Personally, I think this is an appropriate way to express dissatisfaction. It gives people an outlet to let EA know they're unhappy. Petitions and letters are very proper ways to try and communicate your issues with something. Is it selfish? I can't see something as selfish when you're unhappy and simply expressing that unhappiness. They have a right to feel that way and to express it. It becomes selfish when you have people come into the forums and tell those who are buying the game that they are responsible for the game being ruined; that they shouldn't buy the game so we can teach EA a lesson; that they are sheep/lemmings/EA cheerleaders; that they are financially irresponsible, ignorant, stupid, etc. That's selfish and rude because that completely disrespects other people's opinions and wishes.
With all that said, both petitions have been up for quite awhile now and I would eat my copy of TS4 if EA decided to delay the game BECAUSE of the petitions.
Bear with me while we do some math.

They had over 95,000 pre-orders the 6th week out, have been steadily increasing since showing up on the pre-order chart, are (I believe) the ONLY PC game on the top 30 presales chart currently, and still have close to 4 weeks to see those numbers steadily increase. If they hold steady at increasing their pre-order numbers by around 2500 each week (it's more likely this number will steadily increase as well), they'll be at around 110,000 pre-orders by the time it's released. Someone told me they usually estimate that their first week's sales will be about 4 times the pre-order numbers (yeah, not the most legit source but finding info on pre-order numbers is almost impossible). Which means, they're looking at sales over 400,000 in the first week (minimum). While that's only about 1/3 of the sales they got for TS3, I'm not sure anyone expects TS4 to do that well. TS3 broke records when it was released. And, of course, none of that is anything more than a guess--the game could completely flop or it could blow every other game out of the water. There's really no way for us to know until it's released.
Compare that to 20,000 petitioners and you can see what I'm getting at.
Sorry for the book.

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