fail... if a MMO does not grab me in the first 10 minutes of play, nothing but money wasted if your game cannot pull that *simple* feat off, you fail
Whew! If you give up on a game after 10 minutes you are going to miss ouy on lots of good games. I've gone back to games that didn't do anything for me initialy only to find they were quite good. Could have just been in the wrong frame of mind. Conversly, game that have a good 'grab' in the early stages doesn't mean it will turn out great after one gets into it.
That said...I didn't find the score all that aweful. I am mad that Nancy Drew on ly got a high 60 score tho (JK) :P
I read through some of the reviews and found the reviewers seemed to have a positive or negative attitude before playing. The same is true in many instances here. People who either haven't played at all or just weremn't going to like something regardless of its value.
The worst review of AIon ( not a plug for a grindy game with pvp issues) was one of these. Quote follows....
If you're animoo – and you should know by now that I’m not – you’ll probably find the character design of Aion delightful. It’s basically impossible to make a character that doesn’t look like he’s from Bleach or Naruto or some other equivalent.
Geez!! If Aion did anything right it was character creation. Your character could be made to look like anything you wanted it to.I have a dwarf charater that actually looks like a dwarf! Hardly hard to be whatever you want. Gotta wonder how much, if any, time was actually spent on the game.
I never heard of that sight either. I don't believe the numbers for lotro for sure. The reason is how dead it has been. We have seen a drop off were at the level we were before SOM cam out. This can also be verified by xfire and other sites. the metric score of 85 is a bit high.
So no I don't trust these numbers at all, more hogwash tossed at us.
Um...you guys know what's awfully wrong with the scores?
Age of Conan: Did anyone play at launch? 20 levels of pure goodness, the rest was incomplete. Hell, DX10 graphics weren't even there at launch (the box said it would have it, false advertisement is bad).
CIty of Heroes: Anyone else play at launch? Huge balance issues much.
Too lazy to do the rest. Almost all of these reviews are wrong except World of Warcraft (the amount of players that play it would show a linear relationship with the review score, the rest....not so much).
I personally never trust what a website says about any games, if you really want to know if the game is good you have to play it yourself. Because of some reviewers being rather tainted in there points of views how can you make a sound judgement of a game if you've never played it and only looked at how someone scores it? BEFORE you make an assumption from a score you see try the game on a trial account if need be then and only then will you know if the game is good or crap, I say.
Honestly I'd never heard of this site before and now that I know about it I doubt I'll bother with it for the reasons you described in this article.
Most gamers don't know about it. For some reason, though, it is some kind of measuring stick on a pedestal for investors and publishers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
First I've every seen it also. How many mmo players have actually been influenced by these scores? I've played almost every game on that list, and been playing MMO's since having a second phone line was key to surviving pvp. I've never seen that list. Maybe it will influence first time mmo gamers, but for the majority of mmo players I don't think it provides any pro or con to the company in terms of how players react.
As I see it their scores are more accurate than MMORPG.com's scores. There used to be a trend and it still may exist that players were paid by the game manufacturers to give good ratings of their games here at MMORPG.com. Which really messed up the scoring on games. I dont see anything wrong with the scores Metacritic gave. All you have to do is watch the official game play trailers for STO to know the game is crap. And I played AOC at Launch and after they "fixed" the game and it was still crap.
I fail to see what the issue here is, besides personal bias on the part of the author. Clearly he's mad about it - maybe something he doesn't like either scored too high, or something he did like too low. Or maybe even that a result feels too weighted vs the result given by a review here.
Only a few of the numbers on the list differ significantly from the reviews on this site, though. Most are within an acceptable range, considering the Meta scores are weighted averages. I fail to see how this makes them "wildly inaccurate" and how their scores are "broken when it comes to MMO's", especially considering a single review here is more likely to be biased than an average of several (as ghettobooste pointed out, Aion was given an 8.7 here...).
So anyway, let me guess... someone hates WoW and is angry they got the top spot, maybe? It wouldn't be the first time.
Originally posted by kvarium Scores look pretty accurate to me. The only one I somewhat disagree with is Fallen Earth, it's a pretty darn good game in my opinion.
Lol. Are you kidding me? These type of posts almost lend themselves into the article itself in the amount of weight being placed behind these metascores. UO a 59? Obviously the people that agree this is accurate haven't been around in that era, how are some of us measuring the accuracy of these metascores...by the reviews you read? Oh wait those are the reviews that were included in the metascore.
Let's take another EQ 2....what an 83? Yeah right, look how busted that system got. Anything that needed a full class system make-over especially into a change that resembled much of like its own predecessor (which technically is taken a step back in MMORPG evolution) doesn't deserve such an above-average score.
Yeah I agree with the writer and these posts just help support it. Even take a look from the top of the list to the bottom in the article and you can point out how it goes from the biggest name down to the lesser known names (in terms of developers at the time of metareview). It's too easy to utilize and even much easier to discredit these baloney scores.
1. I can't be the only one who feels the writer didn't explain why he thought these scores were outrageous.
2. All reviews are subjective, I thought the STO review (OK partial review) on here was poor, never mind that's OK, I won't be suing anyone for the subscription fee.
3. Metacritic is a good source for sourcing actual reviews - you can see which reviewers have been aggregated, I can't remember which Bioware release was getting nothing but wonderful reviews but the guy from Teletext (British TV tickertape, pretty much the lowest crappiest technology with no sane users or staff) said it was awful. I don't trust Teletext with my game buying either.
4. MMO's aren't liked by as many people as regular games, thus a lower average score would seem to reflect the potential for profitability, which is why Metacritic is a useful tool for investors.
So for me Metacritic is a good tool, but like any source of data you need to evaluate the data yourself rather than relying on a headline number.
Just a few points... 1. I can't be the only one who feels the writer didn't explain why he thought these scores were outrageous.
No you are not the only one. A few people pointed that out and I would like to hear his reasoning as well.
As to the people that say links are dead on Metacritic I havn't found their links to be dead unless you are talking about the links from articles written a decade ago or more e.g. reviews of UO.
The problem as I see it, is a review is writing, not a score. If you want to understand where the review/reviewer are coming from, you need to read what they wrote.
The score is more a popularity thing, if you look at the list, that's pretty well the order of popularity that the games fall in.
A game can be a mess, but still be popular (Exhibit A: WoW's first month when it could take 5 mins to loot something and various other issues), so it's get a good score, or the reviewer will face the wrath of the fanboi.
Conversely, a game can be interesting, and/or fun, but unpopular (Exhibit B: STO and FE), but it'll get a low score cause only a few fanboi's will get upset.
This lets the sites have the appearance of being "fair" (cause their reviews all have different numbers!!), but does NOT give you an accurate idea of if you'll like the game.
For that you need to read the actual words of their reviews and form an opinion on not just the game, but the reviewer as well, because if you don't understand the biases of the reviewer, you're not going to get a fair review.
All score systems are just guide lines, a consensus of opinions about the overall quality of a game, at the end of the day they are just that opinions..
The only real test of the relative quality of a game, is when you do the free trail, and decide you like the good parts and can tolerate the bad.
I am a WOW player and can speak volumes of the game of the bad aspects ( immature players, a complete useless crafting system, the over priced items in the Auction House) but I ignore it and concentrate in questing and doing instances, also have tried EVE countless times but to me is just a buggy and overly complicated game to a friend is like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
At the end the day, you are the one how pay the subscription fee, if it pick your curiosity do the free trail and maybe you may like it.
The Metacritic scores for these games look pretty good to me. I agree with most of them; I think you could successfully argue that WoW was the most polished and complete MMO among this group when it launched, and so deserves to be at the top. I 'm enjoying STO quite a bit, and so my personal score would be higher, but Metacritic is an aggregate review site, and so no one opinion is going to be overwhelmingly important. I actually kind of value that, because it keeps the "big" sites, which have been known in the pay lip service to mediocre games because of the marketing dollars (*coughGamespotKane&Lynchcough*), in check by giving the smaller, and I would argue more honest, review sites equal weight.
But otherwise, I'm not seeing anything that looks radically out of place.
I think that, for this article to clearly make its point, we do need to know what issues the author has with the scores. I feel as if I am missing something here.
I do, however, share the authors disdane for the way in which Metacritic scores have become vital data in the boardrooms of game publishers all over the world. It is a trend that I think unfairly penalizes MMO studios.
On the whole, a good article that calls attention to a fundamental issue with Metacritic and MMOs. Nicely done, Mister Webb.
I try to stay away from getting my gaming info from reviews that judge with a score because it's usually from a "Sku'd" perspective.
This has been going on a long time. Much to my frustration I hate seeing what the game industry is/has turned into. It ain't about the games no more.... Well, there's still some games and developers who know what it is to give a good game for gaming's sake, but they are few.
Comments
Whew! If you give up on a game after 10 minutes you are going to miss ouy on lots of good games. I've gone back to games that didn't do anything for me initialy only to find they were quite good. Could have just been in the wrong frame of mind. Conversly, game that have a good 'grab' in the early stages doesn't mean it will turn out great after one gets into it.
That said...I didn't find the score all that aweful. I am mad that Nancy Drew on ly got a high 60 score tho (JK) :P
I read through some of the reviews and found the reviewers seemed to have a positive or negative attitude before playing. The same is true in many instances here. People who either haven't played at all or just weremn't going to like something regardless of its value.
The worst review of AIon ( not a plug for a grindy game with pvp issues) was one of these. Quote follows....
If you're animoo – and you should know by now that I’m not – you’ll probably find the character design of Aion delightful. It’s basically impossible to make a character that doesn’t look like he’s from Bleach or Naruto or some other equivalent.
Geez!! If Aion did anything right it was character creation. Your character could be made to look like anything you wanted it to.I have a dwarf charater that actually looks like a dwarf! Hardly hard to be whatever you want. Gotta wonder how much, if any, time was actually spent on the game.
I never heard of that sight either. I don't believe the numbers for lotro for sure. The reason is how dead it has been. We have seen a drop off were at the level we were before SOM cam out. This can also be verified by xfire and other sites. the metric score of 85 is a bit high.
So no I don't trust these numbers at all, more hogwash tossed at us.
Maybe they should call it something like "Launch Score" for MMOs, would probably be more appropriate.
Apart from that; of course not everyone would agree with the scores, they're reviews after all, they contain stuffs like opinions.
City of Heroes/Villains real does deserve its 85
Pepsi1028
PEPSI!!!!!
Get out of your box already...
Um...you guys know what's awfully wrong with the scores?
Age of Conan: Did anyone play at launch? 20 levels of pure goodness, the rest was incomplete. Hell, DX10 graphics weren't even there at launch (the box said it would have it, false advertisement is bad).
CIty of Heroes: Anyone else play at launch? Huge balance issues much.
Too lazy to do the rest. Almost all of these reviews are wrong except World of Warcraft (the amount of players that play it would show a linear relationship with the review score, the rest....not so much).
Still looking for "evah" in the dictionary....
The rating system on the site in question is as bad as the reviewer's writing skill.
oh my gosh!!!! horrible!! take them away!!!
what was wrong with the scores? they seem about right. although i will say metacritic does give some bad scores, i think so at least.
I personally never trust what a website says about any games, if you really want to know if the game is good you have to play it yourself. Because of some reviewers being rather tainted in there points of views how can you make a sound judgement of a game if you've never played it and only looked at how someone scores it? BEFORE you make an assumption from a score you see try the game on a trial account if need be then and only then will you know if the game is good or crap, I say.
Most gamers don't know about it. For some reason, though, it is some kind of measuring stick on a pedestal for investors and publishers.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
First I've every seen it also. How many mmo players have actually been influenced by these scores? I've played almost every game on that list, and been playing MMO's since having a second phone line was key to surviving pvp. I've never seen that list. Maybe it will influence first time mmo gamers, but for the majority of mmo players I don't think it provides any pro or con to the company in terms of how players react.
Looks accurate to me. Metacritic, PC Gamer, and Gamerankings.com have always been a very good filter for my gaming experience. Hat's off.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
As I see it their scores are more accurate than MMORPG.com's scores. There used to be a trend and it still may exist that players were paid by the game manufacturers to give good ratings of their games here at MMORPG.com. Which really messed up the scoring on games. I dont see anything wrong with the scores Metacritic gave. All you have to do is watch the official game play trailers for STO to know the game is crap. And I played AOC at Launch and after they "fixed" the game and it was still crap.
I can't help but recall the MMORPG.com staff writer giving Aion an 8.7 score in an official site review...
At least Metacritic was a bit closer on that one...
I fail to see what the issue here is, besides personal bias on the part of the author. Clearly he's mad about it - maybe something he doesn't like either scored too high, or something he did like too low. Or maybe even that a result feels too weighted vs the result given by a review here.
Only a few of the numbers on the list differ significantly from the reviews on this site, though. Most are within an acceptable range, considering the Meta scores are weighted averages. I fail to see how this makes them "wildly inaccurate" and how their scores are "broken when it comes to MMO's", especially considering a single review here is more likely to be biased than an average of several (as ghettobooste pointed out, Aion was given an 8.7 here...).
So anyway, let me guess... someone hates WoW and is angry they got the top spot, maybe? It wouldn't be the first time.
Scores look pretty accurate to me.
The only one I somewhat disagree with is Fallen Earth, it's a pretty darn good game in my opinion.
Lol. Are you kidding me? These type of posts almost lend themselves into the article itself in the amount of weight being placed behind these metascores. UO a 59? Obviously the people that agree this is accurate haven't been around in that era, how are some of us measuring the accuracy of these metascores...by the reviews you read? Oh wait those are the reviews that were included in the metascore.
Let's take another EQ 2....what an 83? Yeah right, look how busted that system got. Anything that needed a full class system make-over especially into a change that resembled much of like its own predecessor (which technically is taken a step back in MMORPG evolution) doesn't deserve such an above-average score.
Yeah I agree with the writer and these posts just help support it. Even take a look from the top of the list to the bottom in the article and you can point out how it goes from the biggest name down to the lesser known names (in terms of developers at the time of metareview). It's too easy to utilize and even much easier to discredit these baloney scores.
Just a few points...
1. I can't be the only one who feels the writer didn't explain why he thought these scores were outrageous.
2. All reviews are subjective, I thought the STO review (OK partial review) on here was poor, never mind that's OK, I won't be suing anyone for the subscription fee.
3. Metacritic is a good source for sourcing actual reviews - you can see which reviewers have been aggregated, I can't remember which Bioware release was getting nothing but wonderful reviews but the guy from Teletext (British TV tickertape, pretty much the lowest crappiest technology with no sane users or staff) said it was awful. I don't trust Teletext with my game buying either.
4. MMO's aren't liked by as many people as regular games, thus a lower average score would seem to reflect the potential for profitability, which is why Metacritic is a useful tool for investors.
So for me Metacritic is a good tool, but like any source of data you need to evaluate the data yourself rather than relying on a headline number.
These scores look pretty spot on to me....dont see what you are talking about....maybe lay off the crack?
No you are not the only one. A few people pointed that out and I would like to hear his reasoning as well.
As to the people that say links are dead on Metacritic I havn't found their links to be dead unless you are talking about the links from articles written a decade ago or more e.g. reviews of UO.
The problem as I see it, is a review is writing, not a score. If you want to understand where the review/reviewer are coming from, you need to read what they wrote.
The score is more a popularity thing, if you look at the list, that's pretty well the order of popularity that the games fall in.
A game can be a mess, but still be popular (Exhibit A: WoW's first month when it could take 5 mins to loot something and various other issues), so it's get a good score, or the reviewer will face the wrath of the fanboi.
Conversely, a game can be interesting, and/or fun, but unpopular (Exhibit B: STO and FE), but it'll get a low score cause only a few fanboi's will get upset.
This lets the sites have the appearance of being "fair" (cause their reviews all have different numbers!!), but does NOT give you an accurate idea of if you'll like the game.
For that you need to read the actual words of their reviews and form an opinion on not just the game, but the reviewer as well, because if you don't understand the biases of the reviewer, you're not going to get a fair review.
Looks about right to me, well, all except WAR. I would think WAR would score around the same area as AoC.
But, yea...everything else seems fine.
PLAYING: NOTHING!!!
PLAYED:FFXI, LotRO, AoC, WAR, DDO, Megaten, Wurm, Rohan, Mabinogi, RoM
WAITING FOR: Dust 514
All score systems are just guide lines, a consensus of opinions about the overall quality of a game, at the end of the day they are just that opinions..
The only real test of the relative quality of a game, is when you do the free trail, and decide you like the good parts and can tolerate the bad.
I am a WOW player and can speak volumes of the game of the bad aspects ( immature players, a complete useless crafting system, the over priced items in the Auction House) but I ignore it and concentrate in questing and doing instances, also have tried EVE countless times but to me is just a buggy and overly complicated game to a friend is like the greatest thing since sliced bread.
At the end the day, you are the one how pay the subscription fee, if it pick your curiosity do the free trail and maybe you may like it.
Live with the good and ignore the bad.
The Metacritic scores for these games look pretty good to me. I agree with most of them; I think you could successfully argue that WoW was the most polished and complete MMO among this group when it launched, and so deserves to be at the top. I 'm enjoying STO quite a bit, and so my personal score would be higher, but Metacritic is an aggregate review site, and so no one opinion is going to be overwhelmingly important. I actually kind of value that, because it keeps the "big" sites, which have been known in the pay lip service to mediocre games because of the marketing dollars (*coughGamespotKane&Lynchcough*), in check by giving the smaller, and I would argue more honest, review sites equal weight.
But otherwise, I'm not seeing anything that looks radically out of place.
I think that, for this article to clearly make its point, we do need to know what issues the author has with the scores. I feel as if I am missing something here.
I do, however, share the authors disdane for the way in which Metacritic scores have become vital data in the boardrooms of game publishers all over the world. It is a trend that I think unfairly penalizes MMO studios.
On the whole, a good article that calls attention to a fundamental issue with Metacritic and MMOs. Nicely done, Mister Webb.
I try to stay away from getting my gaming info from reviews that judge with a score because it's usually from a "Sku'd" perspective.
This has been going on a long time. Much to my frustration I hate seeing what the game industry is/has turned into. It ain't about the games no more.... Well, there's still some games and developers who know what it is to give a good game for gaming's sake, but they are few.
Godspeed my fellow gamer
Is it just me, or do most of the MMORPG.com columnists seem to whine a lot? :P