There should be a scale....and I rate every major MMORPG in a four scale system. 

Class 1: These games are very well maintained games which stand out. They receive a lot of press and media attention (from time to time) and their level of maintanance actually extends beyond the borders of a nation. These games have matured and endured as well and share two game generations of more of players. They do a great job of keeping their player base and have become communities where the most loyal of players form the majority of their playerbase as well. 

Class 2: These games are new and at their infancy. Content exists, but their level of maintanance are still at the local level. While not as big as class 1 games by any means they really are contenders and the signs show it.  Their job is to make sure they can retain their players and expand their games propertly. 

Class 3: These games are ongoing projects, substitutions or experiments. Have very limited support and maintanance are at the local level. Their survivability is always in question as well as their drives. They feel like Open (or Closed) Betas and something is usually missing. They need much work in not just creating content, but making a name for themselves and keeping an active and loyal playerbase...They are GOOD to see for developers can try MANY things, but they are not "Consistent" and can be quite bland if the average model is fed without any incentive either. 

Class 4: These games form the majority of MMORPGs. They are cookie-cutter. out of the mill MMORPGs with very shallow work and low themes. Their intention is to lure gamers into a very small community and extract as much money from a population as possible. They are what I call "Scam-MMOs" where every major company, specially chinese companies where their currency is worth 7 - 10x less than a dollar imagine the dream of making a crappy MMO and launching it in the EU or US to be able to charge 70 - 100x more per month on each transaction reflected across their currency than any localized game in their region.

These games can be F2P or P2P. They can have millions of players or just under 100,000. I have a completely set of criteria I use when analyzing MMOs and its not some Hype Meter or Biased Player Scale.

What people really wish to know are:

1) How reliable a game and its community are...

2) How playable a title is...

3) How deep does support, expansion and facilitarion go

4) How consistent a developer is at promoting and maintaining their titles. 

Finally, they want to know if its fun and worth it in the long run as MMOs are not games to invest short periods of time in them, but are games that every little bit is supposed to make you feel that your time is 'worth" spending. 

Enough of the over complex categories !!!

Keep it simple - If a game allows for more than a couple of hundred players to be in the same area at once then it is an MMO. If there is character progression then it is an RPG.

What were really should be getting rid of is the F2P term, as previously discussed no game is free to play therefore we should call them "no subscription" based games. Simple and easy.

Some of the suggestions above are like weird science mad people who live and paid by classifying already existing reality and claiming that they "discovered" it.

Keep things simple. 

Originally posted by Saorlan

Enough of the over complex categories !!!

Keep it simple - If a game allows for more than a couple of hundred players to be in the same area at once then it is an MMO. If there is character progression then it is an RPG.

What were really should be getting rid of is the F2P term, as previously discussed no game is free to play therefore we should call them "no subscription" based games. Simple and easy.

Some of the suggestions above are like weird science mad people who live and paid by classifying already existing reality and claiming that they "discovered" it.

Keep things simple. 

Boiling it down, how do you score these 2 games:

Game x cost y for T = 50Hrs gameplay

Game z costs 3y for T = 150Hrs gameplay

Unfortunately things are not so simple that 1Hr gameplay in x = 1Hr gameplay in z or x is only 1/3 z!

But people need information that tells them how much gametime they can expect to pay for their money and how much quality can get out of that time? I think the developer's intention starts with a business model that leads to a game design. How well they have executed that intention affects a lot of the mmo game experience: Almost everything has a bottom line and the question is the value of the product and to which players?

imo there is no need for seperate grading,a east or west MMO can both get a A but if its a good detailed review it should become clear which of the 2 are more what we are individually looking for

I feel that every game that proports to be an MMO should be held to the same review standards.  Assuming that there actually is a standard applied to reviews.  The development of two parallel scoring systems and set of standards just seems to me to be a waste of time and effort as both F2P and P2P are targeting the same audiance.

As for a grading system, I have no problems with that.  Given the target audiance such a scoring system would be a natural fit.

Originally posted by wahala99

Originally posted by kjempff

Besides maybe new genres comming,  we might also need to put attributes on games so that players will be able to find a game suiting their tastes. An attribute describing if it is for casual, medium or hardcore player types ? Still inside the game genre.

This would be a subjective nightmare.  Most folks (eapecialy those who don't play it) for instance put WoW in the casual category, while those who working for world firsts on the new heroic raids and dungeons would call it a hardcore game.   Probably people like me who play a lot and try to solo group quests as they go would call it medium.   The heads of the big alliances and their corps would probably call eve hardcore, while those who just do low sec pirating or mining or Hi sec waring might call it medium.  Those who play for a time waster doing lvl3 missions and trading on the market would call it casual. 

Good point, any categorizing could only be subjective.

If someone were to try and categorize, it would take them a lifetime to play and understand all the games in dept.

I guess it could be done with a player voting system, but that would be very subjective and probably not give true information. Could be that categorizing just not possible :)

Some people claims that the business model is irrelevant to the quality and per consequence the grades the game receive, well, I think it's utter nonsense. I mean we're in a consummer society and the price on any products we buy affects the value/grade we place on the product, and it's especially true for games (no matter the genre), for exemple i don't think little games like tiny wings would have the same grade if it were sold in a box for 50$.

Also we can all agree on one thing, the misleading term f2p must disappear, because no game is actually 100% free, developpers need to eat too.

In the end gaming is an investment on the fun we have for the price we paid, so game should be rated this way. We should count how much it costs to obtain and play 100% of a game and include it in the final decision for the grade, and for time sensitive costs I think it can be extrapolated from the reviewer playstyle to different type of gamer playstyle (harcore or casual, etc...)

I think the pay model should just be another category. In rating a game shouldn't it boil down to "Is the game fun?", "Is the game visually appealing?", "Is the game stable and mostly free of bugs?", and "Does the game use music and sound in an appealing way?"

I think the only thing that needs to be expanded on as far as pay model is if it isn't a straight subscription then what can your money get for you, is money required for a casual player to enjoy themselves, is money required for a hard-core player to enjoy themselves and if so how much? 

One of the biggest fears many people seem to have about F2P is whether or not you "need" to spend money to be competitive. Then there are those that don't care if they're competitive as long as they can have fun. Those are issues that should be brought up in a review, not whether a game is good or not depending on if it's P2P or F2P.

Originally posted by Arienai

 

Also we can all agree on one thing, the misleading term f2p must disappear, because no game is actually 100% free, developpers need to eat too.

In the end gaming is an investment on the fun we have for the price we paid, so game should be rated this way. We should count how much it costs to obtain and play 100% of a game and include it in the final decision for the grade, and for time sensitive costs I think it can be extrapolated from the reviewer playstyle to different type of gamer playstyle (harcore or casual, etc...)

 

I totally agree. F2P is just misleading and has turned into a dirty word. Maybe "Full Subscription" and "Optional Subscription" (Modular? ) or something along those lines would be more accurate.

I do not think that F2P and P2P should have different scales... both are the same form of entertainment, with differnt fees.

What I DO think should be done, is that the price be taken into consideration. When reviewers look at computers, they dont compare the $500 computer to the $5k computer. They compare based on bang for the buck.

If a F2P game cost ~$5(dl time value) compared to the ~$50 cost for the P2P, is the P2P 10x better? This is the real comparison. You have to use a comparision that is similar to what the consumer would use... to help them make a good decision, not some arbitrary comparison that holds no relation to their decision process.

While I think the same scale should be used for both, the cost to play should be a factor in the rating (and that includes the 'must buy' costs for f2p). For me, a p2p game has to be MUCH better than a f2p for me to buy it. For other people, price may only be a minow consideration.

I do think it is a sub class of the genre.  It offers a content rich environment with a free to play option.  EQII, LOTRO and DDO all fit this mold.  The item shops also don't seem to rob your wallet like many of the normal f2p grinders do.

Originally posted by GrumpyMel2

I think you basicaly review each game on what it advertises it intends to deliver. You wouldn't review McDonalds on the same scale as you do the Ritz Carlton, because McDonalds doesn't try to portray itself as anything other then a fast food resturaunt.

So a F2P that's open about the experience it's trying to deliver (or for that matter a small indie project as well) is fine to review on a different scale. However ANY game (this goes for AAA titles too) that hypes itself to high heaven....deserves to be reviewed on the scale it attempts to portray itself on.

In other words, as a reviewer, I would hope that as part of your review for any title (AAA, F2P, Sub based, browser based, etc) that you would attempt to puncture whatever marketing hype the game spews about itself with a healthy dose of realism about what it actualy delivers.

I agree with Grumpy. The experience that the game is trying to deliver should be the benchmark.

Part of the problem is that MMOs are cosntantly viewed as a genre and not a platform. Garden Party World, Vindictus, LOTRO, League of Legends, and Combat Arms simply cannot be measured against each other in any reasonable fashion because most would have major shortcomings and downsides when assessed using 3D MMORPGs as the measuring stick. However as a PBBG, an Action MMO, an MMORPG, an MMO RTS and MMO FPS each one shines brightly in their own category.

I believe it depends on the content and intention of the game versus the subscription model. For instance, games like LOTRO and DDO were at one time subscription based and later converted to F2P. So how is it you can compare them as two separate entities? For instance, you can have a MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) that only brings people together for the sole sake of doing so (second life?) and you can have MMORPGs which tend to bring players together for the sole purpose of completing objectives and storymodes. Some are free and some cost money, although they provide entirely different content.

Guild Wars 2, the sequel which I believe you're referring too has a lot of hype. I believe it will deliver with unparalled expectations as well, as the original game and additions were very well developed. However, just because it's F2P I don't believe justifies making it anymore complex to separate it into a sub-category, although you can it's perfectly fine to do so. It just adds an extra demension of complexity in rating games.