Everyone knows that EA is a giant gaming company, but do you think they all realize what is going on between big developers and gaming media behind closed doors?  

Heres an interesting article I just read about Dragon Age 2, which got terrible ratings on metacritic (despite EA posting good reviews for it on there) and great reviews on various gaming media sites:

The fact is, EA controls who it gives its games to pre-release.  Every media company wants to be able to review a game before it is released...  And if you don't play ball with EA you will not get it.  Why did SWTOR get overwhelmingly high reviews by professional media companies but mediocre ones from gamers?  Because Mass Effect 3 is coming soon.

Want to secure your copy of mass effect 3?  Write a good review.   It is that simple and it is completely unspoken.

trust me they might think they outsmart the player but the sad truth is if your game doesnt do fair whatever review come out from anybody will be torched to the ground ask mike b here i am sure he saw countless potential king of the hill game sadly the player werent satisfied ,oh a lot of big company are trying to lobby in forum to sway market i am sure but so far the money spent in those endeavor is rarelly worth the trouble.quality of the game is what mather ,like swtor if it wasnt good i wouldnt be searching out all the small stuff that prevent it from performing admirably i probably still had those issue in wow lol but wow is so lean nerver noticed it ,but swtor was a worthy enough game that i felt it was worth  the trouble to make sure dca and dma werent bugged by settup error i had made weh ni set up net work card tcp

Your logic is flawed for two reasons:

1. And all these "professional" reviewers would be doing it for what? Just early copies of Mass Effect 3? Seriously? You must be kidding! If you had accused EA of paying them thousands of dollars and buying the scores, then maybe your accusation would at the very least provide sufficient motive.

2. The tactic of "fooling" into buying a crappy game through illusory high reviews might be a profitable one for offline games, but for an MMORPG? Really? Why would EA bother spending so much money developing a MMORPG if not in hopes of keeping lots of subscribers for as long as possible. EA would rather have 1 millions subs for 5 years over 10 millions sales and 0 subs after 3 months in a heartbeat.

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Originally posted by Yinmay

Your logic is flawed for two reasons:

1. And all these "professional" reviewers would be doing it for what? Just early copies of Mass Effect 3? Seriously? You must be kidding! If you had accused EA of paying them thousands of dollars and buying the scores, then maybe your accusation would at the very least provide sufficient motive.

2. The tactic of "fooling" into buying a crappy game through illusory high reviews might be a profitable one for offline games, but for an MMORPG? Really? Why would EA bother spending so much money developing a MMORPG if not in hopes of keeping lots of subscribers for as long as possible. EA would rather have 1 millions subs for 5 years over 10 millions sales and 0 subs after 3 months in a heartbeat.

{mod edit}

You didn't make the proper connection ... let me help you ( its not that clear i agree ).

1. Review site X completes bad review of SWTOR and posts it

2. User goes to google "SWTOR REVIEW" and this site comes up in the google search to the page where the review is !

3. BIOWARE/EA then does NOT give said reviewer copy of ME3 to review

4. Review SIte X then has reviews come out ( maybe ) but if so it lags behind the "early acces reviewers get" and thus 

5. Site X loses traffic

6. Site X loses money

This would be why I would trust a review regarding a release from a smaller entity than EA.

Wow, the conspiracy theorists on this site leave no stone unturned...lol.  If I believed half of what some peeps post on this site, I'd be milling about in a tin foil hat.  Quite sad what some people will dig out, just because they don't like the reviews coming out for a game they don't like.

Originally posted by Yinmay

Your logic is flawed for two reasons:

1. And all these "professional" reviewers would be doing it for what? Just early copies of Mass Effect 3? Seriously? You must be kidding! If you had accused EA of paying them thousands of dollars and buying the scores, then maybe your accusation would at the very least provide sufficient motive.

The fact that they will continue to stay in the developer's good graces and get early access to titles and interviews is basically the same thing as EA paying them actual money. They get to preview a game, write an article about it, people buy the magazine or browse the website because they want to read the article...see where I'm going with this?

There's no incentive for a big gaming site to give a negative review. What would they stand to gain by alienating a company like EA?  The res

Originally posted by junzo316

Wow, the conspiracy theorists on this site leave no stone unturned...lol.  If I believed have of what some peeps post on this site, I'd be milling about in a tin foil hat.  Quite sad what some people will dig out, just because they don't like the reviews coming out for a game they don't like.

 

Even more sad that the stated "how it works" is accurate... I mean do you think that EA does not put marketing dollars and lots of them to promote a title this big ?

I work in the software industry and in marketing and we PAY big bucks for  our software to be "recommended by Analysts" this is how it works. That said, I have worked for companies that don't do this, however they are more of the small, startup types.

Originally posted by allegria

Originally posted by Yinmay

Your logic is flawed for two reasons:

1. And all these "professional" reviewers would be doing it for what? Just early copies of Mass Effect 3? Seriously? You must be kidding! If you had accused EA of paying them thousands of dollars and buying the scores, then maybe your accusation would at the very least provide sufficient motive.

2. The tactic of "fooling" into buying a crappy game through illusory high reviews might be a profitable one for offline games, but for an MMORPG? Really? Why would EA bother spending so much money developing a MMORPG if not in hopes of keeping lots of subscribers for as long as possible. EA would rather have 1 millions subs for 5 years over 10 millions sales and 0 subs after 3 months in a heartbeat.

/end of troll thread

You didn't make the proper connection ... let me help you ( its not that clear i agree ).

 

1. Review site X completes bad review of SWTOR and posts it

2. User goes to google "SWTOR REVIEW" and this site comes up in the google search to the page where the review is !

3. BIOWARE/EA then does NOT give said reviewer copy of ME3 to review

4. Review SIte X then has reviews come out ( maybe ) but if so it lags behind the "early acces reviewers get" and thus 

5. Site X loses traffic

6. Site X loses money

 

This would be why I would trust a review regarding a release from a smaller entity than EA.

This absolutely does happen, but not with every game released and much less so with MMOs, because first-week box sales count for a relatively small portion of their lifetime income.

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Originally posted by junzo316

Wow, the conspiracy theorists on this site leave no stone unturned...lol.  If I believed half of what some peeps post on this site, I'd be milling about in a tin foil hat.  Quite sad what some people will dig out, just because they don't like the reviews coming out for a game they don't like.

I'm sure you would like to discredit my post by trying to label it as a conspiricy theory, but that certainly does not make it one.  This is simple economics, and I wouldnt be surprised if people within EA would admit to it themselves.  Its incredibly obvious. 

EA is treating SWTOR like a single player game.  Look at the strong focus on story and voice overs...  They are not going for immersion or long term retainability.  But I am not trying to attack them specifically, the entire industry is like that now, short term gain is the only thing on their minds because they want to show profitability for the company and label these games as 'success!' the same month it is released.

A couple flaws to the consiracy theory:

Dragon Age 2 did get several poor reviews

The expansion packs to all Bioware games have mostly gotten terrible reviews

While I dont doubt sites like this one get some 'advertising' cash, its certainly not widespread to every revewer.

Originally posted by wormywyrm

Originally posted by junzo316

Wow, the conspiracy theorists on this site leave no stone unturned...lol.  If I believed half of what some peeps post on this site, I'd be milling about in a tin foil hat.  Quite sad what some people will dig out, just because they don't like the reviews coming out for a game they don't like.

I'm sure you would like to discredit my post by trying to label it as a conspiricy theory, but that certainly does not make it one.  This is simple economics, and I wouldnt be surprised if people within EA would admit to it themselves.  Its incredibly obvious. 

 

 

Originally posted by Yinmay

2. The tactic of "fooling" into buying a crappy game through illusory high reviews might be a profitable one for offline games, but for an MMORPG? Really? Why would EA bother spending so much money developing a MMORPG if not in hopes of keeping lots of subscribers for as long as possible. EA would rather have 1 millions subs for 5 years over 10 millions sales and 0 subs after 3 months in a heartbeat.

EA is treating SWTOR like a single player game.  Look at the strong focus on story and voice overs...  They are not going for immersion or long term retainability.  But I am not trying to attack them specifically, the entire industry is like that now, short term gain is the only thing on their minds because they want to show profitability for the company and label these games as 'success!' the same month it is released.

did you play the game ?i have reached alderan and just in nar shadaa and tatooine alone there is raid,pve and pvp in same spot,there is heroic dungeon (flashpoint or shuch didnt try that so dont know how it is,you got heroic in the world also pvp ,you got bonus with alos all of the above i mean come on what is missing organised event?ok this is missing ,you think it will be hard for bioware to add organised sillyness like run around the heroic area without dying from foe or pve heroic foe or anything people can come up with .no it is easy everything is there , i even notice a wolrd pvp spot and when you enter there it warn you in big red letter pvp area !outlaws den if i recall and 2 seller are there they sell mount level 50 and other stuff .

i dont mind if a person say it lack this or lack that but please make sure it isnt there ,i played in vanilla days and pretty much everything vanilla had back then is in swtor!

and if you have an idea for the world heroic raid pvp pve area just send them your suggestion gees.a lot of stuff avail in swtor

i bet some would like to have nice reward for that , sadly i went by the big raid robot in bonus area of nar shadaa botom floor cause was way too hard for me and that fucking area is crawling with republic.but the robot is a level 32 .i dont know what to tell people mention all kind of stuff that isnt true where do they come up with this stuff!check youtube video online lot of poeple with good system record check how it look .

and on top of this ea bio is gona stay without expension for a fair while,they will focus on update  for new content (about every season or so)cant go wrong there ,it doesnt means they ll never have an expension but it might be in 24 month!

If EA is treating it like a single player game how come its taken less than a month to get a new instance and new raid bosses?

Originally posted by Dudehog

There's no incentive for a big gaming site to give a negative review. What would they stand to gain by alienating a company like EA?  The res

Quite simply loyalty with their fan base...

Personally I'd love to see some more honest reviews by folks that share my same interest. Instead, I have to read 50 reviews to hear the one minor negative they sneak in and then read the forums to hear all the haters and more or less piece together the honest and true opinion.

It's obvious what is happening. They even have people posting on forums. Never try to argue logic with them or their fanatics.

This is happening, although in a bit more subtle way. The major site reviewers are surely not getting any direct advantages, however, there is a certain pressure to not be too negative against high-budget games, which happen to pay for advertisment on these sites. This does not exclusively apply for video games, and it's a common practice.

Originally posted by Yinmay

*snip*

 EA would rather have 1 millions subs for 5 years over 10 millions sales and 0 subs after 3 months in a heartbeat.

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 Keeping 1 million subs for 5 years requires is a lot of hard work, a lot harder than fooling people into buying a game that turns out to be a turd. If the cost and effort to get those higher revenues is too great, they will just go for the quick cash grab. If they could actually choose between selling 10M copies and doing what needs to be done to keep 1M subs for 5 years, I'd actually bet money on EA preferring to sell the boxes and turn an instant hefty profit over sweating it out for 5 years.

Originally posted by JoeyMMO

 Keeping 1 million subs for 5 years requires is a lot of hard work, a lot harder than fooling people into buying a game that turns out to be a turd. If the cost and effort to get those higher revenues is too great, they will just go for the quick cash grab. If they could actually choose between selling 10M copies and doing what needs to be done to keep 1M subs for 5 years, I'd actually bet money on EA preferring to sell the boxes and turn an instant hefty profit over sweating it out for 5 years.

That pretty much describes the only business model EA has ever been good at.  Getting the boxes off the shelves.