I downloaded Warhawk the other night, and though its not the shooter I'd hoped it'd be (more of an action game, i think), I had much fun. There's one, seemingly unmistakable, problem though. There is absolutely no message, party, or invite system to be found. To play with a friend, you have to open your friends list ( your PSN friends list is ported into Warhawk) and wait for one of your friends to join a room, or make one. You can then join the room if you'd like.

Here's a few of the problems that arise because of this: 1) Having more than 1 person on your friends list join the same room as the one you're in is about luck, as you cant message them to tell them to join, you can only hope they do. 2) If you do manage to get in the same room as people you know, the game will split teams up if they're uneven between rounds, meaning you get split from the people you want to play with ( a party system would easily fix that). 3) There's in-game clan support, though you'd have to have someone from the opposing clan on your PSN friends list to have them join, or they'd have to scroll down the mile long list of servers to find yours. While this is happening, if someone random joins your room, there's no way to kick them, so youd have to re-make and hope only the people you want to join, join. Not to mention, there,s no pre-game lobby. *EDIT* There is a way to make a room that you can only join if you have the password, but without a way of messaging people within the game of Warhawk itself, giving the people the password still requires you to use an instant messanger, or a phone.

I thought these were problems that all would agree are so, but when I posted a thread in a certain forum (not a forum run by Sony, or Incognito)on the subject, I was blasted. Here's some actual replies i got.

"Its called AIM, or join room, idiot."

"Why dont you just get your friends phone numbers and stop complaining"

"You can just make room with a certain server name, and have people scroll till they find your room."

I dont get it, not at all. A message/party/invite system is standard fare for any online game, yet people are defending the lack thereof. Has fanboyism really brought us to the point where we ignore the simplest of problems, so that our beloved companies dont look bad? This has left a very bad taste in my mouth.