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XBox (Games)

Fable Forum Goers Fall For Huge Hoax 38

Posted by Zonk from the i-am-the-bard-send-me-money dept.
CheeseMonkey writes "If you've played Fable, you have probably seen the Bards in the game, and may have had them tell you to find a "better bard". That better bard was found on the Fable forums (reg. required). Or, so it seemed. He led on the gaming public for two solid days with a series of incredibly well crafted poems. Finally, he fessed up. I extensively blogged the whole ordeal, so you don't have to sift through all the rubbish."
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Fable Forum Goers Fall For Huge Hoax More

Fable Forum Goers Fall For Huge Hoax

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  • What? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by contagious_d ( 807463 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:16PM (#10349994) Journal
    Why is this on slashdot? I dont even understand what the hoax is. He pretended to write poetry? Anyone get this? Please explain.
    • /me runs off to remove games from /. display prefs
    • apparently he claimed that the poetry came out of the game.

    • Here's what happened.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by CaseM ( 746707 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:37PM (#10350118)
      Fable came out. Many were not pleased with the short main quest time after all the hype that had spewed forth from the mouth of Peter Molyneux (the lead game designer of Populous and Black & White, et al fame) over the past few years. Many wanted to believe there was more to do, and so some of us held out hope.

      Fast-forward to a week after release. A new xbox.com Fable forum poster (i.e. The Better Bard) started a new thread entitled "For the loyal - a week after release" or something akin to that in which he purported himself to be "contracted" (but, of course, under an NDA) to give out hints on the xbox.com Fable forum pertaining to extra lands and goodies you could get if you could solve his iambic pentameter riddles.

      Although there were doubters, many, many people had their interest piqued enough to dive in headfirst, so to speak, enthusiastically trying to figure out his riddles.

      His poetry, while not Shakespeare, was written just well enough to be taken seriously for several days, in which the thread he started grew to over 200+ pages in size.

      Flame wars ensued between the doubters and the believers, the likes of which haven't been seen since the hey-day of Derrick Smart. New web pages were born overnight with all of his posts listed...many were just hoping against hope that he was for real.

      Of course, since you're reading this, you know it was a hoax. He eventually fessed up, and some applauded his efforts while others promised to heap a thousand curses upon his head and that of his offspring for time immortal.

      There...now you have it.

    • Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)

      by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 )
      Someone posted hundreds of messages to a forum for the recently-released Xbox game Fable. The messages were poetic (in the style of the "bards" within Fable), and were presented as riddles to unlock secrets within the game (a viral marketing ploy, like ilovebees.com is for Halo 2). Later, the person stopped writing poems and came out of character, claiming that he was a 50-year old with a PhD in English, and that he was supposed to stop after he received a certain number of posts flaming him. It turned o
  • what if Shakespeare played MMORPGs......

  • I fail to be amazed. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WhatAmIDoingHere ( 742870 ) <sexwithanimals@gmail.com> on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:26PM (#10350055) Homepage
    "I extensively blogged the whole ordeal, so you don't have to sift through all the rubbish."

    Sounds to me like the whole entire thing was a bunch of rubbish.

    I don't really see why this is considered news.

    A guy tricked some people on a forum. And?

  • Poor Title (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:28PM (#10350068)
    I suggest "Fable Forum Fans Fall for Fantastic Fabrication" instead.

  • Player player (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spyrochaete ( 707033 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @03:46PM (#10350169) Homepage Journal
    This person fooled thousands of people into thinking he had really stumbled on to something! (S)he is a true roleplayer!

  • meta-blogs (Score:5, Funny)

    by jeffehobbs ( 419930 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @04:12PM (#10350333) Homepage

    Somehow, blogs about blogs (meta-blogs?) usually wind up being more interesting than the blogs themselves; which makes me wonder if blogs about blogs about blogs would be even more geometrically interesting than that.

    Or what about a message board post about blogs about meta-blogs, such as this one you're reading right now? Possibly, following the previous logic, what you're reading now is the most interesting thing ever. We are through the looking glass, here, people.

    ~jeff

    • Re:meta-blogs (Score:2, Funny)

      by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
      Possibly, following the previous logic, what you're reading now is the most interesting thing ever.

      Now that's a blatant attempt at Karma whoring...
    • Possibly, following the previous logic, what you're reading now is the most interesting thing ever. We are through the looking glass, here, people.

      Allow me to come to your rescue, then. Although I originally held out hope that your post might bring me some unique insight or possibly contain a witty remark, I soon found it to be utterly uninteresting in every possible way. Thus it appears we are in no danger of civilisation collapsing under an endless recursion of meta-blogging.

      What annoys me is that un

  • This'll kill my karma, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FlyingOrca ( 747207 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @06:11PM (#10351084) Journal
    ...why would this be considered "stuff that matters"? Not trolling, not baiting flames, just looking for an explanation, here. Maybe I just don't "get" the whole game thing, but I really don't see how they matter in the context of things with actual, you know, importance.
  • OH THE DRAMA!

    I'm glad I didn't waste my time reading all those damn pages of awful poetry.
  • Reminds me of when Final Fantasy VII came out, and all the fanboys believed that there was a way to bring Aeris back... people came up with all sorts of button mashing combos, ridiculous quests to revive her, and the like....

    now THIS hoax... well someone with obviously massive amounts of time (that probably would have been better spent playing this awesome game) writes what appears to be like 20 pages of poetry to convince everyone there's some fucking hidden bard?!?

    please... get a life man!
    • Reminds me of when Final Fantasy VII came out, and all the fanboys believed that there was a way to bring Aeris back...

      WHAT?! You mean A4eris DIES?!!!!111one11!? Damn, she can't die, not when she and Cloud are going to have mad sexx0r in Kingdom Hearts 2!!!!

      OK, seriously, this isn't as bad as everyone thinks it is. A buddy of mine plays City of Heroes-- I thought it was OK but there was little in the way of a coherent story. Well, he's big into role-playing, so he decides to start his own story with
  • Heh, MMORPG players are funny indeed.

  • Gah! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Databass ( 254179 ) on Saturday September 25, 2004 @09:28PM (#10352245)
    He lied to me through Poetry! I HATE when people do that!!
    • You must be a girl. You probably fell for:

      Roses are red/Violets are Blue/Sugar is sweet/and so are you.

      And now you're pissed cause you realized that he was just trying to get into your pants.

      Anyway, stop modding people funny. Mod them "Underrated" because "Funny" doesn't yield karma bonuses. Hit the guy above with some real mod points.

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