Look at it this way, there are 500 or so members of this forum. I would imagine that each 1 of those people has posted some sort of opinion at 1 time or another. If each 1 of those 500 told 1 person about the game thats 1000. So we can assume that this number steamrolls and turns into hundreds of thousands,by word of mouth alone. I know that personally I have told more than 20 people about this game,and they are playing it! Those numbers are by no means irrelevent! When it breaks down to brass tacks, the numbers are what makes or break a game! Or you could think about it this way. If each of those 500 members paid 40$ for their copy of the game. Thats 20,000$! I am only counting what I see as membership. That is what counts,I call that a fanbase! If a company, any company does not listen to what their customers are telling them, they are setting themselves up for failure. Simple.
You assume a lot here. I seriously doubt that word of mouth sold hundreds of thousands of copies. It simply doesn't work that way in real life. If that was the case then all games would sell hundreds of thousands of copies, afterall 500 members isn't really much. That is however not the case.
There are more than enough companies who not let themselves be influenced by forum members and not all of those companies suck.
None of that actually really mathers. I'm not debating that the forum members here don't have an influence, but "insanely powerfull" is overdoing it. What's next? we are gods?
