I take reviews as an indicator of the quality of the game (that means if a dozen reviews give a game a great score, I suppose that the game is not an utter failure). Still I do neither trust reviews nor developers. Developers always exaggerate in anything. They behave as if they invented stuff that exists since decades, promise things that won't be there for years etcetc. Just think about how they hyped star wars, talking for hours about a scout tower and how much it will change the game blablablabla.
And the reviewers... It's their personal opinion and nearly all of them are biased, and a number of the bribed by the developers.
You can take them as indicator, but always remember that they exaggerate no matter what they do, and best don't buy a game without having played the trial (and assuming the game wll be much worse after that trial).
I don't NEED real critical reviews,i just ask for the TRUTH.Yes i know opinions or reviews often are not covered as truth or a lie,but i think most of us can tell when it is.
One simple example...
If i see someone give a review,then follows that up by saying he is preordering,that is pretty mcuh a given he is a fanbois,supporting that game no matter what is actually released.As for the site itself,if we see a review popup the same time as advertising for that game,we will assume skewed.
I might add that is postively ok for a developer to ASK for a review along with their advertising dollars,just be truthfull to the readers about the how and why.
IMO MOST reviews SHOULD be critical and i will tell you why...
It is because i KNOW what these developers can accomplish or do with these games and trust me they are not giving us half of what they could or should.I am also 100% positive i am not alone on this,i am postive others know what these developers could be offering as well..There is not many secrets anymore,these developers know darn well what the majority of people want,yet they continue to feed off of each other and deliver sub par efforts.
FFXi took 5 years just to start turning a profit,this means the developer was more interested in putting into the game than instant profit.Then we have Guild Wars,does it really take a rocket scientist to realize that if the game is turning an isntant profit,that not much went into the development?It is very simple math.
Well, "truth" as you indicated is subjective.
Quite frankly I think there are a good many people on this forum who don't want to hear the truth they want to hear something that supports their position.
If anything, a good review isn't a review that says a product is good or bad. And it CERTAINLY shouldn't be a pulpit for someone to rant or push his/her agenda.
A good review should look at the product and then make the determination of what that product was trying to do, compare it against similiar products that are trying to do the same thing and then make a decision on how successful that product is.
To be honest I don't like the reviews on this site. They dont' go far enough and are a bit superficial. Now, that might not be the reviewer's fault. They might have constraints on space and have to get things in there as quickly as possible.
to your other comment on how profit is used I think that depends on who is backing the game and what their motivations are.
Once again, I sometimes get the feeling that some posters on this site have never held a job and have never invested for retirment (or whatever else).
If investors are putting money into a game then two to one they want a return. End of subject.
And unfortunatley (or fortunately?) that company has to bring in money to bolster their stock price.
Do you really look at your own portfolio and say "hmmm, they make a good product and they clearly love what the do but my investment has stagnted over the past 5 years, especially due to inflation... oh well, as long as they are having fun!"
of course you dont'.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I can't speak for the status of reviews across all of the gaming press outlets, but we do hope that you put stock into what we say in our reviews. We're pretty cognizant of the role our reviews hopefully play in your research as an informed consumer and we'll never intentionally lead you astray. I know the cynic out there will laugh that off as a load of bull, but it's true.
With that said, the MMO genre is unlike any other in that many of us are looking for different things. I like to think of it like buying a home. I've never purchased a home myself, but I've seen the deliberations people will make when purchasing a house and often times it can be a number of small things that turn a potential buyer off from what is otherwise a very fine home. The odds of one of our reviewers lining up his or her desires from one of these games with your own are fairly slim, but we do try to give you as much information as we can on the game and how it stacks up overall so you can come to the decision yourself.
There is no way to be 'unbiased' and I don't think anyone reviewing games here is claiming not to have any biases. As I outlined above, we're all looking for certain things in these games as fans of the genre, and we're often much more specific than we'd be with any other game genre, so we all have our biases. The difference is being able to set our biases aside to be objective about the aspects of the game that need to be evaluated objectively. This also means not assigning someone who already hates World of Warcraft to review World of Warcraft or someone who outright hates fantasy games to review a fantasy MMO (unless that is the point of the article e.g. "A Fantasy Hater's Take on X Game"). Or for example, if I hate cartoony-style graphics, being able to recognize well-done cartoony graphics from poorly done cartoony graphics and set aside my bias to evaluate that is whats important. So I might say, "While I'm not a fan of cartoony-graphics, it's hard to deny the love developer put into X games art style. The colors are vibrant and fitting of the game's stylized look. etc etc." That is what differentiates a professional reviewer from an amateur, and is where objectively comes into play. However, on the whole, reviews are subjective; they are ultimately a writer's opinion backed by the establishment the article is appearing in.
Just like many of you, I also consider myself an informed consumer and I will get second, third, and fourth opinions from multiple different outlets on just about anything I purchase. This is the smart thing to do, and may be even smarter when it comes to MMOs, but we hope you value us as part of that process.
Of course, nothing is perfect and we'll be glad to hear any of your feedback so we can act on it. If that's really what you're looking to do in this thread, the best thing you can do is simply tell us what you don't like about our reviews and what you feel we can do to fix it. Just a reminder: suggestions that we're bought off or any other tinfoil hat conspiracies don't really give us much to work with, so please keep it constructive.
Thanks!
P.S. @thefinn. I appreciate the fact you're happy with the result of your appeal, but please do not post correspondence from myself or other staff on the forums.
Of course, nothing is perfect and we'll be glad to hear any of your feedback so we can act on it.
I know that when I'm getting ready to read a review that has been done on this site I check out user comments first. I'll breeze through the review then see what people think about the review itself, that usually tells me right away if i'm reading that review or bailing on it before heading off to read something somewhere else.
How about putting a like/dislike feature, or some form or user rating on reviews here?
Of course in reviews you could have a collection of reviews from staff on mmorpg.com, might show different opinions/preferences with more than one voice?? Generally meta-reviews of the de facto sites for reviewing mmorpgs could be a useful tool for comparison. Ie a global average is always more accurate than isolated ones ; ) albeit it's less accurate for different groups. : )
Originally posted by Fozzik
I think at the heart of my annoyance with reviews on this site is the same thing that bothers me about the industry as a whole and a lot of recent development in this genre.
I don't like the things which have become the focus of the genre, and so I don't like the primary focus of most MMORPG reviews. Polish, smoothness, accessibility... how fast and easy is the game to learn and play, and how often do I get rewards? Does the game avoid ever causing a negative experience or emotion? Does the game provide "enough" content?
I would much rather if developers, and reviewers, focused on what (in my mind, at least) really makes a good MMORPG. Depth, game play and mechanics that really draw you in and keep you playing and learning. Social elements and community-building really baked into every aspect. Replayability. A breadth of viable options for advancement and exploration. The world...it's immersiveness and scope and complexity and internal consistency - all the little environmental and story elements that add up to a realistic virtual world.
I'm not saying polish and accessibility aren't important...but they aren't the PRIMARY elements of what makes a good MMORPG, or at least they shouldn't be. When an extremely shallow, linear, small, and finite solo-centric game with rigidly boxed content and a complete lack of immersiveness or soul can get the highest ever scores on this site, simply due to being easily familiar and polished, something is wrong with the review process (and the development) in this genre.
EDIT: I think the problem with focusing on the real tenets of a good MMORPG in the current genre is that pretty much all games would get negative reviews. There's a reason why just about every game in the last six years has had a very hard time retaining subscribers. If the reviews on this site reflected the general feelings of players in the genre, it would be pretty depressing and probably hard for mmorpg.com to get advertising. I guess as soon as more MMORPG developers start focusing on what's really important, reviewers of the genre will be able to do the same.
I tend to agree with this wholeheartedly.
An analogy imo would be certain great movies that are not from Hollywood, but Hollywood movies often are so derivative when you've seen what else there is out there, except when you have not, the flashy formulas and cgi certainly seems to pull in the cash of the crowds!?
Comments
I take reviews as an indicator of the quality of the game (that means if a dozen reviews give a game a great score, I suppose that the game is not an utter failure). Still I do neither trust reviews nor developers. Developers always exaggerate in anything. They behave as if they invented stuff that exists since decades, promise things that won't be there for years etcetc. Just think about how they hyped star wars, talking for hours about a scout tower and how much it will change the game blablablabla.
And the reviewers... It's their personal opinion and nearly all of them are biased, and a number of the bribed by the developers.
You can take them as indicator, but always remember that they exaggerate no matter what they do, and best don't buy a game without having played the trial (and assuming the game wll be much worse after that trial).
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Well, "truth" as you indicated is subjective.
Quite frankly I think there are a good many people on this forum who don't want to hear the truth they want to hear something that supports their position.
If anything, a good review isn't a review that says a product is good or bad. And it CERTAINLY shouldn't be a pulpit for someone to rant or push his/her agenda.
A good review should look at the product and then make the determination of what that product was trying to do, compare it against similiar products that are trying to do the same thing and then make a decision on how successful that product is.
To be honest I don't like the reviews on this site. They dont' go far enough and are a bit superficial. Now, that might not be the reviewer's fault. They might have constraints on space and have to get things in there as quickly as possible.
to your other comment on how profit is used I think that depends on who is backing the game and what their motivations are.
Once again, I sometimes get the feeling that some posters on this site have never held a job and have never invested for retirment (or whatever else).
If investors are putting money into a game then two to one they want a return. End of subject.
And unfortunatley (or fortunately?) that company has to bring in money to bolster their stock price.
Do you really look at your own portfolio and say "hmmm, they make a good product and they clearly love what the do but my investment has stagnted over the past 5 years, especially due to inflation... oh well, as long as they are having fun!"
of course you dont'.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I can't speak for the status of reviews across all of the gaming press outlets, but we do hope that you put stock into what we say in our reviews. We're pretty cognizant of the role our reviews hopefully play in your research as an informed consumer and we'll never intentionally lead you astray. I know the cynic out there will laugh that off as a load of bull, but it's true.
With that said, the MMO genre is unlike any other in that many of us are looking for different things. I like to think of it like buying a home. I've never purchased a home myself, but I've seen the deliberations people will make when purchasing a house and often times it can be a number of small things that turn a potential buyer off from what is otherwise a very fine home. The odds of one of our reviewers lining up his or her desires from one of these games with your own are fairly slim, but we do try to give you as much information as we can on the game and how it stacks up overall so you can come to the decision yourself.
There is no way to be 'unbiased' and I don't think anyone reviewing games here is claiming not to have any biases. As I outlined above, we're all looking for certain things in these games as fans of the genre, and we're often much more specific than we'd be with any other game genre, so we all have our biases. The difference is being able to set our biases aside to be objective about the aspects of the game that need to be evaluated objectively. This also means not assigning someone who already hates World of Warcraft to review World of Warcraft or someone who outright hates fantasy games to review a fantasy MMO (unless that is the point of the article e.g. "A Fantasy Hater's Take on X Game"). Or for example, if I hate cartoony-style graphics, being able to recognize well-done cartoony graphics from poorly done cartoony graphics and set aside my bias to evaluate that is whats important. So I might say, "While I'm not a fan of cartoony-graphics, it's hard to deny the love developer put into X games art style. The colors are vibrant and fitting of the game's stylized look. etc etc." That is what differentiates a professional reviewer from an amateur, and is where objectively comes into play. However, on the whole, reviews are subjective; they are ultimately a writer's opinion backed by the establishment the article is appearing in.
Just like many of you, I also consider myself an informed consumer and I will get second, third, and fourth opinions from multiple different outlets on just about anything I purchase. This is the smart thing to do, and may be even smarter when it comes to MMOs, but we hope you value us as part of that process.
Of course, nothing is perfect and we'll be glad to hear any of your feedback so we can act on it. If that's really what you're looking to do in this thread, the best thing you can do is simply tell us what you don't like about our reviews and what you feel we can do to fix it. Just a reminder: suggestions that we're bought off or any other tinfoil hat conspiracies don't really give us much to work with, so please keep it constructive.
Thanks!
P.S. @thefinn. I appreciate the fact you're happy with the result of your appeal, but please do not post correspondence from myself or other staff on the forums.
I know that when I'm getting ready to read a review that has been done on this site I check out user comments first. I'll breeze through the review then see what people think about the review itself, that usually tells me right away if i'm reading that review or bailing on it before heading off to read something somewhere else.
How about putting a like/dislike feature, or some form or user rating on reviews here?
Of course in reviews you could have a collection of reviews from staff on mmorpg.com, might show different opinions/preferences with more than one voice?? Generally meta-reviews of the de facto sites for reviewing mmorpgs could be a useful tool for comparison. Ie a global average is always more accurate than isolated ones ; ) albeit it's less accurate for different groups. : )
I tend to agree with this wholeheartedly.
An analogy imo would be certain great movies that are not from Hollywood, but Hollywood movies often are so derivative when you've seen what else there is out there, except when you have not, the flashy formulas and cgi certainly seems to pull in the cash of the crowds!?
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem