General Discussion

Originally posted by sculler

It's quite obvious that Turbine and mmorpg.com have some sort of agreement to positively promote this game.

Originally posted by imershon
I'm with you Donna the rating for LOTRO is just fine - there is nothing new in LOTRO just fine tuning of features from other MMO's that have gone before and as for the graphics/sound ratings they deserve no more than you gave them

Originally posted by sololoco

Seriously, a nine for role playing? 

Although, most of these games supposedly are roleplaying games, the truth is no one role plays anymore. Maybe a handful but for the most part not even that.

Originally posted by Grimshok
Any time the person 'ranking' / scoring the game states that they try not to compare it to other games, its completely ASININE! 

Originally posted by jdilling00

everquest clone, few bugs, you can level up a monster,

Originally posted by GRIMACHU
Sweet ZOMBIE Jesus, the Internet will whine about absolutely anything won't it?

There are, basically, two routes you can take in making a review.

Route 1: Treat it as an op-ed piece and saturate it with your opinion in an attempt to ENTERTAIN the reader. "The sound in this game licks sweaty monkey-balls."
Route 2: Try and provide unbiased knowledge of the game in order to INFORM the reader, cutting away the marketing hyperbole and the 'hating' that fans of other games immediately start spilling so that people can make up their own minds.

This review, and yes, it is a review despite not beating you over the head with a +1 bat of extemporising, clearly takes the second route. Given that it has only been out for a day and that the beta and preorder experience will be different to the live experience this represents, IMO, a good approach.

<snipped>

I don't know about anyone else, but i read a review for opinions on something, not to learn about the topic. If i wanted to learn about it i'd go read the description for the product on the website/box/what-have-you. I don't read a review about a movie to learn what the movie is about (i can clearly learn that from trailers), i read them to see the author's opinions about it, how they felt overall about the movie. This "review" had no opinions about the product aside from the rating(i stopped caring about ratings for anything about 10 years ago). It did not influence my descision any more than going to the lotro website and reading the game info.

Furthermore, i submit to you the definition of review here dictionary.reference.com/browse/review

Which the relative meaning for review in this way is a critical examination. There was no critique in this "review".

I read someone's post that mentioned a suggestion for a few reviewers to rate games independently and then average the scores(i couldn't re-find the post so i couldn't quote, sorry). I completely agree. I think it would make the rating for a game more credible, and reflective of the staff's combined opinion about a game. Allow the reviewer to share their independant rating, but the rating on the MMORPG.com game list/overview should reflect the staff's combined rating(sorry if this is actually how you guys do it, but it seems like it isn't).

Originally posted by Thorsnes
Well, I'm not Nostradamus, but I foresee a certain "review" getting deleted and an actual review being posted soon... Hopefully by a neutral player, or at least by someone with a bit of perspective on things.