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Did MMORPG staff writers contribute to ToR's problems?
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I tried to state my logic, will try again, maybe I wasn't clear, maybe your right that my logic is silly, I still think it was fair to ask.
My logic: ToR developers/investors probably DO NOT read random forums and random player post, ToR developers/investors probably DO read 'professional' reviews, or reviews posted on major websites like MMORPG, I think we can all agree mmorpg is a major website in the online gaming industry and holds some sway over a large portion of the market.
ToR releases patch - >mmorpg gives it super high reviews - > ToR thinks patch was a success and well recieved and continue to work in that direction..
I agree with this. I can understand early on positive reviews, but, after some time MMORPG writers should have adjusted their reviews and ratings of the game and certain aspects of the game.
Looking back I think their review was ok, SWTOR looked great at release. But you are right, that gamers are bad journalists.
Since they depend so much on the information they can get from the companies, people like the ones from mmorp.com tend to be a little too nice in their interviews. They never asked the questions I would like to ask and always stay away from the problems. Look at Vanguard, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online - never was there one guy who tried to ask some critical questions before release, although there were a lot of issues during beta.
In the case of SWTOR it was a little more complicated. Everything looked polished and ok. I was more concerned with the gameplay. It looked too much like WoW in space. Apart from the voice-acting there was nothing spectacular in the game. In the end it was a big disappointment - no free flying around with my spaceship, no action-combat, item-grind in the end-game, battlegrounds.
However, mmorpg.com is still one of the best sites, in Germany there is one called buffed.de, they are more like a commercial platform for Blizzard. It is really annoying.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
Christ, this site is getting weirder and weirder >.<
To stick with the food analogy, if someone has an Italian restaurant and tries some different takes on Italian dishes, that a food critic likes, it's still his view and taste, if he enjoyed it he'll give it a thumbs up.
However, people who've grown sick to the point of vomiting of Italian food, maybe because that's all they had the choice to eat for years until they can't stomach no more, they won't care if its variants of Italian dishes, since they've reached the point that all Italian food and restaurants won't score higher than a 6 to them anyway.
I learnt to judge game reviews for their merits and keep into account that they'll use standard higher than average grades before I was 18 years old, I simply don't get it that other people haven't learnt the trick of estimating reviews correctly.
Or maybe something else is going on, and people simply want confirmation bias, ie if they don't like a game, all the reviews in the world should reflect their own likes and dislikes else those reviews and reviewers should be burnt on the stake
I can agree with this. I do agree that ToR looked very polished early on and was misleading (at least to me). I also agree that mmorpg staff tend to shy away from critical question in regards to most games, they are very friendly with the developers.
SWTOR's issues are not from anything any reviewer or game website did...SWTOR's problems are because of the game itself. The only ones that can be blamed for SWTOR is EA and Bioware.
So you think mmorpgs reviews of the game are fair and they have no obligation to adjust their reviews and ratings of the game and it's systems?
Good grief, while mmorpg did a review, all the did was report the hype that was fed them by ea/bioware. the only folks who are to blame for this train-wreck of an mmo is ea/bioware.
Failure to produce a good game. end of story.
I think the problem is more with the way gaming press works these days. I remember back in the pre-internet days I used to read a magazine called Computer Gaming World, no longer being published, and IMHO one of the best of all time (today included). One of their rules was that they reviewed the exact same game the costumers were going to receive on day 1 (if there was a patch to fix something once internet became common they would acknowledge it, but the review and score was based on the game they received on the disc... or disk for the earlier issues, they were in print since 1981), and in order to publish a review the reviewer was expected to have finished the game. This made their reviews usually late in respect to other magazines (that sometimes either played a few days before reviewing, or used an incomplete pre-release version for their review), but their reviews were spot on and several times they found game breaking bugs that happened late in the game that other magazined failed to mention.
That doesn't happen today, with the internet and an ever online world we start expecting reviews to come out almost as soon as a game goes out. If a gaming site were to hold their reviews or comments about the game for a month or two after release would find itself mostly being ignored. This is, IMHO, what caused SWTOR to get such high review scores, followed by an big loss of subscribers. Lots people have different opinions on where SWTOR failed to keep their subs, but the big one everyone agrees on is not enough things to do once you reach level cap and finish the story, a point where no reviewer was likely to reach in the week or two we expect them to take until the review comes out. I guess that is why MMORPG started the policy of re-reviewing games 6 months later, I think it'll be more interesting to find out the score in that one.
Another thing (and a personal pet peeve of mine) is the game scores. In a score out of 10, I've never seen a game get below 5, no matter how bad a game is. Going back to the Computer Gaming World magazine, for a long time they didn't want to add scores to reviews, but after a while they accepted and created a 5 stars system. Thing is, 1 star games were common, an average game would get 3 stars, 4 stars would mean a very good game, and only 3 or 4 games a year would get 5 stars, and these were game of the year quality. These days an average quality game seems to get easily over 7 or 8 out of 10, while a worst-game-ever doesn't get below 5. Personally when I see review scores I tend to substract half of the top score and seems that the scores correspond better to the game quality that way. A 7.5/10 game becomes y 2.5/5 and so on, for example.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
But this seems to only back my OP - if things are as you said that bioware just "fed mmorpg staff writers a bunch of hype" and mmorpg bought into this hype and gave the game steller reviews based on this, then that seems like pretty shoddy standards for a respected site like mmorpg to follow...In fact that seems even more insulting then what I was claiming in my OP.
The difference between an analysis and an opinion review.
And that's the point i believe the OP failed to see.
MMOrpg.com gives opinions not analysis, to do analysis you need to understand every mechanic that goes into the product.
A bit like reading Empire and expecting them to give you a proper movie analysis, it just won't happen.
No, I understand this, but even if their reviews represent nothing more then opinions by individual writers, every single one of their reviews by different writers seems to over-inflate the game and go against the opinion that this game way under delivered and is no where near as good as the initial reviews said.
I would think maybe one single writer at mmorpg would have given the game a more critical review, I mean, looking at their reviews of the individual aspects of the game (I put them in my OP) they are not just a little inflated, they are crazy inflated...given a 10/10 in one category..
I did not say they bought into the hype I said they just passed onto us what ea/bioware gave them. Im not blaming mmorpg. I blame ea/bioware and all the sheep who thought this was going to be the next best thing since sliced bread. Dont stick words in my mouth that I did not say.
I think the OP overestimates the impact that MMORPG.com has on the industry. A lot of my fellow MMO gamer friends didn't even know about this site until I told them about it, and only one or two actually took the time to visit it.
Sure, I've shared a link on Facebook at one time or another, but even then I doubt that any of them took the time to scour the site for SW:TOR reviews.
Take some of the polls on these various forum threads for example: even the most hyped up games that people are extremely excited about get maybe 400+ hits. That doesn't come across as "subscription crushing" loss or gain to me.
This is one of MANY venues that people visit to get a peek at something new, maybe check it out for a chance at a beta or a few game keys, and for some of us bored folks that like to haunt these forum halls to just shoot the shit. Nothing more.
Ah, I also used to get Computer Gaming World...good times.
But the gaming press is no longer a reliable source for unbiased info on games; the best you can hope for is to read between the lines for nuggets of info.
Nevertheless, you can hardly blame inflated reviews for failure. People canceled their subs when they actually played the game, not when they read the reviews.
Because they would have moved back production another year to redo the story, voice acting, dialog, quests, etc., even if reviewers gave it low scores? That's very unlikely.
I think I see where you're going. If no one tells you that something is bad, you're going to assume it's good. You go for any art degree and you're going to have it drilled through your head that critique, even if harsh, is not only good but vital. If you don't get it, you can't improve. But that's not the fault of the pandering, professional reviewers, particularly when you've got hundreds of thousands in your beta pointing out your issues for you.
Each of those issues ended up contributing to the decrease in popularity, and each time Bioware shoved their heads up their bum and claimed they knew what they were doing, that everyone else should just play the game they made and shut up. Just like they did with ME3, just like they did with DA2 until they finally began to realize they were sliding downhill.
Bioware/EA have no one to blame but themselves.
EDIT - by the way, MMORPG.com is in no way in control of any part of the industry. You can't call out one site for a profession-wide problem, particularly when sites like Gamespot and Kotaku wield far more power. The writers here could use a bit more cynicism in their writing, but I suppose it's hard to tell people a game sucks when you've had the pleasure of talking to the actual people who made it. Or something.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Very true, however I also blame the weak minded people that were jedi mind tricked into liking the game.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
Why would mmorpg.com simply re-report what Bioware/EA fed them as their review? again this seems more insinuating then my OP...
Contribute? No...
However, their initial review piece where several of them gave a review after playing for literally a couple fucking hours was some of the dumbest and lamest shit I've seen. I should have archived it because some of the remarks they made in it were priceless. If I remember correctly most gave it a 9.0 or 9.5.
Only one of them was critical of the game.
...and not a single one of them was remotely objective
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
And again, it's nothing new in this kind of media.
Normally this websites are run by close bunch of people with the same opinions, also they are getting payed to present products and not analisys.
The focal point i believe you're making is that MMORPG as some kind of responsability for not managing peoples expectations and over hyping a product, and they probably did it.
But, isn't the consumer the one to blame for not researching the product and the developer to be blamed by presenting an inferior product?
How is the middle man, and even one middle man that did no real analysis, to blame for having one opinion?
Makes no sense.
Blame EA, blame Bioware, blame the people that bought the game expecting something they imagined instead of actually looking for information.
Your also using hyperbole - my question was has their over-hyping contributed to their problems, NOT has their over-hypeing been a keystone in the games success or failure...Twisting little things like that completely changes the point of my OP.
You're not genuinely wondering if MMORPG.com's review contributed to the issues that SWToR is having. You're implying that the issues they are having were contributed to by MMORPG.com's reviews. You're doing this by asking the question itself. I don't know the name for that. If someone could enlighten me, that would be great.
No, MMORPG.com's reviews did not contribute to SWToR's issues. If for no other reason than all the comments that went with each review highlighted in great detail all the flaws with the review.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I put this to the test, I easily found a number of game review grades in game magazines that were less than 5. Sure, often not the big titles, but let's be honest here, even mediocre big titles are of better quality than the dregs of second rate and third rate publishers in the same genre (shooter, rts, RPG, whatever) that gets released in piles every month, and that people often ignore and seemed to forget.
You think that the top 20 titles of each month are getting too high grades? Well, don't forget the 100-200 other titles that also were released that same month and that often are of far less quality, many of which maybe don't even make it into a magazine or on the review list of a gaming site. Those are the real 5's, and 4's, and 3's.
On the topic of MMO reviews, everyone should know by now that the first 50-100 hours that a game reviewer usually spends in an MMORPG can not say much about the endgame experience, the gameplay you'll be busy with after the first 200-250 hours. It only says something about the questing/leveling experience and combat gameplay, and that can be awesome, but it hardly says something about the endgame.
All of this seems like a chicken or egg argument to me.
A few points though - I did not and have not tried to blame anyone for purchasing a product I was not happy with. That was not the point of my OP or any other post for that matter.
That said, I do read reviews by mmorpg of games and sometimes get excited about a game based on these reviews, as I have said I can understand how intitially they over-hyped the game, it seemed pretty polished at first, however, at this point I don't understand why they continue to give the game high marks, why their review still remains incredibly high and why they have not been more critical in their interviews and Q&A sessions.
I am not sure if mmorpg has a responsibility to be more critical in their reviews or not, I guess that's part of what I was asking in my OP.
I'm with this.
Can't just point fingers at MMORPG and not the other sites. They all did it.
Yes EA is to blame for the game but there is also a responsibility to be an unbiased journalist. Non of the sites asked any tough questions. Not a one questioned any of the design decisions.
They all gave the game the highest scores possible and they know gamers come to these sites to research games. The public did not have access to the beta forums and there was a NDA on the testers. These sites could of gotten access and seen what the testers were saying and started asking questions about them. Did they? Hell no they didn't. If they would have then maybe this whole wreck could of been avoided. Backlash would of been more public and unavoidable. EA would of felt the heat and maybe just maybe done something about it.
I do contribute some of the game's problem on the gaming sites for doing nothing but bias propaganda instead of reporting what actually is going on.
I guess my main complaint though doesn't even necessarily revolve around release, it revolves around the legacy system - if you look at their news articles and Q&A's and impressions of the game, there are more articles on the legacy system then anything else, and all of them overwhelmingly over-inflate the legacy system as some incredibly innovative and unique addition to the game..