The big thing for me was not the game at all. I found that EU maintenance times egregious. I just simply could not support that. I had fun but it clearly did not have staying power so wasn't to bothered stepping away.

The real question is why is MMORPG giving editorial coverage to it. The sceptical might wonder if EA being an advertiser influeneced this decision.

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by Gorilla

Thier reviews are out of ten. Like any marking system not so useful unless you have some familiarity on how they mark and that they mark consistently. That is why people on forums saying "I give it an 8" means nothing whatsoever except to themselves.

Of course some sites marks are completely worthless as they are not consistant, not based on any objectivity and only use 7 8 9 or 10's.

Leaving marks aside he does raise some intresting points.

What is your relationship to that website?  Since you are endorsing it, you must tell us if you are paid or get benefits from it.

None whatsoever. Never mentioned it before in a thousand plus posts :)

heres the skinny. I am getting rather disenchanted with some of the 'reviews' that pass for the norm on sites like ign and even here to be honest. They seem to think that cutting and pasting a bit from the press pack and then gushing and fawning without actually making any real observations of the game passes as journalism. The IGN review was particularly egregious, copletely devoid of any real content. (You can probablly find the thread a few pages back).

I guess that's one of the issues when barriers to entry are so low. I wish someone would start a games portal with grown up journos producing grown up articles rather than a whole bunch of fluff pieces and gushing reviews for publishers that just happen to be advertisers too.

Originally posted by Ridrith

Amalur is a really fun game, I've been enjoying it so far.  I'd give it a 7-8/10 so far.  It's pretty much the love child of fable, and skyrim.  To me, it's worth the $60.00 price tag.  Besides, I've paid full price for a lot of games that weren't worth the money.  But that's just pretty standard as of today.  $50-60 price range.

 

Still though, the combat is enjoyable and I'm liking the crafting system quite a bit.  The fact that you can actually make your own gear and it's relevant through out the entire game is a big plus.  I really hope they transfer that kind of system over to the MMO version of this world.

My big problem is I cant raise detect hidden and smithing fast enough together....I need detect secret door damit as I know I have passed some. I could use a couple more points in sagecraft too!

Thier reviews are out of ten. Like any marking system not so useful unless you have some familiarity on how they mark and that they mark consistently. That is why people on forums saying "I give it an 8" means nothing whatsoever except to themselves.

Of course some sites marks are completely worthless as they are not consistant, not based on any objectivity and only use 7 8 9 or 10's.

Leaving marks aside he does raise some intresting points.

Clicked on the linky and it was undergoing maintenance. Not really surprising but made me smile none the less.

It will be intresting to see how this works in practice.

Edge have just reviewed Amalur. Edge is a games magazine staffed by real journalists that can actually write. Some of the interwebz 'journos' (I use the term very loosely) could learn a thing or two.

It should be pointed out they will use the whole spectrum of marks rather than just 7 8 9 or 10, a 7 is a decent mark for them. I think they pretty much nail it.

http://www.edge-online.com/reviews/kingdoms-amalur-reckoning-review

Personally I'm quite enoying the game for what it is (well so far).

Originally posted by Shadanwolf

Originally posted by DJJazzy

Originally posted by Shadanwolf

Is the server vs server conflict NOT persistent ? Why play an extended mini-game if thats all it is ..is a game for a limited time then reset ?? ? Can someone clear this issue up for me ?

 

They last for two weeks, then the servers get different servers to play against, then that last two weeks and so forth.

Thanks for the news..though I have to say I'm disappointed. Fighting is just to take up time and really means nothing..Oh well there's always Dominus and ArcheAge(possibly).Who waqnts to fight for two weeks then pretend it didn't happen....DDUUHHH HHH

Two weeks is a reasonable time I rekon plus you can become the one sever to rule them all!

Originally posted by 4bsolute

Why are so many threads here allowed where people just tell us that they cancel there sub? Why?

I mean, yes, great for you. Glad that you find out that you dont like the game, superb that you want to go back to your old game. But why posting this? Why? Warum? Pourqoi? Por qué?

Closure?

......

Originally posted by Creslin321

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Sever load is calculated by the number of players taking up the servers' actual load.

In other words, say 1000 people are in the starter zone, that means the server is offically "full" and no one can log on.

Say there are 45 people in each zone of the game, game will read as "light" and let people log in.

Load is determaned by how much stress is being put on the server, more people in the same areas = more server load.

 

So yeah your population guesses are completely unrelated to the server load that you see... 

Its like comparing how long a traffic jam will take to clear up by how many cars are involved in it... you aren't factoring in things like how many lanes of traffic, where the traffic is headed, what kind of cars they have etc...

You are only using a tiny part of the data....

 Huh?

This doesn't make any sense.  SWTOR zones are sharded...why would it matter if the entire server is in the starting area?

Are you saying that the server will read as full if there are 1000 in 1 zone, but not as full if there are 500 people in 3 zones for a total of 1500?

Niether he just made up some random garbage. It is clearly not the case .

Are they running TV ads? I caugfht one out of the corner of my eye and couldn't work out if it was Lucas cashing in on something (3D?) or an ad for TOR. I can tell you it had lightsabres. That was the UK this evening though with sky+ (tivo) it could be from another time.

Originally posted by Mari2k

no monk = no buy.

Sorry we skip this game...

For me its

no fairy = no buy. (Im always a manly fairy)

Actually I might make an exception if I can be a klingon. Maybe you could rollplay a monkey? You just have to call everyone grasshopper and you are golden.

Originally posted by dollada06

Lol anytime someone has issues they claim to have a monster pc.

 

16GB RAM

X2 nVidia GTX 580? 

 

ONE GTX 580 can tear any game apart and you own two?  Lol thats so idiotic (WHICH IS WHY I THINK UR FULL OF CRAP)

Yeah and I guess the thousands of people that posted DXdiags in the FPS issues thread at the official forum got in there with notepad to make there systems look better too. :)

Originally posted by TGSOL

Originally posted by Varking

Yes, IGN had a gold copy of the game early. So their review is based on the real game, not the four month old demo build like the rest of us.

This needs to be emphasized. IGN is not reviewing the limited, 4 month old bug-ridden demo of KOA; they're reviewing the (at least slightly) more polished, full-featured game. There's a big difference.

Actually they reviewed nothing and that is the problem. They cut and pasted some of the press notes and generally 'gushed' and fawned. That much sugar is verging on sickeneing.  They actually game little information about the game. Whether the game is the best ever made or the worse or somewhere inbetween the review is egregious. Does anyone do proper reviews anymore? This one really provides zero information that is not on the publishers web site.

Comparing the game with Syrim does no one any favours. The game clearly is more like Fable without farting mini games than it is like Skyrim. It actually reminded me a little of Dungeon Siege III. Now I happen to enjoy those games. Seems to me that they will have no trouble getting guys like me that enjoy a bit of an action adventure. Of course they (the devs) want to sell as many as they can and so they are talking up some of the aspects of the game that are not really there. People that buy in to this expecting a more open RPG experience are likely to be disapointed. 

Originally posted by Jimmy562

Originally posted by Theodwulf

Originally posted by Jimmy562

Originally posted by gaeanprayer

"And after I jump back into my own game to clean up all of the optional stuff I didn't do, I sense I'll want even more. And yes, so will you."

Lies. Not a bad game, but when I put it down, I didn't miss it. A score of 9...really? And then the 'press' gets idignant and offended when people suspect they're being paid for favorable reviews.

Review is simply his opinion. 

  Opinion is what a layman gives ...the guy does reviews proffessionally... There are technical metrics to judge a product so please stop using the "opinion" fallacy. ... Not liking a game because of setting (flavour) would be "Opinion", example..I don't like EVE because I don't like being a spaceship, it doesn't make the game "good" or "Bad" just not the flavour I want.....Technical Metrics go beyond the flavour of a game and judge it based on the overall merits.. How smooth the game runs, the story arcs in the game , game mechanics , ect are technicals they can be "Good" or "Bad", it's NOT opinion.

 

  A poop sandwich will always be a poop sandwich ,You liking a  poop sandwich, will not make it a good sandwich, Because no matter how good the other parts of the sandwich are, the POOP will ruin it all , because POOP has no business in a sandwich,  BUT feel free to like it.

The 5 things at the end of every IGN review is all to do with opinion. Story arcs would be based on opinion, game mechanics would also be based on opinion. IGN reviews are full of opinions as are most reviews about anything.

If they knew what they where doing they would present 'observations' and 'facts' and then explain why they like or dislike that particular feature/implementation. I guess no one goes to journo school nowadays. Actually it's just common sense really.

For example you could say the game is on rails (fact)  but that does not spoil my  enjoyment because there where enough side paths to explore to make it seem like a more open area (opiion).

Rather than just rattling on about 'the gameplay' (I think he meant combat) being the second coming you describe how the combat works (fact) and why it is satisfying (opinion).

When my son was at school if he had turned in an essay like that I would have given him a clip round the ear and told him to go and do it properly before he could go and play video games. 

Laughable really if this wasn't from such a well established portal.

Originally posted by Joliust

There is something other than game design that keeps you playing. That is who you play with. Having people in the game you have fun talking to playing with, etc really makes everything better.

True. But some of the games I really enjoyed just seemed to lend themselves to social play DAOC for example. At launch it was pretty grindy, the pain was lessened in groups not to mention you got the best exp in a group killing purples, it was almost mandatory. That was even before you got into the RvRvR game (again where you needed to co-operate to get stuff done). Of course nowadays 'forced' grouping is a nono.

Kind of agree with the OP, though I have not given up on the idea that something might inspire me again.

A bit off topic OP but you might want to take a look at witcher 2. A pretty classy story driven RPG that is not written by BW. KOTOR & SWTOR are quite similar in many ways.

One of the things I disiked in TOR (which is a bit of an MMO staple) is the travel (especially on the main plot lines). 3 minitue cut scene 5 mins travel 2 mins killing 5 min travel back. Of course if you can tie in a kill 10 boars sidequest it's not quite so bad. On the flip side single player games sometimes don't feel quite so big (area wise).

Originally posted by Vesavius

 

Lies? What don't you people get about what an 'opinion' is?

If you had pulled him up on factual and technical elements I wouldn't say anything to you, but to call him a liar because he connected to the game and wanted to play more?

You need to relax.

Now... if you want to talk about what gameplay and technical elements that make it less then a 9 to you thats fine, but lets not attack a subjective value based on taste.

I quite like the game, I am not a conspiracy theorist and tend to give reviewers the benefit of the doubt. The 'gush' in this piece made bills DCUO coverage look positively damning! You really do have to wonder if ad revenue played a part in setting the tone of the piece.

Here is an example "Amalur's world doesn't present itself quite as non-linearly as the likes of Fallout 3 or Skyrim," The game is on friggin rails, why not just say that rather than this 'spin'. Now as it happens that dosent neccasarily bother me but this is clearly masking something that will cause some people to say 'this is not the sort of game I enjoy'.

Originally posted by senadin

I am kinda disapointed to hear what folks are saying about the game. I was looking for this game to do really well so that it would help them make the MMO even better.

I havent played the RPG... but well.... so far the consensus here is that it's ok but nothing to call home about.

There is a demo out already you can have a try. The combat is quite fun, while it is not as good as the IGN guy says (imo) it is not too bad, My biggest criticisms (from the demo)  are lousy PC UI, game is really 'on rails'. a lot of people don't like the camera either.

Actually reading and watching the IGN review the sycophantic gushing is verging on sickening.

Some games require a facing to intiate a skill/spell. Some games you can interrupt a skill/spell by breaking LoS. Some games have a positional component to start a skill. 

Having said that a lot of the straffing and bunny hopping nonsense is pretty redundant. I guess it's habbit from playing 'some games'