The guys from Vogster's CrimeCraft have provided us with this little bit of lore about The Triad, one of the game's factions. Along with the lore, the team has sent along some screenshots of the Triad boss.

For many years, the Bratva and the Dragons were engaged in conflict over numerous enterprises in Downtown, including smuggling, gambling and prostitution. Before the collapse, the organizations had engaged in numerous wars and blood feuds, and the previous leadership of the Dragons had sworn an eternal vendetta against all Bratva. This was the predominate thinking in the daily lives of members of the Dragons for many years, and even persisted in the early period after the collapse. However, as life became harder and harder for everyone, there were those among the Dragons who believed that something needed to change.

Read it all here.

NetDevil has released these three new, exclusive MMORPG.com screenshots from their upcoming space-based MMORPG, Jumpgate Evolution.

You can visit Jumpgate Evolution's webpage, here.

See them all here.

In honor of Halloween, the team from Earthrise has provided us with these three renders of their spookiest Halloween themed baddies.

You can visit Earthrise's webpage, here.

You can see them all here.

MMORPG.com EVE Online Correspondent Kevin Schram writes this look at four different fan made applications that make the EVE Online experience that much easier.

Unlike that other MMO, EVE Online does not allow modification of the game's client for user-made mods. To fill this void, the EVE Online community (which is filled with IT professionals – just ask around in your corp) has created a ton of fan made applications. Some of them are great, others can be avoided. This list will run down the four best fan-made applications, plus a few other honorable mentions.

Read it all here.

Note, I'm jumping in here purely as a geek not as someone from the site... :)

But, to play devil's advocate, Superman pretty much breaks every superhero rule too. He's tough to balance and I suspect this may be one thing they pretty much cannot get right.

I've asked them exactly this question before and got that same answer. My guess is there will be more kryptonite situations than Smallville ;)  But who knows.

Regardless, even if people do just have to accept that Superman is no cooler than the other superheroes, it shouldn't matter much since his rules don't even apply to them obviously. For example, the "inspired by" function they have for people who want to base themselves around a certain guy are tough with Superman too. I never really got a full answer since he's basically just all of them combined. I suspect they're just going to have to dodge around this a lot to make a proper game.

It was not a studio that had anything to do with Tabula Rasa. The only connection is that Scott used to work for NCsoft on another project and April did work on Tabula Rasa. Mind you, you can probably make a connection like that to any studio in Austin ;) It's not a big town.

Originally posted by LynxJSA

Wasn't it John Galt Games that he had gone to work for?

 

 

John Galt became Webwars, but he left there to go work for this outfit.

Another sign of the troubled economic times hit home today when it came out that an unannounced MMO studio in Austin, TX had been closed. This group included Lead Designer Scott Jennings, aka "Lum the Mad," formerly of Mythic, NCsoft and, of course, blogging fame.

There was not much known about what the team had been working on, and it appears that we will never officially know for sure. Unlike many studios with unannounced projects, these guys were not even allowed to tell us what company was behind the whole thing.

The only hints we're likely to get was what Jennings posted on his blog: "I’m still a bit sore since I think what we were working on was pretty damned cool (if nothing else, it was *nothing* like World of Warcraft) and I’m a sad panda that it won’t make it out the door."

Check out Scott's blog post on it all here.

Originally posted by Banquetto

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Banquetto

Looks perfectly reasonable to me, mmorpg.com have really damaged their credibility by retracting this review just because the publishers of Fallen Earth cried about it. Pretty hard to have any faith in the accuracy of anything they publish here in the future.

 Not that anyone who makes this kind of tinfoil hat post will believe this, but I figure I should say it anyway:

Icarus and I never discussed this review prior to me pulling it. Not once.

It stayed up until Friday mostly due to my travel schedule, unfortunately.

 

I'm happy to rephrase: "mmorpg.com have really damaged their credibility by retracting this review just because the fans of Fallen Earth cried about it"

Please refer to Post #20 in this thread.

We brought it back because the article didn't support the ratings it gave and based those ratings off of a mistaken assumption. That assumption being that everyone was having the framerate issues (which the reviewer called lag) they were having.

It took 12 hours to accomplish, and thus let everyone have time to get upset, because I was out of town and not able to see the article until then.

As I said before, there is absolutely no guarantee the new review will have a higher score, a lower score or even the same score. The score and the fans had nothing to do with our decision. The review itself was flawed and we made a mistake in putting it out in the first place. That's the mistake we tried to fix by retracting it, case closed.

Originally posted by Chach

Lol 9 pages already... 

Dana and staff:

I enjoy this site very much, feeds my addiction while at work.  I think many people miss the big picture.  Is it fair to write a review on a game after playing it for 2 weeks?  Does someone write a book review after reading 4 chapters?  If they did, they would probably be out of a job.

These kinds of "reviews" have affected consumers.  Case in point for me was Warhammer, without even having to go into detail about it.

Your "reviews" should be called "First Impressions" or "2 Week review."  Only when your "reviewer" has experienced the MMO from beginning to end game activities, then I do believe it can be called an "Official review."

"Wow, this game got high ratings on MMORPG and several forums agreeing. (2 weeks later).  "This game suxorz."

 On this one, we're between a rock and a hard place.

Reviews are generally most useful to people making purchasing decisions. Our general policy on big launches is to do a preview within a week of launch based on Beta play, a first impressions a week after launch and then a review 3 to 4 weeks out. This one came out about a month after launch because Aion launched on the same day and that review ran last week.

Is four weeks enough time to give a complete and total opinion on an MMO? Probably not, but it is enough time to let people know whether or not it is worth buying. Normally, the first month of gameplay should be indicative, although that has fallen apart on us in the past. Take Age of Conan, which was awesome for 20 levels, got huge review scores out of the gate and then went all to hell.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

Originally posted by grunt187

yes because leaving that mistake of a review well alone would have been the right move

/sarcasm off

Well, yeah. It would have. Now those of us who haven't read it, never can. Post a disclaimer if you wish, but leave it up. If it is flawed, then other posters can point that out quite ably.

Stifling speech is very rarely a good thing. This is a bad precedent.

 We took it down because there is no proper way to archive it without it displaying the score all over the site. Had this been a random editorial, we likely would have done as you said, but given the nature of our backend when it comes to review it's an all or nothing proposition.

Plus, we were not trying to hide it. We're not idiots, we know Google remembers everything ;)

Originally posted by Banquetto

Looks perfectly reasonable to me, mmorpg.com have really damaged their credibility by retracting this review just because the publishers of Fallen Earth cried about it. Pretty hard to have any faith in the accuracy of anything they publish here in the future.

 Not that anyone who makes this kind of tinfoil hat post will believe this, but I figure I should say it anyway:

Icarus and I never discussed this review prior to me pulling it. Not once.

It stayed up until Friday mostly due to my travel schedule, unfortunately.

Originally posted by rwyan

I think the problem with past reviews is that it has been left up to the reviewer as to how to grant the final score.  This also creates a problem because even though scores here are on a scale of 1 - 10, most scores end up between 6 - 10.  Anything lower is usually reserved for anything so bad that a low score is given for the sake of giving a low score.  In fact, I would suggest MMORPG.com move to a 4 or 5 star rating system (being that 5-6 on a 10 pt scale is considered low even though it really is average).

1 star - horrible don't even bother, can't recommend

2 star - heavily flawed and few redeeming qualities, would not recommend

3 star - rough around the edges and may be worth a look for a few redeeming qualities, may or may not recommend depending on the player

4 star - a must try despite a few flaws, would recommend

5 star - a must try, definitely recommend

Don't bother with half stars or decimals.  Its either a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.  If its not a 5 and not a 3 then its a 4, not a 3.5 or a 4.5, just a 4.  Partial scores/points/stars tend to encourage inflation of scores.  The final score should reflect the overall experience.  I've played many games where an average may put the game at a 3.  However, maybe the story was so good and intriguing that it made the overall game experience a 4.

Examples:

For example, I'd give Aion a 4.  Its polished, looks great, plays great, but content is bare at higher levels and level design can be bland.  It provides an overall positive, yet very standard MMO experience but may grow tiresome as players reach higher levels due to drop off in content and poorly designed/poorly rewarding objectives.  It is a game I would recommend to other players to at least try as the pvp, setting, and overall presentation may appeal to many gamers.

 

Fallen Earth would be given a 3.  Overall, the game is rough around the edges.  The art is, while pleasing to the eye, is inconsistent with the occasional rough animation, texture or poorly modeled figure.  The gameplay isn't as smooth or refined and has a fairly clunky feel to it.  Players will either learn to enjoy/accept combat or they will never grasp the controls and fight against the mechanics of it.  Crafting is meaningful but because the design encourages players to provide for themselves, the economy is lacking and will continue to do so until players are encouraged to rely on others.  The game is more akin to a post-apocolyptic AC in that players will level up but are free to invest in skills that they chose.  For that reason, the game will have the open ended/sandbox feeling of UO and SWG but still feel linear as players most level up and advance to level appropriate areas.    Because of the inconsistent presentation, awkward combat, and niche appeal, it would be hard to recommend to the mainstream gamer.  However, despite it's misgivings players looking for something a little different may find the game both enjoyable and challenging - and would be a "must try" in that case.

At the risk of giving a hint... You're operating very close to my brainwave with this post. Please, adjust your dial ;)

Originally posted by Dragonalf

Have to agree here. This a positive step for the site in addressing and acknowledging inconsistencies in one of this sites reviews. But the same needs to be done for the Aion review to further address inconsistencies of reviews on this site lately.

Jon, why no response or comment on the strong arguments brought forth about the inconsistencies in the Aion review? It has been consistently pointed out that the score and tone of the review for Aion do not mesh. Couple this with the score being the highest reviewed MMO on this site ever and we have evidence that there is no uniformity in the review process.

As I've claimed in the Aion thread, along with well-defined criteria for writing a review, the scoring of a review must take into account previous review scores from this site for there to be any long-term relevance to all the reviews on this site.

Originally posted by Xondar123

This reminds me of the Champions Online review. It read like a 6.5 review, but the reviewer gave it an 8.

 If you're going to slam us, please check your facts.

Aion was not the highest ever review on the site. It was tied for 4th. However, consistency has been a large issue generally I will grant that. Too many years, too many standards, too many editors and only one scoring system.

And, Champions got 7.5, not 8.

For further talk on this review... See here:

LINK

Originally posted by Salvatoris

Originally posted by Zzulu

*writes a review*

 

*community nerdrages about review*

 

*retracts review*

 

Somehow I feel even less respect for you guys now. I guess you can never win on the internet.

 

Agreed.  A review is supposed to be subjective.  Have you guys ever read a movie review, or a restaurant review.... it isn't supposed to be a news piece, it's an opinion.  It should tell us what the reviewer thinks of the game, not what the developer or the fanboys want us to believe about the game. 

I didn't read the review before it was taken down, but I can only guess it was pretty harsh.... as it should have been.  This game is turd.  everything they got right is overshadowed by the piss poor performance and lackluster graphics.  I could understand one or the other, but this game manages to look bad and run bad at the same time.  It's an armature attempt at making a video game and it shows.

 

We didn't arrive at this decision because of the score or the community pressure. The community pressure we just a symptom of a flawed review. Honestly, to read it, it came off as a summary of game features that was generally positive, then had one negative thing (which was an error) and whipped out a mediocre score.

The new review could be scored higher or lower, who knows. That will be up to the reviewer, but we have to do a better job vetting to make sure that they arrive at their opinion without issues like this one had. The review's score was largely based on "unplayable lag," which was more of a customer support/hardware issue than something that should have been in a review. If someone experiences unplayable lag, they must do everything they can to figure out if it is "just them." To the degree that it impacted this article, the lag described seems to have been "just him" and we didn't do the due diligence necessary to confirm it.

Thus, it was retracted.

A note on the review...

See here.

With that, I'm closing this thread.

Yesterday, as a quick look at our forums will tell you, we published a review of Fallen Earth that was, shall we say, a tad bit controversial.

Over the last 24 hours, we've taken into account community feedback, the content of the review itself and our own processes and decided that it is only fair we give this game a fresh set of eyes.

Reviews are easily the hardest thing to get right on an MMO website, and sometimes mistakes will be made.

This points to a larger issue that we've been aware of for quite some time with our reviews and how we score them. In the coming weeks, we're going to evaluate this system more carefully and, I believe, provide a solution that meets the needs of the community more fully.

The truth is, no review will ever be liked by everyone in our community. Supporters of a game always want a higher score and detractors want a lower one. We are not out to make everyone happy, we can only trust our writers and provide you with our honest assessment. However, sometimes, things slip through that make virtually no one happy. Unfortunately, this was one of those times and so we've removed the review and assigned a writer to give the game a fresh shake.

Originally posted by nekollx

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by Liltawen

Interesting list but I really think Fallen Earth and Aion are just too new to be here-give them a quarter year at least!

What were #11 and 12?

I also considered that same thing with those two new games. Ultimately, I decided to include them, but I wavered on that until the last second. In the end, given commercial success was not my primary measurement, I figured it was OK to put them in.

Basically, I went through the list post-WoW and made a giant list. That included every game on there, plus a few more. From that, I picked 10.

The other games I had briefly considered were: Habbo, Dofus, Silkroad Online, Age of Conan, Free Realms, Mabinogi, Champions Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Runes of Magic, Darkfall and Warhammer Online.

To be clear, that doesn't mean I truly was going to put them on. Just that they popped out at me as I was browsing through.

Runes of Magic and Silkroad were likely 11 and 12, if I had to label it.

Champions Online but not City of Heroes?

 

Wha?

City of Heroes launched before World of Warcraft by a good 7 months.

There is a submit form at the bottom of the game list page, but in this particular case, Bright Shadow is in the queue.

Remember everyone, 8.7 is the school equivalent to a B+.

A good score, but not epic.

Originally posted by Astralglide

 I definately agree with LOTRO. I think that the Saga of Ryzom should have been in there instead of Club Penguin. And whoever said WAR and AOC deserve a place... well, I can concede AOC, but the only thing WAR brought to the table that was innovative was public quests (boring, repetative content is NOT innovative) which really require a WoW size population to work.

 

PS- Not to sound like an idiot for all the trolls out there, but I think that Ryzom was release after WoW. If not, then I'm a tard. (Club Penguin is still lame)

It also came out before WoW. Our game list conveniently lets you sort by date ;)