Profile: The.Watcher
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• • MMORPG.com and Age of Conan--what happened?

  • Originally posted by Iijs
    

    1. Are you certain all these AoC posts have been 'deleted'? Or were they buried by the 250+ AoC posts per day over the last couple days?

    2. Looking on the main home page... as of a couple minutes ago... I see a top banner ad (scrolls for various games, including EVE)... I see an AoC banner ad just below it (Heads will roll).... a small AoC blog ad... news teasers (10, scrolling, the first of which is Stargate), another scrolling ad to the right, which was EVE but is some other game atm that I've never heard of.... and another ad on the right for PotCO....

    Is that overdoing it for AoC? I think not.

    3. Um... why not post this with your main account, eh?

    1. Positive. Many of the original threads still exist, as noted by an above poster, except critical posts inside of them have been removed (often including the OP). Entire threads have also been deleted. And as I noted in my OP, authors of some removed posts were notified of their removal.

    2. The news is understandable, but the prevalence of ads and news articles as they pertain to AoC is much higher than I have seen in quite awhile. As I noted in my OP, this is understandable given the game's release--however, they are still more populous than they ought be, and the reason this is bothersome is because it closely approximates the forum censorship and rating jump in chronological order.

    3. I'd prefer not to get my primary account banned. I use the same name for all MMOs I play--and I often play as a crafter and guild leader--so keeping that name active has its purposes, even if those purposes aren't necessarily advantages for me.

  • Posted: 5/20/08 9:31 AM
    General Discussion
• • MMORPG.com and Age of Conan--what happened?

  • Good day all. For obvious reasons, I am not using my primary account at these forums. What I am about to say will likely be quickly deleted and this username banned, so please consider this carefully. I do not mean to imply any wrongdoing on MMORPG.com's part, but recent history in the AoC forum has inclined me to bring this issue to the community's attention. So: here is what I have seen over the last few days.

    Before beginning, I need to express how disappointed I am to be saying this. MMORPG.com has been, over the years, an excellent source of information and community contact for the MMORPG industry. Recently, however, my faith in the available opinions and information at this site has been destroyed. It seems the administration of this once-phenomenal operation have lost sight of this site's intent. MMORPG.com, wtf mates? Why?

    That said, the community forums for Age of Conan--a game that has just recently been released, as most of you well know--were, a week ago, absolutely flooded with criticisms, bashes, and general "This game is crap" posts. The game's rating, as reported by MMORPG.com's number-based voting system, was somewhere around 7.6, and the combined reports of the rating and the posts agreed quite well with my own opinion of the game. In my opinion, AoC simply is not fun--but that opinion is not the focus of this post.

    A few days ago, between 17-18 May 2008, all of the AoC criticism's in MMORPG.com's forum were deleted. Some of the authors of these posts were notified that the messages were deleted because they were off topic. Mods? Admins? Criticisms, off topic? All of them? I find that hard to believe. The game's praises were left in place. Coincidentally, the game's rating also jumped to a 9.0 literally overnight. Amazing, right? At the time this article is being written, the rating is at 8.9. I have not seen a game score that high on MMORPG.com EVER. Not even WoW, if I remember right, ranked that high. So are we seeing an instantaneous revolution among the MMORPG.com community? Something inside me tells me--probably not.

    Today, visiting MMORPG.com's homepage, all I see are AoC ads. Everywhere. Lots of them. More than half of the slides in the front page slide show are representative of Age of Conan, with each other in-development game receiving maybe one--maybe two. The news clip right below the banner--also AoC--cleverly complements the slew of AoC news links in the pane directly to the right--a pane, I should mention, that is supposed to cover news for all MMORPGs equally. And if you somehow do manage to get by without seeing any of these things, the top banner is also dedicated to AoC, and in ridiculously huge fashion. Visiting MMORPG.com's main page, I could easily mistake it for an AoC fansite, and as far as I can tell, that is exactly what this site has become.

    I don't know why MMORPG.com has deleted the critical AoC posts or why eight hundred million (hyperbole) ads have magically shown up. I do understand that it makes sense for AoC to be receiving better-than-normal coverage on account of its impending release. But seriously? Nothing else is being covered--or at least not with any substance. The lack of coverage, though, can be rationally justified. What seriously bothers me is MMORPG.com's censorship of the forums, seeming manipulation of the vote system (and I must emphasize "seeming"--with only observation of the final rating, it is -technically- possible that the rating legitimately increased by so much in so short a period), and blatant support for Age of Conan's advertising campaign.

    As far as I can tell, MMORPG.com is no longer a neutral entity in terms of journalistic MMO reporting. That bothers me. It should bother you, too. If you don't care, please simply disregard this message. If you do care, speak up. Let them know you've noticed what's going on around here lately. I know I'm not the only one. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with this site unless/until they change this policy of censorship.

    And no, I'm not please to be posting this. I have relied on this site for a long time for excellent information and good reviews from fellow MMO players. Sad day when I can't trust that information anymore.

    (Also, sorry for the wall of text. This is a pretty wtf move on the administrators' part. I felt compelled to elaborate.)

  • Posted: 5/20/08 9:01 AM
    General Discussion