I can understand why people prefer the main series, especially when it comes to storytelling, but bad and inconsequential? Really?
Oh, goodness... yes,
really. Get out of your hole in the ground and take a look at the wider world.
I love Armada, I spent countless hours playing it, and I utterly loved the multiplayer, even though it was primarily just one-on-one (what's the bet that most people didn't even
know about the Proving Grounds addon until a few years later? The internet wasn't such a huge thing back then...). But, let's be clear on this: where Wing Commander is cited by famous game designers as a watershed moment for games; where WC2's characters used to regularly show up in various "top ten character" features all over the internet; where WC3 drove CD-ROM drive sales by the millions, Armada achieved
nothing. It was an extraordinarily fun game, and it didn't feel like a minor spin-off at all, in its own right it seemed very ambitious - but the world didn't care. Is Armada the grandfather of all multiplayer? No, Doom is. Not because Doom was the first multiplayer game (neither was Armada, of course), but because it was the one that really sold people on the concept. Armada sold people on nothing. And bear in mind, Armada sure had potential - I mean, it
was a Wing Commander game, with all the recognition that went with that.
And by the way, in retrospect, Armada is certainly very badly flawed. You have the worst AI in the series, terrible game balance, almost nonexistent capship combat, and a disappointingly primitive strategy mode. Come on, just admit it - you open that box, you install the game, and you expect to be commanding a fleet as impressive as the Concordia's, with escort destroyers, with cruisers, with hundreds of fighters onboard your ship from the get-go. What do you get instead? Not much. Yes, the strategy mode is fun in its own right, but I can't imagine anyone who played WC1 and WC2 running this game and not being disappointed in his heart of hearts. Even the moment of triumph was ultimately a slap in the face - instead of a death-defying battle, you and your wingman fighting past the escort and making repeated torpedo runs against the enemy carrier, you ended up with a cutscene. In theory, if the enemy carrier happened to have an escort (it almost never did), you could actually try to torpedo it in battle, but how many people do you know who actually got to do this? Destroying the carrier was almost impossible in combat, and automatic outside of it. There is a lot to love about Armada - its ship designs and graphics being better than WC3, for instance - but overall, I'd definitely struggle to call it a good game. It's too badly flawed for that.
What about Academy? Again, it's a fun game, and once you've completed WC2, Academy provides you with the gauntlet that WC1 had and WC2 failed to include. But as neat as this is, it's not in any way memorable or consequential. Without the mission editor, Academy would be best described as the game that you bought to make WC2 a complete product. Well, what about the mission editor, then? This was a time when mission editors simply did not exist. So, Academy, in theory, could have been the watershed moment for game editors - it could have been the product that spawned a community dedicated to making fascinating new mission packs, just like happened with Doom a bit later, and proving to other game developers that having a mission editor is a must, that it pays off in spades. Why did this not happen? Is it just because this was the early days of the internet? That didn't stop Doom. No, it didn't happen because Academy was far too limited to be anything more than stopgap entertainment. It failed the most basic test: you could not recreate most WC2 missions in Academy. Had Academy been even the least bit consequential, we would have seen mission editing packages provided in subsequent WC games. This never happened, though, and the first real mission editor that spacesim fans got their hands on was for - yep, you guessed it, Freespace.
So, Academy was fun, but ultimately very limited. I wouldn't call it a bad game, because it's objectively quite good at what it does, but I certainly do think that most WC fans consider it inferior and forgettable. The world at large didn't care. If you weren't a WC fan already, why would you want Academy?
The only one of the three games that I won't speak about is Arena, simply because I've never played it (I wish I did, but I do not have a 360 and have no plans to get one). If we look at its sales, however, I think it's pretty clear that yeah - it's inconsequential. We'd all wish it were otherwise, but that's just the way it is.
Again, I stress that I am not trying to say these games aren't fun or good in their own right. All I'm saying is that we need to keep a sense of perspective on things, and acknowledge that while we enjoy these games, they really are ultimately pretty darned inconsequential (and yes, even "bad") as far as non-fans are concerned.