Reddit mentions of By Temptations and By War (MechWarrior: Dark Age, No. 7)

Mostly because of the baggage that came along with it.

When FASA went under, everyone though "endgame" would pretty much be "it" on the universe. They left some plot threads hanging, but for the most part, ended the Victor Steiner Davion / IS circle jerk that had been going on for years during the clan wars and everyone was fairly satisfied (with the exception that the last few books that tied out the series where MAJORLY rushed to try to make it out to market before FASA went under.)

Then Weisman started Wiz Kids and brought the BT license to them and everyone got excited. Collectable BT miniatures pre-painted, under a new system. Even though Mage Knight at the time wasn't everyone's bag, they where looking forward to the stuff that went along with BT (New fiction, new miniatures, ect.)

What they got was this.

Not to mention the following:

• GIANT time jump of about 60-70 years after the main series with new characters no one knew or cared about
  
• A new "magic nation" in the form of the Republic that just sprung out of no where.
  
• NONE of the classic BT factions in sight at launch. All factions released seemed like lazy "offshoots" of the true factions.
  
• "Battlemechs" where all of a sudden "rare" again despite by the end of BT, they had FULL means to manufacture them.
  
• Because of the above, early DA fiction had factions duking it out with modified "construction mechs" more then battlemechs. (In the initial DA set, most true battlemechs where only available as unique "ultra rare" drops.)
  *Those classic battlemechs that where there, looked like this.
  
• A IS wide "jihad" put on by the WoB, when before they have always been described as simply a splinter faction. (Not to mention that people imediately thought this was pandering to the jihadist fear of the post 9/11 world at the time.) So them pulling it off just came off as eye rollingly bad to most BT enthusiast.
  
• 80% of the litterally THOUSANDS of HPG systems magically just stopped working. Plunging people into a ture "dark age" because communication had pretty much blacked out the entire IS.
  
  To people that had eagerly been anticipating a revival of the brand that they loved, this wasn't just an abomination, it looked like a late term abortion of everything they loved and cared about and made the series fairly "grounded" in reality (relitive to the universes own shinnanagins.)
  
  Most people treated "End game" and the end of the civil war as the "true" end to Battletech, and was just content to leave it as that and walked away. (I'm willing to bet thats how some of those here right now feel.)
  
  But, after this launched, FanPro and the original guys behind battletech proper continued to develop the game under "Classic Battletech.) and even pioneered a sight that provided "canon" short story's from the "Classic" universe that people where more familiar with. (And they still do this.) So while Wiz Kids wanted a fresh start, FanPro and Catalyst after them actually did flesh out the WoB jihad into something that not only made scense in the universe, but was actually a MASSIVE accumulation of the "side stories" and various other interesting "background plots" finally comming to head and plunging the entire IS into an "old guard / new guard" civil war where mis information orchestrated by the WoB lead to various internal factions tearing themselves apart, and not some massive external struggle with some magic WoB army bigger then the combined might of everyone in the IS like previously believed.
  
  Even the Dark Age stuff eventually got good and ranks to me amoung some of the BEST battletech fiction out there.
  
  Make no mistake, most EARLY dark age books are terrible. Ghost war was actually interesting as it was pretty much a giant "exhibition" book to bring classic lore heads up to speed on what was happening, (and as the only BT book written in 1st person.) But everything after that was just god awful (industrial mechs from a clan wolf splinter faction attempting to take over Terra and declare themselves IlKhan...urrrggg.)
  
  But then, Liao comes into the picture and EVERYTHING gets better.
  
  Seriously, if you haven't read "By temptations and by war," correct that mistake and give the Dark age another try. Its a seriously good battletech book, and the first of the Dark age books that actually gets legitimately "good" for fans of the original series.
  
  From there, the DA run is actually fairly solid, and can get MUCH darker then the "traditional" battletech books ever did. Dealing with things like psychosis, religion, and the battlefield rape of a core protagonist. (Not even kidding on that last one and I DO mean it literally.) Some of the books rank among my favorite battletech books in general.
  
  Seriously, even if you have never given a DA book a try but liked the original series, you MUST read these books:
  
  Target of Oppertunity
  
  Surrender your Dreams
  
  Those two books don't need any DA backstory to enjoy them, and they are both easily two of the best Battletech novels regardless of timeline that any fan can enjoy. (Especially the classic fans.)
  
  So Dark Age isn't reviled so much because its stupid (Once it finds its grounding, its actually quite good.) Its mostly reviled because of all the excess baggage that came with that time period when it was first rolled out by WizKids.