SHP Forums

Datadog wrote:I did find it interesting how he responded appropriately to certain forum posts, talking about his favorite foods or what game he was playing right now. Maybe he was a real person doing market research? Or maybe bots just know which forum posts to look for.

I think now that forums have moved to detecting bots better (also, not showing names on the MEMBER LIST on forums until "X" amount of posts, etc) - the people who do it need to do more.

Before bots would spam registration and all their links were to "XXX" sites or whatever. Now that they don't show up, they need to "fake" being real. So I think in some cases, it's real people coming onto forums (that they probably have no idea what it's about), look for appropriate forum sections, to get their post count high enough that forum owners approve them completely - and at that point, they can just do their typical spambot tactics.

Datadog wrote:I did find it interesting how he responded appropriately to certain forum posts, talking about his favorite foods or what game he was playing right now. Maybe he was a real person doing market research? Or maybe bots just know which forum posts to look for.

All of its posts were either just to start a very generic thread or were responses to threads that are very common for forums to have, i.e. "What are you playing now?", "Introduce Yourself!" and even "What's your favourite food?" is not that uncommon. Never once did it say anything about Sierra. Also, note that it used British spellings, but claimed "I am from US".

DeadPoolX wrote:Yeah, I just saw that now. It's odd that ALL of his games are from the Wii and the DS. As Datadog said, his list reads like a catalog.

I also noticed that FIVE of the games Rath listed weren't released within the last decade.

Ah, but I'm a human, I assure you. I just have old-fashioned tastes and consider the Sierra/LucasArts decade to be the pinnacle of adventure gaming. Highly sophisticated graphics and groundbreaking music is nice, but an engrossing storyline and interesting-and-believable characters are better.

dotkel50 wrote:Seems like a teen to me too. Here's my list...

1. Age of Mythology
2. Zeus (and it's expansion Poseidon)
3. Age of Empires III
4. Evil Genius
5. Rise of Legends
6. Psychonauts
7. MDK2
8. Caesar IV
9. The Longest Journey
10. Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

Ack! I've played many of these - AOM, Zeus (and Poseidon), Emperor: RotMK... hmm. I still have AOM (plus expansion) somewhere. What's Rise of Legends like, dotkel? I've played Rise of Nations (and the first expansion, Thrones and Patriots) - is RoL any good? I've noticed that it takes a 'real-world' game into sci-fi channels... what's it all about? *interested*

Collector wrote:

Datadog wrote:I did find it interesting how he responded appropriately to certain forum posts, talking about his favorite foods or what game he was playing right now. Maybe he was a real person doing market research? Or maybe bots just know which forum posts to look for.

All of its posts were either just to start a very generic thread or were responses to threads that are very common for forums to have, i.e. "What are you playing now?", "Introduce Yourself!" and even "What's your favourite food?" is not that uncommon. Never once did it say anything about Sierra. Also, note that it used British spellings, but claimed "I am from US".

Yeah and also the IP address was centered in India.

BUSTED!

What other harm would they be able to do besides posting links to XXX sites?

Jules wrote:BUSTED!
What other harm would they be able to do besides posting links to XXX sites?

Yeah, we had our eye on this one. Collector spotted it first - then I noticed the whole, "I am in the US" (but apparently spells with British spelling) - so I checked the IP from the post, and the service provider was in India. So good on Collector for being suspicious from the start!

Spambots are generally just that. Either those kinds of sites or "discount pharmacy" sites. Essentially they seek to do the same thing that comes into your SPAM folder in email - but do that to forums.

Jules wrote:BUSTED!

What other harm would they be able to do besides posting links to XXX sites?

I'm, by far, not a prude, but some of the spam bots will attach XXX photos to their posts, which makes a board not safe for work and I know I am not the only one here that has accessed this board from work.

Ack! I've played many of these - AOM, Zeus (and Poseidon), Emperor: RotMK... hmm. I still have AOM (plus expansion) somewhere. What's Rise of Legends like, dotkel? I've played Rise of Nations (and the first expansion, Thrones and Patriots) - is RoL any good? I've noticed that it takes a 'real-world' game into sci-fi channels... what's it all about? *interested*

ROL is really good. If you liked RON and sci-fi then you'll like it. Even though I'm not overly fond of fighting games, I liked this one. My nephew told me about it cause he knew i liked sci-fi and a good story line. There are 3 different civilizations: the Vinci, who use odd looking machines to fight; the Alin, who are a desert people who use magic to fight; the Cuotl, live in the jungle and are religious zealots. There are over 50 scenarios in the single player campaign, there are also quick-battle maps, and a multiplayer campaign ( I never play online so can't tell ya about that).

http://riseoflegends.com/

Rath Darkblade wrote:Ah, but I'm a human, I assure you. I just have old-fashioned tastes and consider the Sierra/LucasArts decade to be the pinnacle of adventure gaming. Highly sophisticated graphics and groundbreaking music is nice, but an engrossing storyline and interesting-and-believable characters are better.

I tend to agree (although I might consider graphics a bit more important than you do) that the story and characters are the most important. However, the original question was "Top 10 games of the decade." That means 2000-2010, not "whatever decade I feel produced the most games I enjoy."

Perhaps we should do a thread like that and instead of limit ourselves to the last decade, branch out to previous years as well. That might be more representative of our tastes -- or at least some of us. Many here do enjoy recently released games, but we all have a soft spot for the old Sierra/LucasArts titles.

Jules wrote:What other harm would they be able to do besides posting links to Triple-X sites?

As mentioned above, they can eventually post Triple-X pictures right inside the threads, and even start threads with disgusting titles. Then, to make matters worse, some bots can actually attack the forum's PHP files and make it impossible to post - or in some cases, even prevent moderators from doing the admin thing. We eventually had to shut down the Subspace Channel because of this (also because our head admin was the only one who could fix it, and he'd been missing for two years.)

DeadPoolX wrote:

Rath Darkblade wrote:Ah, but I'm a human, I assure you. I just have old-fashioned tastes and consider the Sierra/LucasArts decade to be the pinnacle of adventure gaming. Highly sophisticated graphics and groundbreaking music is nice, but an engrossing storyline and interesting-and-believable characters are better.

I tend to agree (although I might consider graphics a bit more important than you do) that the story and characters are the most important. However, the original question was "Top 10 games of the decade." That means 2000-2010, not "whatever decade I feel produced the most games I enjoy."

Hmmm. I'm not sure that graphics are all that important - Oblivion, for instance, had AMAZING graphics, but when it came down to it, many of the characters (the incidental ones) had the same voice, if not the same face. I recently played QfG2 (the original EGA version (!!)) and was struck anew by how much work was done on fleshing out the characters and the city of Shapeir. Even some of the incidental messages that the game gives you (as in, when you try to be clever or funny (or both)) are amusing.

I'm not sure that the original question means much when it's posed by a bot.

Rath Darkblade wrote:Hmmm. I'm not sure that graphics are all that important - Oblivion, for instance, had AMAZING graphics, but when it came down to it, many of the characters (the incidental ones) had the same voice, if not the same face. I recently played QfG2 (the original EGA version (!!)) and was struck anew by how much work was done on fleshing out the characters and the city of Shapeir. Even some of the incidental messages that the game gives you (as in, when you try to be clever or funny (or both)) are amusing.

I'm not sure that the original question means much when it's posed by a bot.

Why bother playing if you felt the original question was unimportant and weren't going to follow the rules?

For fun, what are your top 10 games of the past decade?

MusicallyInspired wrote:For fun, what are your top 10 games of the past decade?

The past decade was 2000 to 2010. Do you mean 1990 to 2000?

I meant the same as the OP-bot did. 2000-2010. I was referring to Rath who didn't follow the "rules."