepare to get numerous rants about how this violates the soul and heart of Metroid and never can be erased from its history. One quote This Troper remembers in particular is: "I remember when I shot a missile, and 'HEADSHOT' first appeared on my screen. A part of my soul died that day, never to return."
  • Hell, any 2D game going into 3D sparked backlash among the fans, even to this day.
  • Now that the second World Of Warcraft expansion is underway, the forums are filled with complaints about changes made in the beta, even though they are for the better, all things considered. People complain about nerfed talents (which have been adjusted to the new itemisation process), "bloated" talent trees (when Blizzard tries to give people a wider range of choices even in the same tree), only being able to use one potion per fight (even though that cuts down on one of the major expenses of raids) and the fact that there will be 10-man versions of all raids (supposedly devaluating the achievement of beating them). Or the fact that Blizzard dares to make classes that have a hard time finding groups more attractive.

Tabletop Games
  • The inevitable, rancor-fueled outcry over the edition changes of Dungeons And Dragons. When 2nd Edition changed to 3rd Edition after Wizards of the Coast took over the franchise circa 2000, many long-time players stop playing or cursed the system. Now, that the company has released the 4th edition of the game, there's a similar bile-fueled uproar, only now the Internet is about five times larger and more populous. Inevitably, no one person is going to be 100% pleased with the result. Yet, people had been screaming murder and pillage for months prior to the release of the game, having only seen trace snippets, which was not enough to make an informed decision one way or another. And now that the game has been released, "the sound is like a hundred thousand bats shrieking as they swirl around a jutting spire of obsidian".
  • Related...Forgotten Realms. As the campaign setting of Dungeons And Dragons with the most popular fluff (though Eberron swiftly became a close contender), the setting is subject to the same rule changes during edition changes. When 2nd edition was released, fans were outraged over the "Time of Troubles" during which quite a few gods were killed and wild magic spots flared up around the world. By the time 3rd edition came around fans were so attached to the new version that they hated Wizards' "ruining" of the setting, in spite of the fact that remarkably few things changed between 2nd edition and 3rd. When 4th Edition came out and the changes were marked--the Spellplague resulting in planar mayhem, the introduction of a new race, the destruction of more than a few kingdoms, the death of several powerful and fan-favorite deities...in short, more changes than occurred with the Time Of Troubles--the fans screamed bloody murder.
  • The various edition changes seen in Shadowrun over the years probably come in second after D&D. It seems that every new edition splits the fan base...
    • In fact, pretty much every Tabletop Game that survives long enough to have multiple editions suffers from this. Which is unfortunate, as it often means that legitimate complaints end up being buried in all the NERD RAGE.
  • Mage Knight was once the king of miniature gaming... then WizKids unleashed Mage Knight 2.0, a massive overhaul to the game system. Players howled in protest, WizKids didn't change it back, and the game bled players until it died. Of course, one of the changes was that every single one of the player's old figures could not be played under the new rules, thus rendering everyone's entire collection, which they had spent years and untold dollars on, worthless. That does suck.
  • WizKids again, this time averting it: HeroClix is the current king of miniature gaming, and over the last two years, WizKids has been putting it through a massive overhaul that's completely changed the way the game plays. However, they've done it in small steps, giving the fanbase time to adjust before things change again, and they learned from their earlier mistake and made sure that old figures are still playble. The fans have taken it well.
  • After Time of Judgment ended the original incarnation of The World Of Darkness, White Wolf began to release the new version. Among other changes, each series was decentralized (there is a core "mechanics" book that each line's main book refers to), the system was overhauled (it's now much harder to botch a roll and easier to score critical succcesses), and most notably, due to the giant Thirty Xanatos Pileup the original story suffered, the Metaplot concept was thrown out almost entirely. It is now five gamelines into the new system and some fans still haven't quieted down.
  • There has been backlash from "[Cluedo]" (Or Clue to American) fans after Hasbro announced an update to the classic board game by Christmas, as they had deemed it "Too Stuffy for the 21st century". The updated game (which had been almost unchanged since 1949) features new characters, different weapons, and will now give each player a "Special power" ,and the murderer somehow will have the power to kill off other players mid-game. (How they'll do that without revealing themselves remains to be seen...)

CC Gs
  • Speaking of Wizards of the Coast, this troper is sorely tempted to go back in time and log every change to Magic The Gathering they've made...and then compare it to the number of voices proclaiming that change will be "the end of Magic". Let's see, there's the banning of certain cards; the unbanning of certain cards; price increases; proclamations that certain cards will never be reprinted; block formatting; the rules changes with 6th Edition; the all creature set; the artifact-loaded block; the cardframe change; the Grand Creature Type Reorganization; reductions in set size; introduction of new rarities...the list of death knells goes on. And strangely, so does the game.
    • The biggest one this editor has come upon is the in-story decision to alter the nature of "the Spark" that gives planeswalkers (beings who represent players slinging spells and summoning creatures) their powers, changing them from godlike entities to merely powerful wizards, whereupon most of the existing planeswalker characters were either Killed Off For Real or Put On A Bus. The reaction from some players/readers has gone so far as to speculate how much better MtG would be today if the executive who came up with the idea had been aborted in the womb. Yeah.
    • It should be noted that the game's current head designer, Mark Rosewater, has been taking the brunt of the Fan Dumb quite well over the last few (consistently successful) years. He promises his critics that he's got "Destroy Magic forever" on his big to-do list, and he'll get around to it eventually.

Live Action TV
  • This happened to Doctor Who as the new series was in production. Fans found lots of things to complain about, one of the most infamous being the enlarged TARDIS windows. The series itself eventually made fun of this point, with a character commenting that the TARDIS can't be a real police box, because "the windows are too big".
  • Knight Rider fans have a bad habit of becoming homicidally enraged at any changes from the original source material in the various Revival attempts of the series, even such changes as would be necessary to compensate for the fact that (a) it's no longer 1982 and (b) the Pontiac Trans Am has been out of production for several years. A new revival premiered in February, 2008, and, months before, fans have already taken note of several dozen reasons it is sure to suck. Of course, it did eventually turn out to suck anyway, but that doesn't make it right.
  • The Dresden Files made a lot of (author approved) changes when it made it to TV. Interestingly, it was the little changes that got lambasted the most. Harry Dresden no longer wore a trenchcoat (they didn't want him looking like an Angel ripoff) and didn't drive the same car (while it might look good in text a 6+ foot man cannot drive a compact. It just doesn't work).
    • Interestingly, the people who complained about the car change the most were invariably the people who had lampshaded that difficulty the most in bookverse fanfiction.
  • Stargate Atlantis is currently experiencing a fandom that is divided between froth-at-the-mouth fans who enjoy the show and froth-at-the-mouth ex-fans that decry all of the advances made since Season One. Stargate forums aren't happy places to be anymore...
    • Are any forums ever a happy place to be?
      • Well, yes. I recommend No Mutants Allowed, a Fallout forum. They're a happy bunch.
  • Anything from Super Sentai ported to Power Rangers that isn't 100% true to source is grounds for gasping and fist-shaking. Admittedly, some of it is worthy of decrying, but...getting in a tussle because the heroes don't say "Henshin"? Or that they don't have the same morphers? Check out Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, and you'll have numerous people hating it because it's not japanese.
  • Thomas The Tank Engine fans on hearing the show would be switching from models to CGI. Caused acts of Fan Dumb on You Tube. Then again Gullane and Hit have made plenty of changes to the series before this so the fans have been saying "it sucks" for a while now.

Online Fandom
  • Some MSTers deem a Fan Fic to be "bad" just because it changes the material it's based on too much, regardless of the quality of the writing. This includes making Lighter And Softer versions of dark shows (Darker And Edgier versions of happy shows seem to get off easy), an Alternate Universe that removes the core series' Applied Phlebotinum or other key Mc Guffin, any kind of Cross Over (but especially Fanfic Chop Suey). The resulting MSTing of the fanfic inevitably descends into Fan Wank.
  • On the RP Forum Gaia Online, when the devs make any significant change to the sites layout, dozens of petitions start up to get them to "change it back, because now it sucks". This Troper's usual response is "In a week, you'll love it and hate the old layout. Get over yourselves."

Webcomics
  • This seems to be the mentality of quite a few people about when the webcomic Megatokyo underwent Cerebus Syndrome. The comic basically switched its fanbase from "people who know about shoujo manga" to "people who like shoujo manga and/or character-based plots", so while the quality is still good and the update problem has arguably improved, some people are still holding six-year-old grudges.
  • The character of Fanboy in the Magic The Gath