No disrespect to the staff of this website but, frankly, I don't care that a handful of editors think that this game deserves an award and this other game does not.

Not very long ago, and for a very long time, it was we, the purchasing, playing public, that voted on these nominees.  The yearly awards were based on the opinions of thousands, not just the handful that work for this website.

By excluding your public you have rendered your awards pointless.  Even if I agree with your choices (and I do in many cases) they are no longer a reflection of the mmorpg.com gaming public.  I no longer consider your awards credible.

Voted  "I don't care either way"

If theres something i have learnt over the years, is that game awards,all game awards, are simply bought. Be it in game magazines, gaming websites, distributors or hardware manufacturers, games that win awards are those whose parent companies can afford to pay/rent more ads, services, watever from the givers

which makes game awards a big lame joke. So i never care about what games get what awards, or lure a lot of positive reviews, most likely that game is an unbearable turd.

Same as above ^^

Originally posted by Tyrian

No disrespect to the staff of this website but, frankly, I don't care that a handful of editors think that this game deserves an award and this other game does not

Most publications hold staff picks, no matter what the subject material is. Gaming magazines hold staff picks on the best games, movie publications hold staff picks on the best movies of the year, celeb rags hold staff picks on the best stories of the year.

Stop acting like this is some new thing that only MMORPG.com does. Not every poll is a popularity contest or reader's choice award, and you're just pissed that your game couldn't swarm the polls like Runes of Magic did with the Massively.com reader's choice awards.

It's better to let the editors pick. The problem with the old system when the mmorpg.com users could vote for the game was that development studios were unable to resist screwing up the awards.

Certain mmorpg development companies asked their player base to go over to mmorpg.com and vote for their game. This was especially a problem with CCP, the developer of EVE online. CCP asked its playerbase to go to mmorpg.com and vote for EVE Online on their website and forums. The result was that EVE would win year after year, even won an award for best PVE game. Giving EVE the award for best PVE is like giving Everquest or Final Fantasy XI an award for best pvp game. The awards were not handed out by the mmorpg community, they were handed out by the EVE online community.

The blame, in my opinion, is entirely with developers such as CCP who want awards so bad they are willing to screw them up for it.

To give awards based on community voting is basically useless. You can as well visit the subscription numbers - (on x-fire for example) and will have the same effect. In the end, I agree with the second poster: I don't care either way. Truth is my preference never meets the preference of general public or self-proclaimed experts and critics - whether it is in games, music or films.

Awards always been meaningles. You need to check all by yourself. Awards may (in most cases won't) tell you what is better on market.

Better that the staff votes. This world is  full of fans and they dont respect that some games are better than WoW for example..so they vote for the game they are a fan of and dont care if the game is better or not.

Awards such as these are nothing but a public relations event designed to have something to talk about and to generate interest. There isn't anything wrong with that but every awards program uses a range of arbitrary rules to come up with the finalists and "winners". The end result might be fun to talk about but is effectively irrelevant and meaningless.

Voting isn't great either.

I would guess that tha majority of players is not able and not willing to honestly judge the games.

A - Because the majority has not even remotely played all games that could be voted for (I always say I can't really compare because I haven't played many titles [about two dozen, about 5 titles longer than 3 months], and still I run across people who played, 2, maybe 3 MMORPGs in their whole life, how can they judge anything?) 

B - Because people valiantly defend _their_ games and playstyles. When they're playing game X, only game X is great and games Y, Z and A are complete crap. And they back that up with emotional wannabe-arguments without any reason (like "WoW is crap because it looks like a cartoon"). They don't even try to operationalize things (like how long, in hard numbers, does it take to travel/level/craft)

So I really think leaving the awards to the professionals is a good thing. They played way more of these games than most of us and they (hopefully) contained a sober sense of judgement when it comes to design quality.

I have always enjoyed the predictions far more than the awards portion.  It is always interesting to see how things turn out in comparison to expectations.

 It is hard to have an award contest when there are so few games that are really award worthy.  Some of the articles and categories have really highlighted how bad the genre really is.  I forget the article here, but it was Top 10 games in the industry and seeing some of the choices just illustrated how deep one must dig to name 10 games to fill a top 10 list.  Just for example, iIf a companies game is so bad they go out of business in a few months, I think that should exclude that game from a top ten list, but apparently it isn't.

Honestly I just don't think the mmo genre is good enough to have its own awards contest.  There just isn't enough to fill most categories.  Most of the games listed would not even come close to any top ten list of anything outside a specific mmo contest. 

Most of the time it just reads as "this is the best of the worst". 

The whole CCP incident disqualified this site from any legitimacy.  CCP should be embarrassed really.  What a pathetic display when you think about it.  Telling your fans to vote for awards is one thing, THEN bribing them with incentives for signing up for multiple accounts is even worse.  All so they can stick AWARD WINNER for X on their website, hehe.

Come on, in the big picture, weren't they always meaningless?

Originally posted by dhayes68

Come on, in the big picture, weren't they always meaningless?

QFT.

No matter who does the voting, its just the opinion of the voters and will never perfectly agree with your own ideas on such a subjective topic as gaming.

As someone else mentioned, they are just meant to generate discussion and they serve that purpose well here. (i.e. like this thread)

Originally posted by arcdevil

Voted  "I don't care either way"

 

If theres something i have learnt over the years, is that game awards,all game awards, are simply bought. Be it in game magazines, gaming websites, distributors or hardware manufacturers, games that win awards are those whose parent companies can afford to pay/rent more ads, services, watever from the givers

 

which makes game awards a big lame joke. So i never care about what games get what awards, or lure a lot of positive reviews, most likely that game is an unbearable turd.

I voted this way as well, for the same reason. Its not just the gaming industry that uses the  pay as you go model. Its been a business tool for as long as advertising dollars have been spent.

Not all game awards are trash. If something comes first place and the editors(s) or whomever that decided writes an article about why it is in first place and it makes sense then I don't see the problem. If you make most awards public they will always be tainted whereas a panel of experts, at least in theory will be non-biased.

They're meaningful. They're professionals. Mos of us are not. Hence, of course their opinion matters more than most of us. If you don't know that for a fact, that just means you don't know the facts.

Opinions are important. Sometimes even more than facts. Much of human history is built not on not facts but on opinion, and will continue to do so.

People taking issue with this just haven't thought much about what an opinion is, what humanity is, how they act and move. Not surprising  seeing as thinking and opinions go hand in hand.

I have no problem with them making their own choices for awards.   I don't get offended they may pick something i may not like, its not a big deal really. 

Every site has different ways they choose awards hell even if the players got to choose it still wouldn't mean anything and we would probably see people saying "zomg why did you let random people choose its all a setup..somebody got paid off!!! blah blah blah!"

Perhaps just as a peace offering, since people can't help but rage over meaningless awards, they should have a player vote on the same awards.

I agree. It would be extremely interesting to see the difference in results.

There's two things at work here. I think everyone can agree that to the individual popularity contests are meaningless. If I don't like a game I won't play it for long no matter how many people like it. For example WoW. Very popular game that I don't personally enjoy. The second effect though and in the case of awards the more important one is marketing. Popular games are tried by more people therefore have a greater chance of attracting people who do like them long and short term. This is where popularity contests like awards are vital and why companies will put in so much effort to affect them. Companies will try to drum up support among their fans and spend absurd amounts on the gaming press trying to subtly and not so subtly affect the outcome of awards. So what does this mean? As a group awards are a factor in a games short term success. They have an indirect effect on a game's long term success. They don't mean much to us individually over the long term. They do influence which games we will try though. Many other things go into those decisions but it is true that awards do in fact matter. To us as gamers, to gaming companies and to the gaming press.