The annual “start fight, get humiliated, ragequit but not really” post is out from Tobold, at a new record of just 17 days into 2016 this year. His thin skin is getting thinner with old age I guess. It’s pretty wonderful this time around too. Not quite “SynCaine is evil” on the outrageously dumb statements scale (and certainly no “CCP will go bankrupt in 2013” idiocy), but still plenty of delicious tears to harvest all around.
My favorite part about Tobold over the last few years is he has regressed into your classic middle school bully. If he thinks he has found an easy target he will act tough for the crowd, but the first time he gets hit in the nose the tears come out and he turtles up. Rinse repeat over and over again.
And lets not get ourselves confused, he not only asks for this, he begs for it. Go back over those F4 posts of his and tell me that’s not the case. Why do you think he is so proud of his “I can insult you on my blog, but I’ll delete your insults or replies” stance? Because he wants this attention, both at his blog and others. How is he both offended by what he is crying about in that post but also doesn’t read said blogs? Can’t have it both ways inferno-man, so stop lying and just admit you crave the attention. At least, until reality hits him and he is the clown everyone is laugh at. Then it’s ragequit post time.
Actually I take it back. Tobold isn’t just a pre-teen bully, he is also that teenage girl on Facebook who posts “Having a bad day :sadface emoji:” without context, just begging for “Are you ok?” replies and attention from like-minded fools. Well here you go princess, another post just for you. Think of it as a ‘thank you’ for all the entertainment you have inadvertently provided us in 2015, plus 2016 is already off to a strong start!
Hardcore Casual 
Two people hitting ‘like’ on this post is hilarious meta-humor, thank you.
When I saw that post this morning, and was done laughing at the usual hypocrisy (he literally complains about nostalgia in one paragraph while invoking it in another) and lack of self reflection (hate is where you find it), I was tempted to do a parody post with the title “Drama Blogs.” But I suspect that would go right over his head and be seen as simply more hate. No need to feed the troll.
The oddest thing about that post is that it appears to be a reply to a question no-one has asked. I thought he’d announced months ago that he was going to stop posting about MMOs. If I did have a question on the topic (which I didn’t) it would have been more along the lines of “Why are you still posting about MMOs when you said you were going to stop?”
I’d like to know the names of some of these negative blogs, too. I gave it some thought but I struggled to come up with more than half a dozen even using his criteria. Since Tobold doesn’t have a blogroll there are precious few clues. There certainly aren’t many of them in my Feedly, that’s for sure.
He’s never been a great one for empirical evidence though. Surprising, given his day job.
Tobold has degenerated into the ridiculous and illogical. The only reason he keeps dragging up comments about a genre he ragequit a long time ago is that MMO commentary was the only aspect of his blog that kept people coming back to his website. Once that disappeared he realized people had no interest in reading about his D&D tabletop exploits hence why he still posts intermittent posts about everything that makes him angry related to MMO’s (which is the people aspect the most important part of the genre).
Still it is quite entertaining to see him still spitting the proverbial dummy. I thank Syncaine for keeping us up to date on a blog that most of us don’t even read anymore.
He isn’t a bully – he is the epitome of Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo. Complains about nothing, about everything and constantly tries to grab people into his lunacy.
Not sure what in the linked post could be taken specifically as ‘oh, noes, SynCaine bloodied my nose over F4’, but quick and unyielding triumphalism without sweating the details too much is part of the charm of Hardcore Casual.
Which is why Tobold strikes such a false note here. Sure, he’s right, MMO blogging is stagnant (reflecting the genre itself) and often divided simply between nostalgics, travelogue-writing MMO tourists, people who whine about catering to casuals and people who whine about catering to elitists. But then, is he discovering this now? You load this blog, or his, or Azuriel’s, or Keen’s, or Syp’s, or Gevlon’s, etc. you more or less know what you signed up for in terms of tone or content.
Yes, total coincidence that his first post after my post about him was another Tobold “I quit” post, talking about ‘blogs’ that are mean and whaa whaa whaa. Guessing you also believe Tobold when he says he doesn’t read this blog too huh? He just ‘somehow’ finds a way to respond more often than not, just in his own cowardly way?
Also worthy of mention : all of Tobold posts about F2P games where he spends tons of money and actually do not quite achieve much in these games while, of course, denying he is a big spender by stretching the definition as much as possible.