I also applaud this move. I followed the forums slightly and was appalled at the pettiness the management team portrayed.

Excellent decision to rise above this. I think also that other gaming companies will have to respect this site and the members in general a bit more.

They  will hopefully refrain from sending staff to this site to have flame wars and try and discredit members who are here to warn us about their negative experience.

 I for one am here to hear players views on games not the dev,support or pr hype. I can get that from the gamesite. I think this goes to show mmorpg.com is behind this community and the freedom of open forum. Excellent decision

So, you're announcing that the reason your list of mmogs is incomplete is the result of favoritism on the part of the mmorpg.com staff.

How many other mmogs are missing because their companies didn't stroke you well enough? How many scores/reviews have been adjusted by this policy of filtering information to fit your mood?

I guess since you aren't a real news organization you don't feel obligated to any particular ethic. It shouldn't surprise me given that IGE banner up there polluting your site, but up until this I thought you at least pretended you still represented the mmog community.

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Originally posted by Drayven

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Originally posted by Orcc

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Originally posted by Drayven
I too thought this site was about covering all MMOs not just the ones that play nice with each other. Without knowing what happened from the LLE end it seems very much like a "i'm taking my ball and going home" move.

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Put yourself in MMORPG.coms shoes, imagine you do a whole bunch of promoting for a company and you get nothing but harassment... i tihnk youd stop dealing with them too. You must remember MMORPG.com is a business as well.

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But at the same time I'm forced to wonder if I can trust MMORPG.com's word on anything as far as games go. If they're willing to dump a game because they don't agree with the devs what's to say they won't increase teh ratings of other games, or filter out the less favorable reviews of games of which they have good standing with the devs.

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Who cares what they do the ratings of other games? Look over the site, 99% of the reviews and hype is generated by players and forum members and ive NEVER seen a staff member come on the boards promoting Game XVXZX.

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Originally posted by Drayven

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Originally posted by Orcc

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Originally posted by Drayven
I too thought this site was about covering all MMOs not just the ones that play nice with each other. Without knowing what happened from the LLE end it seems very much like a "i'm taking my ball and going home" move.

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Put yourself in MMORPG.coms shoes, imagine you do a whole bunch of promoting for a company and you get nothing but harassment... i tihnk youd stop dealing with them too. You must remember MMORPG.com is a business as well.

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But at the same time I'm forced to wonder if I can trust MMORPG.com's word on anything as far as games go. If they're willing to dump a game because they don't agree with the devs what's to say they won't increase teh ratings of other games, or filter out the less favorable reviews of games of which they have good standing with the devs.

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You're just creating drama.

The situation is right in front of you, you know why MMORPG.com has removed Mourning, and there you have it. MMORPG.com did not create this situation; Mourning did. No other game has had such problems with public relations, such developers that the gaming community frowns upon... I will be continuing to visit MMORPG.com because I now know that it is run not by a mindless mob but by people that involve themselves and care about the community.

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Originally posted by Drayven

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Originally posted by Orcc

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Originally posted by Drayven
I too thought this site was about covering all MMOs not just the ones that play nice with each other. Without knowing what happened from the LLE end it seems very much like a "i'm taking my ball and going home" move.

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Put yourself in MMORPG.coms shoes, imagine you do a whole bunch of promoting for a company and you get nothing but harassment... i tihnk youd stop dealing with them too. You must remember MMORPG.com is a business as well.

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But at the same time I'm forced to wonder if I can trust MMORPG.com's word on anything as far as games go. If they're willing to dump a game because they don't agree with the devs what's to say they won't increase teh ratings of other games, or filter out the less favorable reviews of games of which they have good standing with the devs.

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Actually not agreeing with the managers of Mourning and having to put up with a daily torrent of abuse from them both here and on the Mourning boards are two different things.

MMORPG provides free coverage for many MMO's and the kind of company that is producing Mourning should be over the moon about the free press they get here. Instead because they are registered card carrying haters of free speech they chose to relinquish that free coverage by being totally disrespectfull to MMO and its members.

Im amazed MMO put up with their crapo for as long as they did and still continued to promote their so called game.

I for one do not doubt for an instant that MMO provides the best all round coverage of this industry on the web. Mourning chose not to be part of that.

Would it be ok that they removed the game if it was because they found out the devs are lying to everyone about a good few things?

I bet that would be fine with you, right?

Well, they are lying about a good few things.

Want proof? Point this post out to to Tiamat and co over at LLH and get them to come to this forum and say its ok for me to break my NDA to prove it. I gladly will

Hi All,

[quote]It's one thing to sell out to commercialism; at least you're getting paid.  Selling out to your own faults by sinking to the level of some bickering clod is another matter entirely.  I say rise above it all and continue to list Mourning on MMORPG.com.  Nobody says you have to kiss their asses or hype their game, but when everone finds out that your list is full of holes due to your personal opinions, they'll go somewhere they can read about all of the games, not just the ones you like and/or get along with.  ---Retantilus.[/quote]

Actually this is one of the few instances of Gamer Consumer Advocacy i've ever seen on the web. Although it was prompted by a commerical gamer portal, and not a gamer non-profit org. Nonetheless this is a touche for those who always lament why do gamers support a bad game product. Be it in the form of poor technical design / glitches, or in this case what seems F+ public relations and customer risk management.

It seems LLE is in need of "The Themis Group", much like Funcom employed a couple of years ago. For their own community relations fiasco right after they launched Anarchy Online.

no....this wasnt a bad move my mmorpg.com....mourning is sketchy, shady, weird, and seemingly bad situation to be involved in

check out forums here, mourning forums, and other site's forums talking about mourning....no other game has such bad underground publicity as mourning...they were supposedly banning people for canceling pre-orders, wtf is that about....

and if you feel mmorpg is censoring you, relax....check the mmorpg news sites and put the big picture together...you shouldnt be relying on any one source for news.

knowledge is understanding the information around you...and i'm not fucking calling you dumb=)

I have no stake in this, I don't feel that MMORPG represents the MMO community at all. In fact most posts I read here are written by people who have hardly played an MMO which is evident in the content of their posts (most not all, some of you have highly insightful and informed posts regarding various issues in MMORPG's, and you know who you are). Further moderation of a forumed site is needed to foster a true community.

This is just a customer base to them. And that is totally legitimate. But don't run around pretending you represent the community... after all tons of other games have disrespected players and the MMO community (at large) in the past and MMORPG.com took no stance on those situations. So when MMORPG starts boycotting all games that piss on the player base (customers, stakeholders, and community) then we can talk.

I agree MMORPG brings about many fun and informative experiences. And I agree that MMORPG has the odd good review. And I thank them for their wonderful gaming site, and all the hard work they do. But MMORPG does make money on this site, and so can not be considered an non-partisan, objective agent in this issue. It is because of this vested interest in profit that mmorpg.com can not call themselves community representatives (or even  true members of the community for that mater). Yes you may be players, but you are players who have something to gain, and that means you sit in a different boat than the rest of the community.

Regardless I completely respect MMORPG.com's business decision to dump promotion on Mourning. It looked like a horrible game anyway (IMHO).

AFTER THOUGHT

Out right removal of Mourning is likely a bad idea. This will turn other prospective game companies off because it struts the attitude of ‘don’t mess up in dealings with us (mmorpg.com) or we will boycott you’. A better solution would be to leave the Mourning forums up, and leave the game listed on the site, but just “forget” to update the information ever again. Simply put leave what you have, and never add more to it and possibly don’t moderate the Mourning forums, because as I said above (Moderating a forum helps breed a community).  

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Originally posted by Malicus

Excellent decision to rise above this. I think also that other gaming companies will have to respect this site and the members in general a bit more.

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[quote]
Who cares what they do the ratings of other games? Look over the site, 99% of the reviews and hype is generated by players and forum members and ive NEVER seen a staff member come on the boards promoting Game XVXZX.[/b][/quote]

But let's say the MMORPG staff really likes a game, it wouldn't be that hard for them to just throw out 50% of the reviews that rated the game below a 7. I'm not saying that this is happening but whta I"m saying is that once you start showing favoritism one way or the other it can really hurt how people trust your opinions. Also I've noticed that they say they did this becuase of these PMs they received but they don't want to talk about it. If they didn't want to talk about it they would've quietly faded Mourning off of the site they wouldn't have put it up as a main news story on the front page. It's like me taking out an ad in the local paper calling my ex wife all sorts of nasty things then when people ask what that's all about I just say "I don't want to talk about it." MMORPG is the one that took this public they should at least show some evidence as to why they made these decisions.

I urge you to reconsider the "remove" decision. For a site such as this one, the selective ommision, exclusion, or removal of any one game for any reason goes very much counter to the core purpose of the site, and is a huge disservice to anyone that comes here find and read information. This site does not present itself as someones list of favorite MMOs, rather it appears to be an exhaustively complete list of such games. Clearly, if there are issues with the coverage and discussion of one game more than the rest, something needs to be done to indicate that is the case, but removing the game from the list altogether should not be the route taken.

Right on, mmorpg.com. There is no reason anyone should buy/promote a company that provide a poor quality product. I applaude you, and wish more people would stand up and back their opinions of companies they deal with.... Unless you like receiving bad service over and over again.

I do not think poeple who have not read the massege can say whatever or not this dicision is good or not, but in my opinion the massege would be rater and insult to the poeple of MMORPG.com before they would close it down. They give the site FREE comurcial so the companies producing the games should respect that, but as said before i do not know what was in the letters

I think this is something that prompted it, taken from the Mourning boards:

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I think the nail in the coffin was attempting to get personal information of a mmorpg.com member under the pretense of a lawsuit. There is a thing called freedom of speech and mourning managements nazi attitude didnt seem to support this. Istead of rising above negativity they buried themselves in it. Hopefully other games will learn from mournings mistakes as I think its too late for this one.

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I guess they were offended by someone violating an NDA or, maybe from what ive heard they get paranoid over small situatuions...

Whats with everyone saying mmorpg.com is bad now that they have done this. What if at shool you say how cool this guy is and how he is your best bud, and then he turns around and starts beating you up. Thats what seems to have happened here. Would you still say how cool he was if he was being a bully and beating you up?

look at the big picture and think about what your saying before you post. please.

I don't see why people are are suggesting this is about favoritism. I'd expect this reaction from another fansite. For example, if Sony started showing complete disrespect towards GameSpy in private messages and talking about their community would you expect them to keep quiet and accept it or would you expect them to do something. What about Gamespot or IGN. Would you expect FilePlanet to continue to work together with a company if they treated them with disrespect? I don't see this as being about listing games as favorites. I'd expect those sites to blacklist or stop coverage from those companies if they were treated unfairly or with disrespect. Just like you'd expect a store to stop caring a certain name brand if the relationship with a company goes bad or for a store to refuse service to a certain customer if there has been a constant problem with them. I think people are trying to make this out to be more then it is.

As said, they haven't had any problems like this with any other company. People shouldn't be acting if they can't trust MMORPG again. People should be feeling they can trust MMORPG more since they were up front about this and explained their actions and didn't try to hide this or make up some reason. THey were upfront about this and clear. This should build your trust in them.

I vist MMORPG.com daily and check out news all the time. I don't really care much for Mourning nor have I checked it out. However, this decision does raise questions now in my mind if this is indeed a site that I can trust. I completely second this poster's position and think you should reinstate the forum and listing and put all emails from Mourning emails/promotions/media outlays directly to your junk mail. You are not promoting Mourning by having the forum, you are doing what *we* expect to get when we visit your site. I am not defending Mourning activities, but two wrongs don't make a right.

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Originally posted by rentantilus

Originally posted by Herithius
I thought this was a site dedicated to covering mmo games. All mmo games. Not just the ones you personally like or don't like for whatever reason.

Kind of makes you wonder how many other MMORPGs are out there right now that you're not hearing about through MMORPG.com eh? Who knows, your perfect game could be up and running right now, but you might never hear about it here because one of their mods is an ex-girlfriend of some MMORPG.com staffmember or something.
MMORPG.com, this is a bad move all around. The one and only thing you have going for you is the web address "mmorpg.com," and the second people find out that your personal feelings about certain MMORPGs either promote or preclude them from appearing on your site, they'll head over to one of the numerous other MMO dedicated sites.
It's one thing to sell out to commercialism; at least you're getting paid. Selling out to your own faults by sinking to the level of some bickering clod is another matter entirely. I say rise above it all and continue to list Mourning on MMORPG.com. Nobody says you have to kiss their asses or hype their game, but when everone finds out that your list is full of holes due to your personal opinions, they'll go somewhere they can read about all of the games, not just the ones you like and/or get along with.

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Well this should end the discussion...

THE MOURNING DEVS ASKED FOR THE GAME TO BE REMOVED FROM MMORPG.COM

Quote from Mourning administrator:

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Yet MMORPG staff came up and said some things about us which should have never be said in a professional relationship.

That's why I said yes when our discussion came to the point of which we should have to ask from MMORPG staff to entirely delete Mourning game and its forums from their site.

And I'm quite sure that not we are the ones who'll have to lose from this.

And as a last thing, it's astonishing to see that they claim they were the ones doing this because they felt so:

quote:Today MMORPG.com has made the difficult decision to remove the game "Mourning" from our list of MMORPG's as well as shut down our Mourning specific forums.

We would like to clarify that this decision was not based on the actions of any community members at MMORPG.com - rather our core feelings about the company behind this project, and the way they treat us and their community.

My dear MMORPG staff, what about the fact the WE expressely asked you to do this?

I gues we'll see who was right about this. Atm I'm just glad we don't have to deal anymore with all the trollings from those forums.

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End of discussion on MMORPG.com showing favoritism.

Just out of curiosity the devs on the Mourning forums say they asked to be removed from MMORPG.com, just wondering if the mmorpg staff would acknowledge wether that's true or not.