Like all media, the MMORPG world is currently in a state of hype oversaturation. Seriously speaking, a game can be thrown in our faces only so many times before disinterest steps in. Now, don't get me wrong here, hype as a concept is fine and dandy, how else would we learn about upcoming products than through advertising and promotion? I myself am very keen on being one of the "first in the know" about unreleased titles and there is no better place to find new information than the internet. However, I like to label hype into three categories, "good hype","bad hype" and "heinous hype"(Yes, I am a certified genius.). I've summarized the three categories below:
Good hype is the sort of stuff you actually want to see, new screenshots, gameplay videos, indepth features, you know the stuff, its the sort of material that gives you more insight into the game, but leaves you hungry for more.
Bad hype is the kind of stuff you may even browse through, but in general don't find very stimulating, if one would want to commonize the term, I guess it could be changed into "lame hype". This is the sort of "information" studio and developer PR people come up with to justify their paychecks. One annoying example of bad hype are the continuously emerging forum "round-ups". Yes, it is good to have a centralized base for gathering information about a game, however when there are tens if not hundreds of different compilations on a given forum, most of which share the same content, it all becomes a bit pointless. To summarize this up, bad hype is irrelevant information that nobody really gives a toss about and recycling of already released material.
Heinous hype, this is where it gets interesting. To experienced MMO followers, Vanguard hype, Darkfall hype and God's and Heroes hype should say enough. Heinous hype is sort of like a neurotic toxin in Verdana font form, even a tiny sprinkle of this deadly substance can flip a promising title belly-up. Heinous hype consists of lies, exaggeration, false promises and fabricated scenarios. I don't think anybody would argue that deceiving and lying to your potential customer base is a good form of marketing. Yet heinous hype is being put out daily. If I were to lie to a customer at work that the software he is considering to buy has a feature which it actually does not include, I would most probably be fired. Yet studio executives and PR reps are cheered on when they blabber-mouth about non-existent features and outright lie to the gaming public about their product. I just hate heinous hype!
Why does bad PR exist then? I think heinous and bad hype is fueled by the heated competition in the MMO market. Before you could put out almost anything and people would still play it as there were not very many alternatives available. Today, there is a MMO for almost every niche market out there, and the MMO community has matured into a very critical and demanding audience. This means that developers are pressured to come up with new ideas and to exaggerate the merits of their product to keep up interest in their game. The media also plays a large part in the production of bad hype. There is so much competition for exclusive content in the games media these days(Countless sites, magazines and TV-shows are toughing it out to get a larger audience.), that the editors are encouraged to publish whatever they get their hands on. This leads to outrageous claims made by executives and PR people "in the heat of the moment" being published to the public as news, which is certainly a bad thing. Once what you've said has been labeled as a fact, the pressure to keep up appearances is enormous, even if what you put out of your mouth was an outright lie. I personally think there have been cases where precious development time was lost on a given title, because a bigmouthed PR guy promised a feature to the public and the dev team needed to work on that particular feature for the next public demo/video release. Developer executives should really watch their mouth when out in public, rather than pushing their development team to cover for their PR failures.
I don't know what you all think about my rant, but here in Finland the PR crowd is affected by the general nordic business mentality; "Be honest, down-to-earth and respectful to your customer base." I personally like this model, why be outrageous and deceitful when you can be humble and honest.