Why is it that 99% of all reviews done by the mmorpg.com staff are written as either game haters or paid up fanbois?  is it so difficult these days to get an unbiased opinion that details both the rough and the smooth of a title.

The latest example of this is the review of Guildwars.  Okay you like the game, you are in good company with a fair amount of other players but not once did you hit on any of the games down points apart from a small sentence on character customisation. 

Now, I also like Guildwars for what it is, the graphics are beautiful, the missions are well scripted and the interface is intuitive and easy to control even for new players but let's look at a few bad points:

1) The devs went completely overboard with mobs that hide under the ground.  Devourers jump out at you when you are level 1 and they jump out at you when you are level 20.

2) The community spirit found in most mmorgs is entirely missing from Guildwars due to the game being completely instanced, meaning that the only places you get to meet new people are the towns and outposts.  There is no running into someone out in the wilds, no rushing to someones aid that has got into trouble or for that matter no one running to your aid.  In short the player populated world is missing.

3) The chat system is one of the worst I have encountered in any mmo and I have played a few.

4) The auction system is wholly inadequate meaning that if a player wants to sell a rare item instead of just throwing it at an npc vendor for a pittance he must stand around for an age shouting about it, which in itself is awkward as he is only being heard by the players in that particular outpost in that particular district at the time so 90% of the population don't even hear it.

5) The PvE side of the game has been called Diablo mixed with WoW or a single player game where other players just happen to be around from time to time because that is what the gameplay feels like, you fail a mission /shrug so what?  you can always go back to town, get rid of any death penalties and start it again which does get old very quickly.

In short Guildwars falls firmly into the saying too much of a good thing, I'm all for instanced zones but having the whole game done that way is way too much.

All I'm asking for in this post is a little unbiased, objective journalism in your reviews or am I asking too much?

Btw this post is not intended to slag of guildwars so all the forum trolls can go back to sleep.

give it a rest. I found the GW review to be pretty spot on, if you disgree fair enough but i'd hardly say the reviewer was a fanboi. Just because the reviewer gave it a high score than you would does not make either of you wrong, just that you have different opinions.

1) Doesn't bother me in the slightest.
2) Community isn't missing, just concentrated into towns.
3) Chat is fine.
4) There will probably be an auction system added soon, there are websites around that do it for you. Not a massive issue IMO, gold is largely irrelevant.
5) Just because people call it something doesn't make it true. I find the missions fun, and rarely restart a mission half way through (since you can regain dp back with morale boosts).

I've said it before and i'll say it again: GW is a game to pick up and play with a couple of mates (either RL or online), not something to spend 24 hours a day on.

I think i'll add that to my sig...

For a game that flatly claims to not be a true MMORPG right on their website, Guild Wars certainly did get a shining review here at "MMORPG.com."

Not really, lots of games on this site are rated higher, such as Eve (8.3), Anarchy Online (8.8!), City of Heroes (8.3) and DAoC (8.4). Does ok compared to the 'big two' of EQ2 and WoW though.

Okay you obviously missed the part where I said that this post was not intended to slag Guildwars, you also missed the part about me liking the game so please in future read the posts before you reply to them.

The point of the post was to highlight the fact that nothing is perfect and mmorpg,com should include the downsides as well as the up for it to be an unbiased piece of journalism.

I was trying to illustrate that a couple of your 'bad points' are debatable and depend a lot on your point of view. The reviewer might not have considered them even worth mentioning. Reviews will never be unbiased, people will always have pre-formed opinions and likes and dislikes. To be honest, I think that free trials are 100000% better than any review, its a shame GW doesn't offer something like 'play the first 3 missions' as a trial.

What I am fed up with is everyone moaning all the time about things like MMORPG.com reviews that really aren't that important to your enjoyment of games.

---

Originally posted by eric1000
Why is it that 99% of all reviews done by the mmorpg.com staff are written as either game haters or paid up fanbois?

---

So, basically what you are saying here is that if someone forms an opinion of a game and presents it in a reveiw, they are a "game hater" or a "fanboi". So you want reviews with no opinion what so ever of the games. I think that's pretty funny since most reviews I read on basically anything, gives an opinion of it. Hell, Consumer Reports reviews LOTS and LOTS of items, and they always give an opinion about what they are reviewing. They even compare it to other items in the same category ranking them.

I think your just hitting on the inherent problem with reviews and reviewers in general, it's always just someone's oppinion, subject to that persons particular preferences/tastes - style of game play - who they happen to work for - past experiences and so on and so forth.

Saying that the mmorpg.com reviewers either hate or love a game is ridiculous in it's own right, of course there going to go one way or the other, it's an oppinion and no matter how much a reviewer attempts to orientate himself towards neutrality, preferences are still going to come through.

Not to say I don't find this website a little boasting of undeserved titles... *cough SOE *cough, and I do tend to agree with you as far as GW goes but again, that's just my oppinion. I read reviews the same way I read a menu from a restaurant, sure it may sound great or bad but I reserve my right to judgement until I actually try whatever it may be out.

The review was ok as far as it goes. But it doesn't address the fundamental point concerning GW in any depth. That is that the game is for all intent and purposes totally instanced.

Surely that's a huge point - especially since the review is on mmorpg.com and presumably aimed at the mmorpg community who are used to playing "real" mmorpgs which are not toally instanced.

Its fair to judge GW on its own merits -that its an instanced ORPG not a MMORPG.

But a review must state clearly that that is one of the assumptions used by the reviewer and that means, in effect, this review does not yield a score that one can compare against the scores for the "real " mmorpgs reviewed on this site.