While not attracting as much misuse as Condemned by History, Vindicated by History can still be misused in that:
1. It can be used to gush excessively about works that never made a splash and never really gained traction afterwards and otherwise over-exaggerate its achievements (like the Wii U entry, the ATT thread
I started about it inspiring me to start this thread)
2. It can be used to say "You know, this thing that was hated then and still hated today wasn't really that bad!"
3. It developed a small fanbase but not one big or influential enough that it redeemed the work in the public's eyes
5. Someone says "X is becoming this trope". That's not how it works. Either it was vindicated or it's not. If it's "becoming" this trope, wait until it does before adding.
6. It is confused with Popularity Polynomial
7. It violates the 5-year waiting period
Edited by supernintendo128 on Jul 23rd 2022 at 1:58:21 PM
I'd like to clean up VindicatedByHistory.Video Games because there are many disputable examples.
Starting with Castlevania:
- While it did get very positive reviews, the 2D PlayStation game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night came out with initially low sales solely because it was 2D when other series moved to 3D. It was heavily overshadowed at the time of its release by massively hyped games such as GoldenEye (1997) and Final Fantasy VII, which cost it many "Game of the Year" awards for 1997. It would later be placed above both of those games on many "greatest of all time" lists in the years after its release.
- There's also Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. When the game first came out on the NES, it was rejected by the fans, because it got rid of the by-level gameplay of the original Castlevania. What they didn't realize until years later, was the innovative gameplay ideas the sequel had — such as side-scrolling gameplay exploration, multiple endings, a password system, etc. It wouldn't be until over a decade later that Konami would bring the gameplay back with Symphony, where it would in turn become so well-regarded that it helped name a genre.
- Castlevania: Circle of the Moon was mostly derided upon its release for an odd reason: It was a Game Boy Advance game with dark graphics and was released early in the system's life, when the only system capable of playing it had no backlighting. Aside from those who modded their system, it wasn't until the release of the GBA SP (as well as the Game Boy Player and the Nintendo DS) that many players could truly begin to enjoy it and warm up to it. The game does still receive a lot of criticism for a different reason, but going from “mostly hated” to “love it or hate it” is still a marked improvement. The Castlevania Advance Collection rerelase for multiple platforms further helped to salvage its reputation and fix a lot of its perceived flaws thanks to a bunch of quality-of-life features such as savestates (thus addressing the dearth of save points and the lack of a native Suspend Save), notifications when attacking a monster that may drop a DSS card, and an in-game encyclopedia that provides a lot of useful information.
- Castlevania: Curse of Darkness had mixed reviews at launch, but today it is now regarded as the best 3D Castlevania game and one of the best Castlevania games in general, with many fans fawning over its unique Innocent Devil system and polished combat. The story is also considered top-notch, with its main characters Hector and Isaac proving popular enough to be included in Castlevania (2017), an adaption of Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse—a game they never even appeared in (though to be fair, it is implied they were working for Dracula during that game's events).
- Castlevania Legends came out just after Symphony of the Night and was a medium transfer to the Game Boy. Most people, even the ones who still do not like it, admit it is worth more than what people considered it to be back in 1997 and that it shouldn't have been Ret-Gone'd because a) at least the story was fine and b) the idea of Alucard being Trevor Belmont's father, heavily implied by Sonia's relationship with Alucard and the game's Golden Ending, would make the Belmonts' strength and power to sense Dracula make more sense.
Feel free to cut, they are not examples as you mention.
I cleaned up all Castlevania games, both VindicatedByHistory.Video Games and YMMV pages, and removed the folder.
Now, Fire Emblem. This has a lot of strange misuse. They focus on facts that Super Smash Bros. renewed the interest on video games and had them vindicated, but this is Colbert Bump or Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.". There's also a lot of talk about class Metagame changes that have nothing to do with a work being vindicated.
My opinion on subjects (Bolded part by me)
This is not Vindicated by History by definition. It's Colbert Bump or Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.".
- Prior to 2001, it had never seen anything resembling an international release (save for the short-lived OVA), and so was obscure, if not completely unheard of, outside of Japan. Then came Super Smash Bros. Melee, which featured Marth and Roy as hidden characters. The two characters clearly sparked an interest in American players, and is widely attributed as the reason why from the seventh game onward, Fire Emblem started seeing international releases... except New Mystery of the Emblem, anyway (though the first game in the series was Remade for the Export, meaning that Marth is no longer a Japan-only character).
- The Tellius games, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn sold so badly on their initial release they forced the franchise to move to handhelds for over 12 years, and Intelligent Systems even considered revamping the series from the ground up. After Ike's appearance in the Super Smash Bros. series and the newer FE games attracting a Broken Base, interest in the Tellius games skyrocketed, causing them to sell for extremely high prices on eBay. Today, both games are regarded as some of the best entries in the series, and Radiant Dawn gets a lot less flak for its story than it used to.
- The Jagan archetype got this. Initially, fans would dismiss characters like Jagen and Marcus as "EXP thieves" and would never use them. When metagame tier lists started placing more importance on overall contribution to the team and availability rather than growth rates, the archetype rose in different tier lists for each game whereas Magikarp Power characters took a hit. The contribution of the Crutch Character to Hard Mode playthroughs and Ranked runs proved to be invaluable and now they're often seen as the best characters in their games.
- In general, prepromoted units (characters who have already undergone class change) were widely mocked as Overrated and Underleveled, only useful if you lost one of your early-joining characters with higher potential. At worst, they were actively advised away from, due to "stealing XP." Then people realized that, in fact, many prepromotes are actually incredibly strong and could often stay good for the whole game with minimal investment. And far from "stealing" XP, they instead became lauded for not needing XP, as opposed to a low-level character who needs a lot of work just to catch up to a prepromote's base performance. Many characters once dismissed as mediocre or useless, such as Niime, Hawkeye, Saleh, Minerva, and Wendell, now rarely rank below the high tiers.
- The early metagame of the series' Western fandom primarily focused on a character's raw endgame stats and combat performance, which caused many characters to be dismissed as bad simply for not having high growth rates. In the GBA games, early fliers like Vanessa, Shanna, and Florina and staff-users like Priscilla, Moulder, and Saul were given poor appraisals for their inability to cap all their stats. If they were run at all, it was because people believed they needed to use one of every class. Then people realized that utility is a massive part of the game, and recognized that those frail fliers vastly improve an army's mobility and flexibility by carrying units around and circumventing terrain, and those weak healers can trivialize maps with little effort when wielding the utility staves that come online in the mid-to-late game. It also became apparent to many fans that the actual benchmarks needed to be good at combat are often not particularly high, causing them to reconsider units previously seen as mediocre at fighting as actually being able to hold their own. Consequently, all of the above units are now considered very good.
- The Sacred Stones:
- Within Sacred Stones itself, the Summoner class was often dismissed as flat-out useless because it had the worst combat performance of the various magic classes and its signature gimmick was seen as "stealing XP." Then, when people started valuing utility over raw combat performance, it became apparent that the Summoner offered an advantage like nothing else in the game, due to its ability to exploit weaknesses in enemy AI and effectively nullify major threats. Nowadays, appraisals of Summoner tend to look less like "don't bother" and more like "the only problem with them is that there's not more of them" (the only two available Summoners have bad availability and mediocre stats).
- Sacred Stones has also been vindicated by ROMHackers. Many Fire Emblem ROMHacks are made based off of the Sacred Stones Engine, thanks in part to many of the tool(s) used being based off of Sacred Stones.
- Within Shadow Dragon's cast, Caeda was initially only seen as useful in a mage class, and far from the best unit due to having no Strength growth to speak of. But then players realized that Caeda's Strength didn't actually matter, because simply forging her Wing Spear made her into the game's best offensive unit and bosskiller due to the damage multipliers on the thing. Consequently, she's now argued as one of the best flier units in the series.
- In Fire Emblem Fates, Xander is an In-Universe example. His ending in Conquest and Revelation says that as king of Nohr, he was responsible for many reforms that were unpopular with much of the populace, but scholars say were necessary for future prosperity.
- The Sacred Stones:
- The game had a mixed reception upon release, being the first game since Gaiden to allow level grinding, which meant it was praised from one camp for being more accessible to casual players and players who were new to the series, but derided from the other for being too easy and ruining the series' Nintendo Hard appeal. After the release of Awakening, which added even more casual-friendly features, the hardcore camp started to warm up to Sacred Stones out of a combination of it being harder without relying on Fake Difficulty and general nostalgia. This was especially true when people pointed out that level-grinding in Sacred Stones was always optional.
- The game's plot as well is pretty much a book report of all Fire Emblem tropes, as well as a lot of JRPG tropes. However, it's remembered more fondly nowadays - in part due to Lyon being seen as one of the best written villains in the series. Back in 2005, he was written off as an Alvis wannabe - but he's seen as much more. His portrayal in Fire Emblem Heroes has also helped.
- Fire Emblem Gaiden itself has a significantly warmer reception now than it did at release. Many fans at the time disliked the many changes it had from the first game, most of which did not reappear in the series for a long time. However, with Sacred Stones, Awakening, and Fates including aspects such as easier level grinding (all three), split routes (Sacred Stones and Fates), and Unbreakable Weapons (Fates), Gaiden feels much less out of place now than it did then. Its popularity was also helped significantly by its remake, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, which is widely regarded as a Polished Port with vastly improved characters and writing.
- Shadow Dragon, when released in 2009, was one step away from being a Polished Port, with most of the polishes being done with the mechanics rather than bringing things like Character Development or the story up to par with the standard set by the previous four games released in the west. On top of that, the character of Marth suffered a lot of Hype Backlash due to how many members of the Smash Bros. fandom created their own personality independent of what he actually had, so when his personality was "discovered" to be that of a standard 1990s game hero, he was seen as a Vanilla Protagonist and boring. It was even initially labeled a Franchise Killer, something it was seriously Mis-blamed for (Radiant Dawn had a much higher budget and sold significantly worse). However, as time went on, people started to accept all the things it did well—it introduced the concept of reclassing to the series, features a highly customizable level of difficulty from "cakewalk" to "murderous", added some major quality-of-life improvements that the Tellius games had been sorely lacking (most notably, the ability to skip an enemy phase), and involved some incredibly fun characters and mechanics (such as retooling Ballisticians almost completely). The plot, while relatively minimalistic, is also often seen as doing what it needs to do, and the game is perhaps the most fleshed out in terms of "no resets"-style play, since it features multiple methods to help the player get back on their feet if they lose too many units to permadeath—features that, on release, got people angry because they saw the game as forcing them to kill off units. While it's rarely seen as one of the best games in the series, it's gotten a much stronger reception and a good-sized hardcore following.
Edited by SpaceKABOOM on Feb 2nd 2024 at 12:06:17 PM
This was added to the page for Shadow the Hedgehog:
- Vindicated by History: As infamous as this game was at the time of its release, and still is to an extent, with Sega all but burying it to the annals of history and the Popularity Polynomial of the Sonic franchise itself, there's been a subsection of fans who look back on the game much more fondly, whether sincerely or ironically. The Real-Time Fandub of it made by Snapcube in particular got a lot of modern eyes on it. Sure enough, when the Updated Re-release of Sonic Generations was announced to be including an all-new campaign for Shadow that would take elements from this game, including Black Doom being Back from the Dead, the reception was almost universally positive, a huge far cry from the game's initial reception almost two decades prior.
————
While the Black Arms and the concept of Shadow packing a gun isn’t viciously hated like it once was, I don’t know if that’s enough to get Vindicated by History. If the Critical Backlash and defenses of Sonic 06 isn’t enough to get that game vindicated, I don’t see Shadow counting either
Edit: got removed
Edited by Mariofan99 on Feb 2nd 2024 at 7:43:17 AM
I erased clear misuse examples for Fire Emblem in VindicatedByHistory.Video Games but left the unsure ones because I don't know the games enough to judge them.
Now, Silent Hill folder. This one is absurd because each entry of Silent Hill 1-4 contradicts each other. Silent Hill 2 one says it was compared negatively to the first game, but Silent Hill 1 also says it got dismissed since Silent Hill 2 came out?
My thoughts on subjects:
- Silent Hill:
- Silent Hill 2 is a rather interesting case of this. When the game first came out, it was quite popular and given very positive reviews, but it was often compared and contrasted to the first game. Fast forward to the present where "artsy" games like Spec Ops: The Line, The Stanley Parable, and Shadow of the Colossus have become well-regarded, and people quickly began to see the incredibly complex and metaphorical story of the game. Today, not only is it universally considered the best Silent Hill game and one of the best horror games ever made, but also one of the best games ever made and a paragon of the "Games are Art" philosophy. It also helps that a certain popular caustic reviewer holds it up as one of the very few games he likes and constantly puts it on a pedestal.
and its reception remained same or got even better. Also has unnecessary shoutout to Zero Punctuation
- Both Silent Hill 3 and Silent Hill 4 were heavily cast under the shadow of Silent Hill 2, with 3 being criticized for not adding anything new to the series and for bringing back The Order (a central plot point in the first game that’s considered thematically inferior to the personal demons plot lines for some fans), and 4 for being too different from past games by having the main protagonist not go to the titular town and putting in more combat sequences. After Team Silent (the original development team) disbanded and Konami exported the games to American developers which both took the Tragic Hero trope and combat sequences up to eleven, both games have now been seen as some of the series best installments that are now praised for their improved controls, better graphics and for taking a risk with the series as opposed to copying the same formula again.
and even Silent Hill 4 had good reviews. They're Contested Sequel at worst and had its share of fans from start. This is "this game is better because American sequels are bad" opinion and not a vindication
- Ironically, this has even come around the original game as well. With how universally praised SH2 came to be, the once-lauded original fell by the wayside, dismissed as being comparatively shallow and simplistic, coming before the sequel led the series into deeper psychological territory and being just an atmospheric and surreal but still comparably mundane horror game about fighting monsters in a haunted town, as well as its jagged PS1 graphics and clunky controls considered to have aged like spoiled milk. However, a reexamination of the game in the later 2010s came to the conclusion that, even without the twisted psychological layers of later games, the game still holds up surprisingly well for one simple reason — it is still as scary as balls, with the primitive graphics only making things more eerie and disturbing. A revival of deliberately outdated retro horror games like Paratopic and Concluse that are designed to invoke Silent Hill's jagged, low-rez freakiness suggests the game could even come out today and still be well-liked.
. Later mention about indie horror may fit Periphery Demographic.
- Silent Hill: Shattered Memories received slightly above average reviews due to the greatly disliked Silent Hill: Homecoming being still being fresh in fans' minds and Shattered Memories in general lacking the bloody and grotesque qualities of the Japanese games. Since then, Silent Hill fans have gone back to the game and genuinely praised its psychological components that are in the spirit of the first four games. It's easily considered the best of the American-developed Silent Hill games (though that may qualify as Damned by Faint Praise depending on who you ask).
and had good reception from start. This doesn't really explain why it was poorly received at first and later mention of Damned by Faint Praise feels like it was written as "American sequel surprisingly good?" opinion and not a genuine vindication
- Silent Hill: Downpour was savaged upon release due to it releasing in an Obvious Beta state. The game itself was somewhat of a Creator Killer with its developers going under within a year of release. However, after a patch was released, many of its performance issues were fixed, but by then the damage was done. When people started to look back upon it and play it in its improved state, they liked what they saw, and felt that, while not as scary as it could've been, the game developers actually understood the concept of Silent Hill quite well. The game isn't without its flaws that couldn't be patched, but it's seen as somewhat of an underrated Silent Hill title in The New '20s. The fact it didn't rely overly on pandering to the past Silent Hill games outside of a deliberate sidequest also helped.
Downpour fails by both criteria—it wasn't hated enough (its reviews were more "mixed" than "savage" multiple publications gave it decent scores), and it isn't loved enough now, either.
So there's all these examples from World Of Warcraft.
- World of Warcraft has had this happen through its various expansion packs throughout the years, some more than others:
- Mists of Pandaria was at launch criticised for its tonal shift from the much bleaker Cataclysm to the idealistic world of Pandaria. Some criticised it as being too much of a Kung Fu Panda ripoff (despite Pandaria being around since Frozen Throne, regardless of their Running Gag status), for overhauling the talent system, as well as the amount of Daily Quests. After Warlords of Draenor, people looked back fondly upon Mists and started to appreciate it for the fact that the expansion had a LOT of content available at launch. Not only that, but Pandaria has some of the most beautiful zones ever shown in the game.
- While virtually nobody will defend Warlords of Draenor as having been good (causing the subscriber count to drop to lower than that of Classic!), the overall sentiment of It's Short, So It Sucks! overall drowned out appreciation for what people thought the expansion did correctly. After Legion and Battle for Azeroth, people looked back and pointed out that Warlords actually had some pretty good questing and appreciated that they got to see how Draenor looked at its height — which also made the Draenei relevant for the first time since 2008. On top of that, it allowed players to pay more attention to their professions, instead of having to grind through four expansion packs' worth of gathering and crafting. It also set the stage for Legion, considered to be one of the overall better expansion packs.
I don't think these examples really count as those expansions are still heavily criticized and controversial to this day, the Warlords of Draenor even touches on how it still isn't liked.
Also both expansion storylines have gained criticism in recent years for Orientalism and liberal use of Always Chaotic Evil from what I've seen.
Many other expansions are listed, but those are the ones that stick out the most I feel.
Any other opinions.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yeah, I'll remove that, too.
Both read like "this is better now because the next expansion is bad", which is a common misuse for Vindicated by History.
Should I get rid of them then?
If you have enough reasons to suspect its legitimacy, yes, I suggest citing your comment as edit reason and removing it. Warlords of Draenor is certainly not a correct use, having "it's not really that bad" argument right at beginning, and Mists of Pandaria's argument seems rather weak to me.
I'll probably get rid of it as again the argument is weak and they aren't that liked. To this day, many additions from those expansions are cursed by the fandom.
Here are the others.
- World of Warcraft has had this happen through its various expansion packs throughout the years, some more than others:
- Burning Crusade was criticised (before release) for its controversial changes to the lore — most notably, Blood Elves and Draenei, who brought with them the Paladin and Shaman classes to their factions (respectively) to the opposing faction. Memes of "Lore, LOL" were prevalent throughout 2006-2007, and the Draenei were memetically mocked for their inaction and thematic differences from the rest of the group. However, once the removing of the faction-exclusiveness fully set in, people begun to appreciate this move as it allowed the Paladin and Shaman classes to develop further, instead of having to constantly match one another. This was a constant development headache throughout classic, since they had to play the same role in terms of gameplay, but also needed to be mechanically different from one another. Many of the former detractors of the Draenei have come around, feeling that while the initial eredar/Draenei retcon was somewhat clumsy, it did add more to the Burning Legion's lore and the new Draenei proved to be interesting. It certainly helped that later expansions did much more retcons with less justification.
- Cataclysm was and still is considered to be when the game "died" as the player population dwindled (plus Wrath was kind of a Tough Act to Follow). Many people cited bizarre changes to the lore, the drastic changes to the world, (and the complete lack of catchup mechanics for a year), Dungeons that were too hard and had to be nerfed before players outgeared them, quest zones that were long, and some unintentionally hilarious voicework and presentation. However, as time went on many people started to see the good in the expansion: giving players multiple choices on where to level as opposed to being railroaded through a set route, refining the catch-up mechanics when they were added, and most notably, the massive update to the old world that refined and fixed many of its design flaws. This ultimately brought the rest of the world up to the standards of Wrath, and many people still believe a few Cataclysm areas were some of their best.
- In general, Chris Metzen's contributions to the lore have been looked upon much more fondly than in the past. While Metzen was one of the key figures behind the Warcraft setting and many of the earlier storylines, his time on World of Warcraft has been initially scrutinized as introducing massive retcons to move the story, perceived use of the Conflict Ball to drive the narrative, supposed treatment of Thrall as a Creator's Pet, and lore directions seen to be detrimental to the overarching storyline. This was also combined with backlash at his handling of the campaign of the Starcraft II trilogy as well, namely the decision to redeem Sarah Kerrigan(in part tied to him having a greater fondness for redemption arcs as time went on) and center the narrative on her romance with Raynor. Yet, following Metzen's departure from Blizzard and the poor reception of both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands and the perceived worsening of the storytelling, worldbuilding, and plot direction of Warcraft combined with Blizzard being embroiled in multiple scandals, Metzen's storytelling has been looked upon much more fondly as at least providing emotionally charged moments, drawing on the basic themes of the Warraft franchise, and doing solid worldbuilding on their own right. Meanwhile, many players have at least given some credit to Starcraft II for wrapping that franchise up while it's ahead regardless of the perceived flaws of it's campaign in contrast to the Warcraft narrative. When Metzen's return to Blizzard as Executive Creative Director was announced, many had hopes that this would also indicate a return to form for both Warcraft and Blizzard, with his appearance in Blizzcon 2023 during the announcement of the Worldsoul trilogy being met with huge cheers.
The Draenei part of the entry belong more under Character Perception Evolution, I feel.
Burning Crusade is debatable, but Catacylsm is still controversial, even if it less so than the other expansions.
Metzen, I don't know what to say about, but I think it belongs more under Only the Creator Does It Right?
Any thoughts on these, should I get rid of them too?
To be a Master
Sounds like Metzen was given the George Lucas treatment back in the old day. So I wouldn't say it's just Only the Creator Does It Right given the fandom didn't really focus on the good aspects of his writing until after Metzen left.
RE: Shadao
Metzen was definitely bashed alot in the past, but I'm not sure if its Vindicated by History or something else?
From my experience Warcraft fandom loves to take one random writer/creator and put the blame for every thing they hate in the story on that specific writer, sometimes even coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories to slander them.
IE stuff like;
- "This new employee posted a selfie of himself with a statue of a Warcraft character marketed for the new expansion, that must mean that character is his waifu and he's twisting the story of the game to favor his waifu."
Metzen wasn't immune to this kind of stuff. But I feel it is irrelevant to Vindicated by History.
I do think Metzen is an example of Only the Creator Does It Right, though, as many of the most controversial changes happened when he wasn't involved.
To be a Master
The entry gave me the impression that Metzen's writing wasn't praised (rather hated) until after he left. Which then leads to people reexamining his writing and then wish he was back to give WOW some proper storyline.
It comes across as a George Lucas syndrome where the creator is hated for the writing of their favorite franchise... until said-creator left and then the successor turns out to not be so great, causing many to revise their stance on the creator and say "Actually, they're a creative genius with great storytelling."
I haven't been in the WOW fandom for a long time, so I don't know what the fandom's stance on Metzen was before he left. If it can be proven that he was overall praised before he left, then the entry is simply false and thus should be removed.
RE: Shadao
The Wo W fandom definitely scapegoated Metzen, similar to Lucas.
But it is true, people have gone over and liked Metzen's additions like making Orcs and various other monsters not Always Chaotic Evil and having moral nuance.
Later expansions doing stuff like going back to alot of Always Chaotic Evil tropes for Orcs and undoing alot of the nuance Metzen added has drawn heavy criticism at the very least.
People still point out Metzen's flaws, but in general, his writing was viewed as good by the fandom. People also appreciated that he actually apologized for doing a retcon.
I guess it is similar to George Lucas, but what about the rest of the expansion entries, do you think they can be removed?
So I was behind the Metzen entry and let me chime in.
I am going to vouch for MOP remaining in here. I remember how MOP discourse used to be much more critical—-nowadays it tends to rank very high A LOT on top expansions lists and people tend to like MOP for the side lore even if the Faction War is controversial(through not as hated as the war that came much later). Garrosh is at the very least liked as a villain—it is fairly telling that he usually gets on the top 10 spot of best Warcraft antagonists. Even if people found the Faction War polarizing, Garrosh is at least praised for either being a badass rvillain and oozing sigificant Evil Is Cool, or having Unintentionally Sympathetic points that the narrative should have dealt with.
However, Mists can use a MASSIVE rewrite. There was at the very least criticism of a couple of elements of Mists such as the Faction War and a couple of gimmicky features like the "Pokemon" minigame that got woven into the main story. However, now there is more focus of what Mists did right.
I will agree with removing Warlords and Cataclysm. Cata is controversial even if it has a couple of dedicated Private Server projects around it. The general consensus is that Cata "died" after 4.0 but that 4.0 and individual Zones themselves have merit, I don't think "and the expansion got worse over time" qualifies for this at all. With WOD it's more "individual questing and leveling is good, main story bad", which happened enough during WoW's history, even after the point where the game's reputation fully took a nosedive, that I don't think this is unique to WOD.
I'm going to vouch to also keep Metzen, I was active in the fandom those years ago, I have seen how polarizing he was. Kerrigan was basically the Ur-Example of the Xehanort, Diamond Authority, <Insert 90% of Naruto villains here> sort of discourse. He had a massive George Lucas style negative backlash between Warcraft III and his departure, but compare this to now where people are very much elated that he is back in the saddle as the brains behind the new plan for Warcraft and the massive cheers when he stepped up during the announcement of the Worldsoul Trilogy. And there is somewhat more focus on what he did right over what he did wrong.
Edited by xie323 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 8:44:33 AM
RE: xie323
I'm fine with Metzen, but the thing with MOP is that it used alot of stereotypes that have gotten heavy criticism over the years.
MOP is frequently cited in the fandom for its lack of moral nuance and killing many prominent characters, whilst also making them evil.
Like WOD, from what I've seen as a major part of the fandom, is people highly criticize MOP for its usage of Always Chaotic Evil tropes for races like Orcs and trolls.
It is also frequently brought up as being the reason behind the character drought for races like Orcs.
Also I would count Garrosh being Un Intentionally Sympathetic as a point against the expansion being Vindicated by History. The same goes for some of the expansion's heroes, including a few characters that committed horrible atrocities such as genocide, being Un Intentionally Unsympathetic
Edited by Monsund on Feb 3rd 2024 at 9:28:26 AM
The Faction War was polarizing back then as well even without the sterotypes to be honest and if we take purely the Faction War not being hated as the one further down tbe line and people warming up to Garrosh it won’t be VBH. What people had come to like was more the stuff about the Mogu, the Sha, Pandaria being beautiful, the Titan stuff, along with the fact that all the content patches offered a lot of endgame content, as well as even PVP that was not broken for once.
While I mentioned that “side content good main story bad” is endemic to WoW the main difference is that expansions that are hated in spite of this are still hated or seen in a negative light, while you are very likely to see MOP be well regarded as one of the better wow expansions because of the Pandaria unique lore and the generally perceived “it got better” gameplay wise patch cycle.
Edited by xie323 on Feb 3rd 2024 at 9:55:32 AM
(xie323) I know little to nothing about WoW, but your point reads like it's more applicable to Critical Backlash (a criticized work has gained supporters who think it's not as bad as others make it out to be) or Contested Sequel (there're a considerable number in both sides of discussion about an expansion sequel)
I could maybe see the case with MOP being more contested sequel nowadays but I feel we may need more warcraft players to chime in.
RJ Savoy
I remember that Mists had vocal haters, but my impression is that most players liked it fine. There was no discontent to be heard among anyone I played with, which I certainly did hear in Warlords.
It's worth remembering that the forums always amplify the critics, because those who are content with the game don't post there as much. In the years I've read them, it feels like every expansion is the worst time yet for the game, only for it to become a lost golden age a month into the next expansion.
I would not consider any of the expansions to be Vindicated unless professional reviewers have changed their minds.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.
Assuming that Mists always had a silent fandom anf it is more the vocal hatedom dying down, I thibk I’d be fine with removing any expansion from here on that basis
Mega Man in VindicatedByHistory.Video Games. Everything after Mega Man Legends seems like misuse.
- Mega Man:
- Back in 1998, Mega Man Legends wasn't exactly the most loved iteration of the franchise. Its sales (at the very least, the sales of the sequel) did not satisfy Capcom, many veteran fans (who grew up with the Classic and/or X series) were unsupportive of it for being a completely different kind of game and critical reception was average (ScrewAttack even included it in their "Top Ten Worst 2D to 3D Games" list). With time, though, its fanbase grew strong, especially since Keiji Inafune declared the Legends series to be his favorite part of the Mega Man series, and now finding anyone brave enough to admit disliking the series has become a daunting task.
. The sales fell below anticipation. 2000s wasn't kind to it either because it was a frequent topic about "how transition from 2D to 3D could go wrong" on YouTube, like Screwattack mentioned here and AVGN episode. The reception got notably better around the time Legends 3 got cancelled and it's now generally liked as an early open-world action role-playing game
- While Mega Man Battle Network wasn't treated with as much hostility or lukewarm apathy as Legends (until the fourth game, that is), in the early 2000s, it was pretty difficult to find people who admitted to liking Battle Network. (In fact, when someone asked about them at an E3, other fans booed them.) Now, people look back upon it fondly for being a different type of game altogether than what the Blue Bomber had at the time. It had nuanced (yet hilariously easy-to-break) gameplay which resulted in it becoming somewhat of an eSport. Some view its plot to either be Narm Charm, while others also view its cyberterrorism themes as oddly relevant ten plus years later. The Lets Plays done by EpM have also earned an audience, being the only decent way to enjoy the fourth game. Some even view the maligned fourth game as being So Bad, It's Good.
- While Mega Man Battle Network wasn't treated with as much hostility or lukewarm apathy as Legends (until the fourth game, that is), in the early 2000s, it was pretty difficult to find people who admitted to liking Battle Network. (In fact, when someone asked about them at an E3, other fans booed them.) Now, people look back upon it fondly for being a different type of game altogether than what the Blue Bomber had at the time. It had nuanced (yet hilariously easy-to-break) gameplay which resulted in it becoming somewhat of an eSport
- Mega Man Battle Network 6: Cybeast Gregar and Cybeast Falzar in particular had a lot going against it. Part of it was because 4's icy cold reception leading to mixed/middling reviews. It also released in June of 2006 in NA&EU regions, when fewer people had their eyes on any new releases for Game Boy Advance. What also didn't help was that the 5th game had a DS version, and in Europe said particular version released less than two months before the 6th game. Despite this, it's been looked back fondly upon as being an underrated classic that served as a decent Grand Finale to the series, being rated on GameFAQs as high as the second and third games.
. This is more like Critical Dissonance. Its Metacritic scores are 63 and 62 for both versions but it's had good reception from fans
- Mega Man X8 was the death knell for the X series due to poor sales after the universally reviled Mega Man X7, and critics blasting the game for its difficulty. Over time, fans have discovered that it's actually a solid game, doing far better than X7 (by largely keeping the 3D elements to a bare minimum), helping to salvage Axl as a character both personality and gameplay-wise, giving X some much-needed Character Rerailment, and finally killing off Sigma, who many fans felt had long overstayed his welcome, for good while introducing a brand new Big Bad in the form of Lumine. Even now, the ending of X8 (particularly The Stinger in which Lumine's Last Breath Bullet appears to have embedded something in Axl's cracked helmet crystal) has been ripe for Wild Mass Guessing involving the events leading up to the Elf Wars and Mega Man Zero as well as Axl's ultimate fate (not helped by one of the in-game unlockables being a hidden "Armor" for Axl in Lumine's color scheme).
- During the early and mid-2000s, some actually saw the Mega Man series as a relic that should have remained in The '90s, thanks in part to the rather lukewarm reception of the Mega Man X games released during that period. note Due to having a prolific amount of releases in a short period of time, franchise fatigue was also setting in: the Classic series only received a port of a previously-Japan-exclusive SNES title and a Compilation Re-release; the X, Battle Network, and Zero series were all running concurrently at one point, two out of three of which were steadily declining with each release; and when the latter two subseries concluded, they were soon replaced by their own sequel series (Star Force and ZX respectively). note Once Mega Man 9, a deliberate throwback to the 8-bit days, came out in 2008, the Blue Bomber was looked upon with much more fondness. That unfortunately didn't stop the series from falling into a similar rut in The New '10s following somewhat frosty reception to Mega Man 10, the departure of Keiji Inafune (who was actually only the producer of Mega Man) from Capcom, and the company shelving all their Mega Man-related projects (including highly anticipated titles like Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe), but this only served to make the fandom more vocal, culminating in Mega Man becoming a Guest Fighter in the fourth Super Smash Bros. and finally receiving a new installment in 2018's Mega Man 11.
I think that the Nelvana dub of Cardcaptor Sakura should qualify for this because people are now realizing it was kids wb that screwed it up in the US.
Edited by dms2345 on Feb 10th 2024 at 2:04:31 AM
Yeah, generally a newer work is gonna cause more discussion (and that includes a backlash) so the less-discussed earlier controversial works are gonna look better since it's not the new thing to talk about, and contrarian takes have more room to shine. That doesn't mean the fandom is picky or whatever, or even that said contrarian takes are always wrong, it's more just a function of how online discussion works. That's why it's tricky to work out examples of VBH, and why "people hate this newer thing more than the old thing" isn't enough.
Edited by harryhenry on Jan 25th 2024 at 3:21:56 AM