Quote Originally Posted by chionos View Post
So based on some comments some people have made in here and in other places around the forums, I think the fact that these polls are often closer than they should be is a result of some people just being assholes to try to upset nerds. Which is annoying, but fine, because it is fun to watch these come down to the last second.

sharky, you better watch your tone with me, boy. Or I'll show you where you can put that gunblade of yours.
While there are trolls out there and maybe EoFF has more per capita than the rest of the world, I think this is more related to a sort of balancing bias that exists over time. FFVIII (along with FFII, X-2, etc.) have been widely criticized for many years by a number of passionate fans. While that may snowball during the initial release and review of these games (resulting in even more negativity), I think that effect gradually reverses over time as the negativity cools down and with the human desire to be independent from popular opinion or at least ensure the scales of opinion are 'fair and balanced' (whether consciously or not). The same happens for games that are fairly universally loved like FFVI and FFVII but in the opposite direction. Their overwhelming popularity causes people to rethink their own opinion of it and try to find the flaws in an effort to not fall into a groupthink mentality. This is the reason I think BoB continues to praise FFXIII. I don't think he actually loves the game that much, but he feels the need to overcompensate his love for it to balance out the overwhelming negativity. If we were to make this poll in another 10 years, I bet FFXIII would give any of the popular FFs a fairly close match. It's all cyclical.

Or, you know, some people just like those games better.