Originally posted by ste2000

Let's put things straight here.

A review should be unbiased (or at least try), I am not getting why people are accepting the reviews are a personal matter.
They should not be a personal matter, in particular when they rappresent the official view of the site/magazine/paper.

The difference between a reviewer and average Joe is that the reviewer should base the review on objective points, and they should not score products based on their preference.

If a reviewer is writing just his opinion then what is the point of the review?
There are already thousands of people posting everyday their opinion in this forums, why should the reviewer opinion be more qualified than mine or the person next to me?

I played every major MMO released since UO, like many of us in this forum.
So why the opinion of this guy should be more valid than mine for example?
The only reason would be because he can discuss the game with more objectivity than most of us with equal if not better experience than him.
If it fails to do so and he bases his review on his opinion, then it defeats the point of the review, since his biased opinion might clash with the view of more experienced people, or people with more common sense than him.

In short reviewer should be able to say they do not like a particular feature, whilst at the same time admitting that the same feature can contribute to other people fun.
When you review Aion you need to put your shoes to the casual/themepark player, when you review FE you put yourself in the shoes of the sandbox player.
You do not evaluate both games with the same measure.
If you are not able to do so, it means the reviewer is not the job for you.
 

STE he should also read the game requirements before he plays,his system is below the game requirements so I ask again why is this review on this site?

A joke it really is,I normally read reviews and see the reviewer's specs are well above the the game's specs,this has to be the 1st time a review has been done with below the game specs...I mean why even bother?

Originally posted by WSIMike

 In my humble opinion (though I know it wasn't asked - at least not in this thread)... I think mmorpg.com does need to seriously re-think how they present their reviews.... revise their review criteria, set a standard that every other reviewer has to follow... *something* to inject some kind of consistency into it.

Because, while I can understand when Stradden says "different people review the games and have different opinions than other reviewers"... that's great on its face. But...

Here's the the problem. When people see a review here, they see it as "MMORPG.com's review of XYZ game". When game websites cite reviews and comments and scores given here in their "accolades" section or whatever... It's cited as "MMORPG.COM"... not the name of the reviewer. I've seen ads for games in magazines and there will be quotes from this site (and others), cited as "MMORPG.COM"...

Do you see what's happening here?

Every review that's put out by this site is seen as being the official opinion of mmorpg.com as a whole - not merely the person who wrote it.

I think it's time you people at mmorpg.com realize this site's "grown up". You're not a small, upstart site like you were some years back. Your name (for better or worse) carries weight and anything you put out in terms of reviews is seen as being the collective opinion of the site... just like IGN's, or any gaming magazine. 

I think this is why people react the way they do to such all over the place reviews... You're trying to cling to that "individuals' reviews" approach, but your website has grown way beyond that. Beyond this site, MMORPG.com is a presence unto itself, it's beyond the individuals who edit or write for it. So when you defend the reviews by saying "well that's what those individuals think", it sounds very disingenuous.

Again.. just my thoughts... but I think you guys need to seriously reassess the way you handle reviews and rate games.

 

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/256840/Review-Policy-Suggestions.html

Jon (Stradden) put up this forum for such suggestions generated from this discussion. Please do jump on over and add to what is building there. Hopefully we, the site viewers, can provide a few good ideas they can incorporate into the current system. Hey, it's a start, right?

The issue here is not the quality of the reviewer, its the quality of the editor.  If this review had been properly proof read this poorly writen peice would never had made it online.  Bottom line is any low grade moron can write an article and send it to be presented to the public but a publication has Proofreaders and editors whos job it is to sift through all the crap.  Place this firmly in the lap of the editor, my gawd, he didnt even catch the typos.

System specs:

 Stradden, saying stop the conspiracy theories is a weak response to the minimum requirements discussion. Looking at some of the posts regarding the amount of RAMs in your reviewers video cards, his mentioning of his video RAM as being Corsair and all that, it is obvious that something fishy is likely to be going on with that reviewer. 

I am not saying he is definately lying, but if the stars have to align for a person to not be lying then its most likely that lying is indeed whats happening. And the stars would have had to align for all the errors the reviewer made in talking about his system specifications to be true. 

That being said it seems fairly obvious for you to ask him for a dxdiag, check it out, come back here and then either crush the conspiracy part of the discussion with hard evidence that makes sense in regards to his specs, or telling your community that you have terminated your lying employee. Only course of action with regards to the system specs part imo.

Second, the part about the score matching the review, and you wanting to give reviewers totally free hands in determining the score: 

Your scores are interpreted as mmorpg.coms scores even if done by freelancing writers. This means people will come to the site, see a list of games and think they can compare the scores the games in between. This should in my opinion be the case, but if you dont think it should, the lists and everywhere else with scores should definately clearly state that theres is no relationship in between scores. Although this direction would mean that you might aswell not feature scores as they are only usefull to make easy comparisons across a big list about which games are best.

Secondly giving direction and a sort of "scale" to your reviewers does not constitute you influencing the scores as long as every reviewer is given the same directions and scale. What I personally think a reviewer should be trying to do is objectively describe what the different aspects/game design of a game is, and in the end scoring it how the reviewer thinks people who like that kind of game would score it. What I mean here is not that he should give fanboi scores, but that he should write a review describing what type of game you are dealing with and then making a score that sort of sums up how well done the focus of the game is. Meaning that f.ex. if I like a WoW type game and see a review of EvE I should not necessarily think WoW is "better" if WoW got a better score. What I should be able to do though is see that WoW implemented the stuff that blizzard wanted to be the focus of their game better than CCP implemented the stuff that they wanted EvE to focus on. Still meaning that if I liked sandbox player driven content I would be better off choosing EvE even though EvE might have gotten a lower score. I should see this not by the score, but by the review. If however I have reviews of games that are fairly similar in what gameplay is focused on, then I want to be able to use the score to see which game its most likely that I would like the most. Meaning that comparing Aion/WoW/Everquest type  games on score should make sense. 

Meaning that reviewers should be given guidelines saying: Imagine you like PvE questgrinding/raiding whatever types of games, how good does this game cater to what you like ? Using the review text to "box in" the game where its sort of obvious which other games it can resonably be compared with in terms of features and focus, and then using the score to determine how likely it will be for a guy who thinks he will like the kind of game described in the review to actually want to keep plaiying it. Of course you should as a reader not be taken by surprise by the final grade, meaning that the review should match the grade in terms of pros and cons.

Just my points.(Edited for grammar)

Overall review was pretty good.

The score?  LOL I'm not one to 'troll', but Houston we have a problem.

The genre finally gets a different kind of MMO and the 'official' MMORPG.com reviewer has a problem with mouse and keyboard?  Really?  Anybody that has played just about every kind of game on the PC uses the mouse and keyboard...let's name a few shall we?  This list will include only games I've played and will not be indicative of every game I've played, but for example purposes only.  Again these are PC versions not console

Oblivion - check

LOTR - check

COD (any version) - check

Mouse and keyboard is pretty standard now a days and has been for some time for many mainstream games.

The overall review was great on the game but I think the reviewer let his/her personal opinion in, which pretty much seemed to have been getting owned in game and getting bad lagg because of his computer (btw i think they edited out the specs).

Great, now this site is allowing TROLLS to make its reviews? This just can't even make the difference between low FPS and lag. It's just idiot trying to play anything in Windows Vista with just 2 GB os memory. First i was upste becouse this site clearly sold its review to Aion's creators, becouse that game will never deserv 8.7 anyware, and will never be the best mmo released, its just an stupid grind fest.

The note is totally incompatible with the great game FE is, and even with the entire review, that has more good things to say about the game than bad things(the only complaint was the lag, that on truth was low FPS becouse the reviwer's bad system). This game for sure deserves another review, and by some one professional, that knows how to trully review a mmorpg.

Originally posted by Delphos

Great, know this site is allowing TROLLS to make its reviews? This just can't even make the difference between low FPS and lag. It's just idiot trying to play anything in Windows Vista with just 2 GB os memory.  First i was upste becouse this site clearly sold its review to Aion's creators, becouse that game will never deserv 8.7 anyware, and will never be the best mmo released, its just an stupid grind fest.

The note is totally incompatible with the great game FE is, and even with the entire review, that has more good things to say about the game than bad things(the only complaint was the lag, that on truth was low FPS becouse the reviwer's bad system).  This game for sure deserves another review, and by some one professional, that knows how to trully review a mmorpg. 

Agreed.

NVM

Originally posted by WSIMike

 In my humble opinion (though I know it wasn't asked - at least not in this thread)... I think mmorpg.com does need to seriously re-think how they present their reviews.... revise their review criteria, set a standard that every other reviewer has to follow... *something* to inject some kind of consistency into it.

Because, while I can understand when Stradden says "different people review the games and have different opinions than other reviewers"... that's great on its face. But...

Here's the the problem. When people see a review here, they see it as "MMORPG.com's review of XYZ game". When game websites cite reviews and comments and scores given here in their "accolades" section or whatever... It's cited as "MMORPG.COM"... not the name of the reviewer. I've seen ads for games in magazines and there will be quotes from this site (and others), cited as "MMORPG.COM"...

Do you see what's happening here?

Every review that's put out by this site is seen as being the official opinion of mmorpg.com as a whole - not merely the person who wrote it.

I think it's time you people at mmorpg.com realize this site's "grown up". You're not a small, upstart site like you were some years back. Your name (for better or worse) carries weight and anything you put out in terms of reviews is seen as being the collective opinion of the site... just like IGN's, or any gaming magazine. 

I think this is why people react the way they do to such all over the place reviews... You're trying to cling to that "individuals' reviews" approach, but your website has grown way beyond that. Beyond this site, MMORPG.com is a presence unto itself, it's beyond the individuals who edit or write for it. So when you defend the reviews by saying "well that's what those individuals think", it sounds very disingenuous.

Again.. just my thoughts... but I think you guys need to seriously reassess the way you handle reviews and rate games.

A good place to start might be what was suggested.... do away with number scores. Those seem to create the most uproar - unless that's what you're after.

Brilliant post. I think you've hit the nail on the head here.

6.9 is abit too low for this game. Especially compared to how high they rated Aion. But FE is laggy as hell indeed

He stated 2GB of Corsair system RAM in the AoC review in July and again in the WoW review earlier this year and over a year ago in the Hellgate review. Same system, same amount of RAM stated.
Look... I understand the ego and pride of writing a review piece and putting it up on a gaming site, but I don't think it's very fair to mislead. Just accept your system wasn't up to snuff and you made a little mistake. Remove the review and move on. These things can happen. You just learn and keep on going.

Fallen Earth makes the list of top ten since WoW, and the site's official reviewer gives it a 6.9...

Originally posted by Goob

 

An indie company took on the challenge of making an original, sandbox game (which is SO rare) and the game actually had a good launch. This is already quite remarkable. The difference in the community score and the reviewer`s score leaves a bad taste in my mouth, its as if the reviewer didn`t like the game much and scored according to that rather than the relatively neutral review he wrote.

Being an indie company does not excuse a game from the same review from the press that the big games get.  I'm tired of seeing this sentence thrown around.  Taking a chance is risky, but just being glowingly positive about something because it took that chance does more to damage a genre than being critical of it. 

What a JOKE!

Come on... MMORPG.com is a very well known gaming website but the best you can do is hire someone with a below average PC??

You have got to be kidding me... any gamer knows minimum requirements means "don't bother you are not going to have an enjoyable experience." and this guy is going to review the game for the masses?? wtf?

This is just laughable... and to argue oh he did meet minimum by a pubic hair or what not is an even bigger joke. Seriously if someone is going to take a Icarus studio's years of blood, sweat and tears and give it a score to a very commercial website they better have a damn good rig or even several to dispute if it was an actual problem from the user's end or the games.

Like someone else previously posted... MAKE THE REVIEWER send you a DXDIAG because this is some fishy sh!t with him stating oh ya I have 2gb crucial ram... wait I was referring video card ram... and then his model video card never even came in a 1gb model.... yaaaa this is not fishy at all.

Personally, I would like to see MMORPG.com change its review policies.  I would suggest that, every time a game is reviewed, it should be reviewed by a total of three people.  These people should not talk to each other about the game, and their scores should be averaged once the reviews are complete.  This would result in more realistic scores that prevent games from getting a poor rating just because they don't suit one person's playstyle.  I do understand that it might take longer and fewer games would be able to be reviewed, but I honestly believe it would result in better information for those trying to decide whether or not to go out and pick up the game.

Originally posted by Stradden

Ok guys,

I've spoken extensively with the reviewer. There was actually a mistake made in the original text. Originally, he was talking about the RAM in the dual video cards, and neglected to mention system RAM. His machine, on top of the video cards, has 4 Gb RAM, more than enough to meet the minimum requirements.

He also assures me that the offending lag comes at peak times and the game does run more smootly when there are fewer players online.

My sincere apologies for any problems that this caused to people. As you can imagine, this has been a bit of an embarasing situation for me. I really should have caught this on my edit of the review. So, continue to crucify me if you want to, but that was my bad and I'm sorry.

As for the score: That's the score that the reviewer chose to give the game. You don't have to like it, you don't have to agree with it but in the end when asked that the game was worth, he told me 6.9. Not everyone is going to like the same kinds of game. In the end, a reviewer scores a game based on his or her own opinions of it.

 

"I am running Fallen Earth with Windows Vista Ultimate on a Dual Core E6750 @2.66, Dual ATI Radeon HD 3850, 4 Gigs of RAM and cable modem." nice edit but um still some things here hes runing crossfire with both those ATI Radeon HD 3850 whiich atm are of dubious ram 1 gig each 512?
 

an yes they made 1gig versions of those cards . www.amazon.com/PALIT-MULTIMEDIA-INC-38500-HD02/dp/B001CWCM0G/ref=sr_1_1 has one for 43 bucks. theirs a reson why their so cheep. as one site put it if one ATI Radeon HD 3850 is about 2/3rd of a 8800gtx then 2 would be..it could be the cards or crossfire thats the lag. oir he could have stayed in one area that bad for lag people have mentioned on this site./shrug cnet review mentions how that card in crossifre has problems with some games.another points out you wount be playing crysis with it..

either way thats his reson for the score is lag.an yet of all the reviews by players an forum posts only a few have lag problems most do not.now i dont play this game .but down the road i just might.are you sure he knows the difrence tween a 6 an 8?because reading the review then seeing the numbers they dont match the review.

again i dont play this game.dont realy have a dog in this fight so to speek other than haveing a poorly spelled opion .which aprently is all the review "finger in the wind" is as well. 6.9 for the review of the review. i expect better from this site in the future.

Originally posted by jdlamson75

Fallen Earth makes the list of top ten since WoW, and the site's official reviewer gives it a 6.9...

 

MMORPG.COM really screwed the pooch on this and I can say this since I started on this website back in 2004.

Honestly, as much as I like coming to this website to post my thoughts, I don't think I can ever take their reviews seriously now.

My rant goes as far back with Age of Conan and Warhammer Online.

They need to revamp the way they  review mmo's, if their going to use a numerical #s to rate a game.

I am starting to believe that bones gets thrown to the highest bidder who advertises with them. But money talks even more now.

Its best to use multiple sources to get the right information anyways about a game your interested in playing.

In my opinion, this score was a slap in the face to Icarus and the score doesn't even add up right...

????????   way better than a 6.9...geez

I can understand why players that like Aion or other pretty fantasy mmorpg wouldn´t like Fallen Earth, it is simply too different of a game; "too american" with dirty post apocalyptics surrounding and lots of weapons.

But reviewers are supposed to be genre neutral so I don´t understand the 6.9 rating at all. And looking at his conclusion:

"Fallen Earth will certainly find its niche with a particular type of player. The open advancement system certainly holds a great appeal for players tired of being pigeon holed by traditional class systems. The fast paced nature of the combat system is certainly not for everybody. I personally found the game a little difficult to play, perhaps it was the lag. For those looking for a solid challenge, Fallen Earth is for you. There is no cookie cutter format with this type of game play. You are what you make yourself in this game. Do you challenge yourself to be the ultimate warrior or the ultimate crafter? The greater the challenge the greater the reward for players. According to the folks at Fallen Earth, the best items in the game are player created. There is nothing standing between a player and their in game greatness other than the time and effort the player is willing to invest. There is less of a random element involved, but it will be up to the players to figure out what path they should follow."

Makes me wonder what rating he would give EvE online? His main issue for giving such low score to Fallen Earth, according to his conclusion, is that he finds the game too difficult? Eh? Both games are difficults and have the sandbox aspects and appeal to a "certain niche of players".

Ok, so have read the whole thread now and all I can see is that:

1. The reviewer didn't meet min specs.

2. Lied to Stradden about it being a mistake. Says he actually has 4 gigs of ram.

3. Says that the 2gb was for his "Corsair" Dual ATI Radeon HD 3850, which disn't come out in 1gb cards (so another lie to try cover up the first).

4. It wont get changed or taken down becuase mmorpg allows people to review the games however they choose. They can give obvious unfair scores since it's only thier opinion, which is based off playing the game below min specs!

Originally posted by lestaticon

He stated 2GB of Corsair system RAM in the AoC review in July and again in the WoW review earlier this year and over a year ago in the Hellgate review. Same system, same amount of RAM stated.
Look... I understand the ego and pride of writing a review piece and putting it up on a gaming site, but I don't think it's very fair to mislead. Just accept your system wasn't up to snuff and you made a little mistake. Remove the review and move on. These things can happen. You just learn and keep on going.

Originally posted by Gabby-air

Fire the reviewer,

Perhaps they need to pass pink slips a bit higher up the chain as well.

I'll add to the chorus of dissent here, because this really is a poor performance from mmorpg.com. It is also a real shame that it happened to FE and Icarus.

For many of us, FE genuinely has an innovative, finally-something-a-bit-different quality. A quality which I've read calls for in plenty of articles that I've read on this site, since I started visiting a couple of years ago. The irony is incredible. Finally, something a little different does appear on the mmo scene and the standard of the review on the site that you would expect to treat the game more seriously than perhaps other gaming sites would, is just plain shoddy, and very unfair.

I see two serious mistakes on the part of *both* the reviewer and the editors with broader responsibility for what appears on mmporg.com. One, not making absolutely sure that the system requirements of the reviewer's computer meet the minimum requirements plainly stated by Icarus. This is just a basic competency that ought to go hand-in-hand with running a site like this and publishing reviews. It does not matter, Jon, that you are personally not an expert in the technology. It is then your responsibility to consult with someone who *is* an expert, and who you trust to give sound technical advice.

Two, defending the review by saying it is an opinion. Others have pointed out that at this point in its "lifetime" this is not a valid policy for mmporg.com, and nor is it particularly helpful to both publish a number (6.9 in this case) and *at the same time* take this attitude to reviews. The purpose of distilling the essence of a review by giving a single number is to enable direct comparison between games, ease of ranking, etc. so to argue that two reviews on this site simply represent two opinions and are not comparable, and to also give numbers, is just plain silly.

Overall, a hugely dissapointing "event" to read about here.

Originally posted by lestaticon

He stated 2GB of Corsair system RAM in the AoC review in July and again in the WoW review earlier this year and over a year ago in the Hellgate review. Same system, same amount of RAM stated.
Look... I understand the ego and pride of writing a review piece and putting it up on a gaming site, but I don't think it's very fair to mislead. Just accept your system wasn't up to snuff and you made a little mistake. Remove the review and move on. These things can happen. You just learn and keep on going.

Nice catch, Lestaticon!

I think at this point he should just come clean.  This game is by no means perfect.  No mmo is.  But Fallen Earth, Icarus, and mmo fans deserve another review, this time by someone with a bit more integrity and a gaming rig that atleast meets recommended specs.  Even my outdated rig runs the game better than his computer, if he is to be believed...

I dont post much on these forums, but in this case i just had to say something. 99% of all the MMORPGs out there are waaaay to easy and the reviewer is complaining that the game is hard??? The weird part is its not even that hard, you just have to search for some information before starting, or consider your first caracter a test one, then make a second one and you'll be fine. Whats so hard about the fact that you need to choose skills? Well DooH. MMOs are about having choices and people were craving for them for a long time now that we have them you want to cry about having too much choices??? The only one thing it was true in the review is the fact that the game has a steap learning curve, well yeah it has, so what? With the latest patch they added a lot more missions fro beginers to explain how everything works. I for one, wasent in beta, my first day of playing was on 9Sept. and learned the game, AND i only used the Help chanel ingame 2 or 3 times. I learned for myself and i'm doing fine.

Also, you had lag, oh my, well guess what, i dont have almost ANY lag, and i live in Poland (I guess i need to spewcify to you Poland is in Europe) No point in writing more here but this review HAS to be taken down and somebody who is NOT a WOW fan should write the review, or someone who can really be impartial.