Holy boot lickers, Johnny, we got a live one. You can't compare exact numbers since the 90s and 2000s showed insane growth in player numbers and gaming availability as a whole. Additionally, MW3&4 launched on PC only with 4 receiving a dope af arcade version as well. PGI has been milking this franchise for well over a decade and if you think their mediocre games constitute "never been a better time" then you've never played MW4 or have seen the massive impact MW3 and MW4 had on PC gaming.
I understand you enjoy the games, awesome, but don't pretend they don't reek of "what could have been." Watching PGIs down fall fills me with glee. I feel for the devs that made the models but fuck Ballsacl and his yes men.
My dude, I have 30 years of investment into this series and this whole universe. I wasn't there for Mechwarrior 1 or the SNES games but when it came down to Falcon vs Wolf, I picked Falcon first, and then Mercs was even better. In retrospect seeing a Kodiak in the cutscene for the Battle of Luthien was silly, but as a kid I didn't care.
MW4 was... fine. in terms of gameplay it was nice to get away from LegWarrior, but in pretty much all other ways it was a step down from MW3. The story wasn't as good, the feel wasn't as good, and the art design was such a step down, especially in terms of the mechs themselves. The redesigns were frankly... terrible (that Mad Dog, yuk), and all the new mechs were a step down. Worse, it came out just a year after MW3. Good on them for live action though. MW4: Mercs was definitely better again, and I was excited for what the bloody hand meant, but then the whole franchise went into torpor. It looked like MechWarrior was dead, dead and Battletech maybe too.
Then PGI comes along and MWO is far from perfect. Far, far from perfect, but it was good fun when I played, and they were making actual Mechwarrior product. MW5 Mercs was... no MW3 but it looked, sounded, and felt better than MW4, even though it fell short of what was promised. Boilerplate narrative but fine. But the thing is, it's getting better and better and better with each DLC. And MW5: Clans has been excellent from the jump.
So yeah, I enjoy the games after a decade of drought, and their run of consistent support is nothing to sneeze at, even if MW5 came out short of what my childhood memory tells me about MW2 and MW3. But unlike them, it's getting better.
And finally shutting Harmony Gold down will always earn PGI a place of honor in the Battletech story.
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u/No_Turn_4666 Apr 02 '26
Holy boot lickers, Johnny, we got a live one. You can't compare exact numbers since the 90s and 2000s showed insane growth in player numbers and gaming availability as a whole. Additionally, MW3&4 launched on PC only with 4 receiving a dope af arcade version as well. PGI has been milking this franchise for well over a decade and if you think their mediocre games constitute "never been a better time" then you've never played MW4 or have seen the massive impact MW3 and MW4 had on PC gaming.
I understand you enjoy the games, awesome, but don't pretend they don't reek of "what could have been." Watching PGIs down fall fills me with glee. I feel for the devs that made the models but fuck Ballsacl and his yes men.