As someone who has always enjoyed Sins either single player or in a local (LAN) multiplayer environment, I do not care.

That said, people have been mentioning how small Sins multiplayer community was for as long it's been out, doesn't sound like a new development.

The ignorance of people that join the scene of a game that's been around for years is not astounding in the slightest.

When you buy an old game on sale, and the player numbers fall off in the weeks following, it doesn't mean someone killed the community.

8 year old game, two year old expansion.  Sins came out when people were using P4's, it's old.  That there is a multiplayer community at all for a six year old niche game is not a mark of failure.

After playing ICO for a few years till I quit shortly after the Beta of Rebellion ended. Stardock and Ironclad honestly don't care for ICO. It was tacked on admittedly. 

But let's be fair, the MP community sucks. We were a group of pretentious assholes save a given few and I'd imagine that it still is. Newbies are faced with a cliff trying to break into the community. Sure people will teach you but to get to the point where you weren't simply a detriment to the time takes a ton of effort. The community is extremely anti-newbie.

Also think of a better comeback other than troll, you're just proving how shit the community is.

Well hello there.  Hi my name is monk and I've been here since just before the first SINS released in 2008 (I am however by no means 'an oldie' here.......I believe that distinction would belong to all of those old farts over at wincustomize......hehe  )

What I can tell you is this.  Stardock/Ironclad did not kill the MP for SINS.  They never really built the MP (with a larger 'mp community' in mind) for SINS in the first place.  Right from the start their focus has always been on the SP game.  For balance etc. etc.   Sure they did make some changes along the way with the expansions and then Rebellion etc. but the reality of it is that SINS was always the kind of game you got a few friends together via LAN (ICO didn't work for many people and you wouldn't believe how hard it was for many people to host games for direct-connect when the game initially released).  Some of us stuck around for a few years (on the fringes of what might be called an 'mp community' and played/smurfed pug matches etc.) but again, the 'mp community' for this game has always been a different animal of sorts when compared to those other mp games you've referred to.

Just chalk SINS multiplayer up as that awesomely fun game to play with a few buds (while enjoying a few buds) on a weekend and you'll find things much more enjoyable!

Oh please, you can do much better.  I've gotten karma for worse than that.  Repeatedly.

Multiplayer tutorials are anything but typical, and anything but worthwhile when present.  The best multiplayer tutorial is playing with actual players.

When I started playing Warlords Battlecry, the multiplayer community was smaller than the Sins community, significantly.  I got games whenever I went looking for them, with people that weren't adverse to playing with new guys, despite long standing bugs, and a game design that lent itself toward lengthy matches.

The multiplayer community here has numerous assholes that bitch and moan about every little thing, kick anyone that doesn't play how they want them to, and are generally dicks in every way possible.  It's not the bugs that make the community, it's the assholes.

What I'm about to say is going to be very similar to what Sinkillr has said...I'm not trying to be redundant, but rather I think it is important for people to see multiple voices saying the same thing for the sake of credibility..

I am not familiar with Warlords Battlecry so I do not know how comparable it is to Sins...however, there are many things that make Sins different from most MP games I am familiar with, and while Warlords Battle may have some of these similarities, I'd be surprised if it has all of them...

Here are some unique things about sins MP...there isn't any one thing on this list that is actually unique, but rather the unique combination of them all I think makes this game different:

1. Games are relatively long -- even on faster speeds, a "quick" team game (ignoring MDs and the like) will last 45-60 minutes...most games usually go for around 90 or so minutes, with some getting to the 2 hour mark...FFAs, multi-team games, or your casual LAN game tend to take much longer, especially if you use slower game speeds...
2. ICO is relatively unstable -- people crash a lot...the MDs, the runtime errors, the DCs (and occasional CTD) are terrible...it is easy for people who don't experience these things to push the blame on the player -- their computer sucks, their connection is wonky, their drivers are out of date, but all that is really just BS spewed by people who don't know what they are talking about...the stability of this game on ICO is terrible, the "mega-dumps" of 2+ people crashing at the same time are common and affect all games, not just 5s on faster...that there are now multiple accounts of stability issues in singleplayer points even more to the game, not the player...
3. There is no rejoin feature for this game...
4. There are autosaves, but they can cause lag spikes and crashes, so many players turn them off (as well as auto-recording)...

Combine all of these things, and you have a very fragile MP environment...because games are long, people want the games to be as balanced as possible so that they are fun...getting an easy win or getting your ass handed to you aren't so bad if the game only lasts 15 minutes....but when it lasts an hour, or two, or more, players are naturally going to value their time invested playing each game...they are going to want more balanced teams, which is why setting up teams takes so long...they are also going to be wary of noobs since they significantly complicate balance by being unknown quantities (and sometimes even smurfs)...

The long setup times combined with the lack of stability and inability to rejoin frustrate players even more...it makes each opportunity to play a nice, well-balanced game even more valuable, and this is why a skilled player is going to be unwilling to tutor some noobs when a 5s game has just been hosted...

The players who are asshats to noobs are generally asshats to everyone, which is pretty much how life is on the internets....of course, even "nice" players will kick noobs out of lobbies, but this is only because of the reasons mentioned above -- the games are long and thus people want to make damn sure they are balanced...in fact, kicking noobs is to be expected when the title of the game includes "skilled only" -- the noob has no reason to complain at that point...

Of course there's the counterargument that this is just an elitist atmosphere that, while not intentionally malicious, is still essentially anti-noob...that, however, is incredibly (or conveniently?) ignorant...noobs host games all the time, and kick players with too many games (even if the game title doesn't include "noobs only")....their reasoning is the same as the skilled -- games are long, and they want to make sure their time is spent playing a well-balanced game...just as a noob can throw an entire skilled game, a pro can throw an entire noob game...in other words, it works both ways -- the noobs can be just as unfriendly as the skilled players...the core issue is not the friendliness of the community, but rather the time it takes to play a game, the difficulty in actually getting to play a full game without crashing, and the inability to rejoin a game if you do crash...

Many MP games have some of the issues mentioned above, but few (if any major ones?) have all four...Civ V games are long, but it has better stability and a rejoin feature...Dota 2 has some stability issues and team balance is very important, but you can rejoin, you can chat while the game is paused, and the games are much shorter than a typical sins game...total war games are fraught with stability issues, but the battles are shorter...console games are notorious for having glitches, bugs, or exploits, but the matchmaking sets up games quickly and the typical length is around 10-20 minutes...

Experience in single player games, reading several threads about strategies and reading those guides are more than enough for a new player to enter the MP community, if he is willing to put some energy and determination in it.

While it may be true to some extent, let me point out something else.

One year ago when I was playing online, skilled matches and the sort, we faced a strange problem.

One of the issues MP community has always been somewhat hostile towards new players that MANY NOOBS ARE IDIOTS.

1. They can not understand skilled games are not meant for them,

2. when asked never respond in the game,

3. never ask questions about gameplay and doing their horrible style that is not even sufficient against a HARD AI. We had many games with players who just sat on their homeworlds for like 10 minutes, not responding to anyone. Someone wrote about this before me, I think Seleuceia, that the skill range of noobs is extremely wide. I was a good player even as a noob, because I trained myself using the advanced strategies I read on these forums, was even accused of being a smurf LOL, and in my first few games ASKED FOR ADVICE, but compared to another noob who had 0 games like me, but failed to even upgrade his asteroid during the whole game and started with two KOLs, never asking anything, never even responding to chat....

4. Many players fail to take advice, if me or someone told them to do XY thing to improve his situation he completely ignored it, ruining the game. Many even said OK I'll do that, but in reality they just continued to cripple the game with their ridiculously noobish playstyle.

5. One of the worst thing about noobs that you can never know when they decide to randomly quit. It was so infuriating to see a 0 game player leave after 4 minutes even before doing anything useful or before being defeated by Doci or someone.

The solution is extremely simple. Just admit you are new against skilled people, and ask for advice on how to improve, what are the basic strategies against real players, and if someone helps you, DO WHAT HE SAYS. But if you are stubborn, quiet, don't expect the whole community to do everything to help you... Oh and practice.

There are two sides of the coin...

Seleuceia, Turchany, and Hydraling are right (although the latter might find it prudent to be a little less hostile). Look at a game like Homeworld. 15 years after its release, it probably has 5x more active players than rebellion after less than two. Why is that? Heavy support and framework for that aspect of the game.

What i meant was heavy initial support and the foundations needed for MP. All we need from the the game developers is a racetrack and a little push, and the community can take it from there.

Stardock and Ironclad didn't even give us a tickle. Instead, they decided to pour poison on us (metaphorically speaking), with a few spikes along the dirt path.

Actually, the community has taken that "first step" many times. Each time there's a steam sale, player count rises to over 500. Its just the crappy ICO system forces 99% of these people to leave in just one week. So much wasted potential.

Selective memory plays a big part in all the bitching and moaning.  Two niche strategy games, that did unique things to make a more in depth experience, with fairly similar track records, but the one is looked back on without seeing the problems that plagued it.

Reality.  Frequent CTD's, even after patches there were still a few stubborn remainders.  We found one of them in alpha testing for WBC3, if you dragged a selection box off the top of the map with certain features, it crashed.  No one even played big games, 2v2's were hard enough to finish, 3v3's almost always failed.  You guys are always doing the worst possible thing, stability wise, full player rosters.  The completion of one in WBC was a rare event and it didn't even go to 10 players, it stopped at 6.

We're two years out from the release.  Two years out from WBC's release, the multiplayer community consisted of less people in total than play Sins now on any given evening.  I knew them all by name, the only time you'd see someone that wasn't one of the couple dozen regulars, was when some guys would get on Gamespy to play real life friends.  They were weeks between sightings.  Two thirds of the regulars are in my defunct contact lists from when we used ICQ to setup matches.

It had a Gamespy lobby...  You post like you played, but it doesn't really sound like you played.

A minor detail, truly minor.  Outside of hero rushing, which was frowned on, games in WBC were much longer than the typical RTS.  This is grasping at straws, little more than excusing a blatant lack of tolerance.  You could play a small map, do a coop comp stomp in half an hour, and show them the ropes just fine without blowing a couple hours on a long stalemated game.

Hilarious, really.  There are two types of new players.  Those that are actually new, and those that are just new to that particular game.  I came through the campaign of my first RTS building one of each building, turtling behind defenses, and slowly building up an army big enough to roll over the obstacles.  Multiplayer was an entirely different animal, I don't play through campaigns the same way I used to before I played against other people.

The campaign only teaches you the basics if you already know the basics.  People that already have, will learn just as well from what Sins has, in a fraction of the time a campaign would take.  People that haven't, wont.

I've given Karma twice, once was testing the system because someone said it didn't work.  The second was for a troll post, extremely obvious in it's nature, and yet still taken seriously, by people such as yourself with no sense of humor that do little but rage in their self perpetuating ignorance.

I don't.  Why would I?  This player did this, that player did that, don't play with so and so because he wouldn't surrender.  Half the time someone posts, it's to complain about someone or something.  This community has been overly competitive and lacking in tolerance for years.  We even had some tards flaming modders for destroying the community because the mods would break up the player base.  For so few of you, the amount of griefing over the years is really quite impressive.

Symbolic relationship with modders? Bwhahahahah!! Pardon me but that's a whole load of bullshit. There are a few exceptions but generally ICO MP community was mostly uncaring or rather hostile to modders. I remember when people on ICO would call people who played mods a bunch of unskilled newbies and demoted them for that.

The ICO MP community has barely any ties of benefit to the modding scene. Rather it has been the opposite.

In terms of ICO and Modding relations. I went from ICO to modding. ZombieRus5 was pretty good at competitive play and he's one of the bigger modders. Goafan did a little I believe. Seleuceia is the other one. But other than that it stops there from my memory. I can't think of any testers on any large modding team that are former ICO players.

I left the MP community due to just lost of interest to continue playing. The old core of players were leaving in droves after playing essentially the same game for a long long time. Joining the SoTP team and modding was the only thing that kept me going back to this game. And it still does.

No matter how hard we tried it just ended the next day before anyone stuck around. Not to mention we were consistently frustrated, bored, and tired of it. It got to a point where we mostly threw our hands up and said "screw it". It was evident since the Rebellion Beta ended. There were still a few who stuck around but the majority eventually left shortly after. Why now of all times does someone decide to make a thread and call out on it puzzles me when it was evident for so long.

Ironclad nor Stardock don't care for SoaSE MP, They honestly did not want to put in the effort to improve ICO. And why should they waste time and money to rework net code and various functions to cater to a very small base of players? The money comes from the stream of SP players that pick up this game and the modding community literally carries this game. Especially now when admittedly, Star Trek Armada 3 the mod has garnered a huge crowd for this game. Gathering a huge wave of public attention for their mod.