Hey, DA fan here (but enjoy Witcher too), thought you might like to hear some views on the DA fanbase and forums "from the other side" regarding the topics of conversation in the last 5-10 pages of the thread. Sorry for the long post.
Re: Romances - Yes there are some people online who obssess about the romances. They tend to stick to their respective character romance threads, which can be 100s or even 1000s of pages long. They are regarded as something of a humorous anomaly by the rest of the forumites. Generally they are seen as harmless eccentrics. Sometimes they can be very vocal. The above Tumblr quote ("another straight guy ?? really ?") was probably not written by a SJW or Feminazi (terms I dislike) but by a straight male. There are a handful of straight men on the BSN who are angry that they have less romance options than straight women have. The last two revealed romances were straight men, which pissed off a few men who wanted another female to romance.
Re: the Moderators. Chris Priestly was not just a mod, but one of Bioware's main PR guys. Stanley Woo worked in QA and just moderated the forums in his spare time. Neither of them were paid to moderate the forums. Chris Priestly was actually an alright guy: helpful, friendly and funny. I suspect the above quote is him on a really bad day. Stanley Woo was a different matter. I didn't dislike him but he was waaaaay too trigger-happy when it came to closing threads. Plus he only ever posted when he was closing a thread, he never actually discussed anything, unlike Chris. NB. Chris was laid off, not fired. Don't know why Stanley Woo left, but I doubt it was because of his crapness as a moderator, since that wasn't his job. The worst mod we have now is just called BiowareMod01. He/she is kinda Stanley Woo-lite. We also have Allan Schumacher, a QA guy who is reasonable, well-liked and who will read through 100s of posts and cull the one or two bad ones rather than lock a thread. All in all a very good mod and nice person.
Re: Gay content - the lead writer of DA is a gay man (David Gaider). After working with Bioware on 10 games over almost 2 decades, he's finally written his first gay character, who appears in DAI. He wrote most of Bioware's best characters outside of the Mass Effect series, none of them gay. The media picked up on the one gay character he's written and tried to portray him as a SJW. Kinda harsh. As far as the disproportionate number of bi characters, it's a pretty harmless gamey thing so that women and gays can get more content. It's a pretty small part of the game and apparently most players just play as straight males or don't do a romance. Other than occasionally appearing at Gaymerx (a gay games conference which gets zero publicity), Bioware do not make a fuss about their gay content. It's the "garme jurnalizts" who do that.
Re: BSN Video and general craziness of the forums - the above video was heavily selective in its use of quotes, was meant to be humorous and almost all the posts it showed were deliberately taking the piss and were not meant to be taken seriously. Every so often a genuinely bonkers topic will show up, usually made by a member who makes half a dozen posts then leaves. These topics will draw a lot of attention due to the sideshow-freakery appeal, then be locked. Basically standard troll threads that you get on any large forum.
Hope that helps to give a more balanced picture of Bioware and its online fanbase.
(PS. Re: 8 abilities. Yep, this is my biggest worry regarding DAI.)
Re: Romances - Yes there are some people online who obssess about the romances. They tend to stick to their respective character romance threads, which can be 100s or even 1000s of pages long. They are regarded as something of a humorous anomaly by the rest of the forumites. Generally they are seen as harmless eccentrics. Sometimes they can be very vocal. The above Tumblr quote ("another straight guy ?? really ?") was probably not written by a SJW or Feminazi (terms I dislike) but by a straight male. There are a handful of straight men on the BSN who are angry that they have less romance options than straight women have. The last two revealed romances were straight men, which pissed off a few men who wanted another female to romance.
Re: the Moderators. Chris Priestly was not just a mod, but one of Bioware's main PR guys. Stanley Woo worked in QA and just moderated the forums in his spare time. Neither of them were paid to moderate the forums. Chris Priestly was actually an alright guy: helpful, friendly and funny. I suspect the above quote is him on a really bad day. Stanley Woo was a different matter. I didn't dislike him but he was waaaaay too trigger-happy when it came to closing threads. Plus he only ever posted when he was closing a thread, he never actually discussed anything, unlike Chris. NB. Chris was laid off, not fired. Don't know why Stanley Woo left, but I doubt it was because of his crapness as a moderator, since that wasn't his job. The worst mod we have now is just called BiowareMod01. He/she is kinda Stanley Woo-lite. We also have Allan Schumacher, a QA guy who is reasonable, well-liked and who will read through 100s of posts and cull the one or two bad ones rather than lock a thread. All in all a very good mod and nice person.
Re: Gay content - the lead writer of DA is a gay man (David Gaider). After working with Bioware on 10 games over almost 2 decades, he's finally written his first gay character, who appears in DAI. He wrote most of Bioware's best characters outside of the Mass Effect series, none of them gay. The media picked up on the one gay character he's written and tried to portray him as a SJW. Kinda harsh. As far as the disproportionate number of bi characters, it's a pretty harmless gamey thing so that women and gays can get more content. It's a pretty small part of the game and apparently most players just play as straight males or don't do a romance. Other than occasionally appearing at Gaymerx (a gay games conference which gets zero publicity), Bioware do not make a fuss about their gay content. It's the "garme jurnalizts" who do that.
Re: BSN Video and general craziness of the forums - the above video was heavily selective in its use of quotes, was meant to be humorous and almost all the posts it showed were deliberately taking the piss and were not meant to be taken seriously. Every so often a genuinely bonkers topic will show up, usually made by a member who makes half a dozen posts then leaves. These topics will draw a lot of attention due to the sideshow-freakery appeal, then be locked. Basically standard troll threads that you get on any large forum.
Hope that helps to give a more balanced picture of Bioware and its online fanbase.
(PS. Re: 8 abilities. Yep, this is my biggest worry regarding DAI.)
