I must admit that I am dissapointed by this review.
I ordered LOTR without playing beta or any of that, and was looking for a review to justify or denounce my purchase for better or for worse. This IS a mere description as many others have said. I dont really care what score the game gets, the reader should be able to make a choice from the reviewers words without even seeing a score.
Reviewer - get some PASSION into your writing and at least give the reader a stimulating opinion of what you thought be it good or bad!!!
Take a look at www.eurogamer.net , those guys do a good job in my opinion, you get the essential facts about the game, what YOU as a potential buyer REALLY want's to know before splashing out hard earned cash.
GET SOME PASSION! do the game justice and excite / anger / tempt / dissuade your readers with some real opinions.
GET SOME PASSION! do the game justice and excite / anger / tempt / dissuade your readers with some real opinions.
Seems to me that aim was accomplished better by being neutral and professional than by deliberately posting flamebait. But surely! Better to provoke a reaction from your readership than to fill a review site with bland, grey descriptive reviews? Is that not a sure-fire way to ensure that readers simply look elsewhere for reviews that form opinions? be they good or bad?
A review is just that, a personal account of the feelings you had when playing the game made public so others can judge whether to partake based on those trusted opinions of the reviewer.
If reviews are to be "dumbed-down" to avoid fanbois and flamers anger then the reasons for coming to this site at all to look for an opinion become so much weaker.
At the end of the day though, I suspect most of those issues are mute, and that what we are in fact dealing with here is a lack of effort from the reviewer. This smacks of "being up til 4am the day before the deadline"
An uninspired review that took 5 minutes to write, compared to the years of effort that went into making the game. At least tell us what it's like to play the game and not just read off a list of game content.
Rating WoW graphics better than EQ2 and LOTR, then I cannot take this review seriously. I enjoyed WoW for two years and the graphics are nothing spectacular to rate a 10, while EQ2 gets a 9 and LOTR gets an 8.
Even worse is MMORPG rates the WoW community to be almost as good as EQ2 and better than LOTRs. Please, the WoW community is notorisouly one of the worst. There are good people playing the game, but too many bad apples and it shows.
Please standardize your game reviews, so that you can show consistency in your ability to rates games.
This is no personal attack against one reviewer. Overall I really enjoy using this site and find a wealth of information. but they need to work on their reviews.
Rating WoW graphics better than EQ2 and LOTR, then I cannot take this review seriously. I enjoyed WoW for two years and the graphics are nothing spectacular to rate a 10, while EQ2 gets a 9 and LOTR gets an 8. Even worse is MMORPG rates the WoW community to be almost as good as EQ2 and better than LOTRs. Please, the WoW community is notorisouly one of the worst. There are good people playing the game, but too many bad apples and it shows. Please standardize your game reviews, so that you can show consistency in your ability to rates games. This is no personal attack against one reviewer. Overall I really enjoy using this site and find a wealth of information. but they need to work on their reviews.
World of Warcraft makes good use of Lighting, art and detail, and that is why WoW gets such high numbers in the graphic department. You also have to take into consideration that WoW was released in 2004, LOTRO, 2007.
hmm i checked the other games rattings given by you guys, and most of them over 8 and why only 7.8 for LOTRO, you guys have something against this game? is this game worse then, eq2, wow, gw, daoc,coh,cov, etc?
I do my best to give a realistic score.
This is a joke right?
Overall - 7.8
Graphics - 8, right............
Last night I watched "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" and you my dear are just like those MPAA movie reviewers. Actually, you're more like those reviewers on Gamespot. I think you should go and apply for a position there. You'll do a fantastic job!
I'm not too impressed with this review. To me it just smells of something.
I have a run of the mill, unmodified $1200.00 HP from Costco. ( HP Pavilion a1657c w/ XP media center )
I have played LOTRO through closed beta and a lot of this just doesn't make much sense. Since I was in the market for a new MMO, the last couple weeks I have downloaded every MMO with a trial on the list on this site. Even WWII, hehe ( kinda fun ).
Graphics? There isnt a game that I downloaded that had graphics comparable to LOTRO. This was the only game that actually had 'moments' as to where you would stop what your doing and just gaze at the scenery. Eve probably has an honorable mention as some of the sites comming out of warp looked pretty sweet... but that might just be because it's different. After seeing WoW get a 10 in graphics.. I think MMORPG.com kinda loses credibility. WoW is a low pixel CARTOON...not a bad idea as it can run on very low systems and doesn't have too much to render.
Content? On the surface, it's not something that smacks you in the face, but after a few months in LOTRO you start to see the depth of it and it's pretty sweet. Great barrows dungeon, Conjunctions, trait management, the chapter quests, dread in Angmar, Monsterplay is very addicting. It seems like I'm still finding new things about this game and many of it is seen in MMOs for the first time.
My Cons of this game are kinda my cons for the current genre.
It's another dumbed down game that puts an 'easy button' out there so that anyone ( including my 7 year old ) can progress with minimal effort. I don't know if I can effectively use this to rate the game as it seems the player base is wanting this. I'm an 8 year EQ veteran from an end-game raid guild. I think it may be awhile before I find another tough, long lasting MMO. ( WoW raiders claiming to be 'hardcore' make my giggle ). I'm pretty sure that the end-game LOTRO will be more of same kind of raiding.
Crafting system. I'm very unimpressed with it. I prefer a system to where crafting progression is part of the economy and take a long time to master. again... easy button.
My Pros of this game.
Being used to SOE programming its weird comming from a game with 8 years of maturity and full of bugs to a beta. In all honesty, I was expecting horrible bugs, crashes, pathing, itemization, broken quests, etc. I was simply amazed at the polish that Turbine put on this game. Sure, if you look hard enough you can find a bug...but nothing that effects gameplay. I think after 8 years I was just trained to accept poor programming... hopefully Turbine will be setting a precedence for future MMOs.
Lag. Compared to other games its very low. Yes, you will run into it in bree sometimes, especially now when there are hundreds of folks taking off from level 15. It will clear though as folks get spread out. Again.. I don't think many games could take the concentration of players I've seen in LOTRO without crashing. Someone mentioned earlier how 24 vs 24 monsterplay would be a lagfest... well, thats someone who hasn't played the game. In closed beta we had 48 (creeps) vs. 24 (freeps) many times and I'm sure it can do more. At the end of closed beta, we had several hundred players in rivendale ( a high pixal zone to start with ) ganging up on the devs monsters. click to low settings and turn off names and it was a sea of players without lag. To put this in perspective.. EQ on low settings starts to lag around 60-70 players if not slightly less.
Monster Play. A great addition. I think what turns folks off is the fact that they call it monster play. Its pretty much just RvR shoehorned into a PvE game. Missing is ganking lowbies in noobie zones... but I fail to see the PvP challenge in that anyways. I had a real hard time peeling myself out of there to go back to my main character. Ya..theres no levels, theres ranks ( not much different). lots of quests, skills, abilities to buff up your monster or you'll get owned by a creep. LOTS of potential here, and I'm sure it'll just get better.
Turbine. After dealing with SOE for 8 years... its a breath of fresh air. 'nuff said.
8.8/10
With whats out on the market, this is my ranking.
I'll be playing LOTRO for a PvE game and when Warhammer comes out I'll probably play it for PvP ( if its polished like LOTRO ).
I agree the review was alittle hasty at best. I do find it very ammusing that the reviewer is backtracking and trying to defend the rushed review and questionable low score. They should have waited a week for the dust to settle, launch week needs to be evaluated in full. What if the servers start crashing non stop? The score of 7.8 is also pretty low considering how polished, stable and bug free the game is.
All in All its not that big of a deal as this site isn't very credible as far as reviews go. I have seen tons of bad games get great scores and vice versa. LoTRO is obviosly an 8+ rating game which would be considered good and will probably reviewed as such on much more influential gaming sites and publications.
That's a pretty strange score, given the good review overall. The score doesn't seem to reflect what what said in the review - I expected an 8.5 mark based on what was said...
And an 8 for graphics? What was that compared to? EQ2? - That seems pretty low to me, especially after returning from Rivendell - one of the most beautiful areas of any computer game I have ever played (I have about 26 years of experience here) It's not just the quality of the graphics - Oblivion beats that for it's bump mapping, etc - but it's the artwork too, which is amazing.. I think that a 7 for the community was a strange score to give as well - the community is extremely new after all.
Perhaps it was too early to publish a review on this game. I say that because it's still early days yet, and no one has played a good portion of the finished game yet to give a definitive score for certain aspects of it.
Nice overview of the game though, Donna; Nicely written.
Rating WoW graphics better than EQ2 and LOTR, then I cannot take this review seriously. I enjoyed WoW for two years and the graphics are nothing spectacular to rate a 10, while EQ2 gets a 9 and LOTR gets an 8. Even worse is MMORPG rates the WoW community to be almost as good as EQ2 and better than LOTRs. Please, the WoW community is notorisouly one of the worst. There are good people playing the game, but too many bad apples and it shows. Please standardize your game reviews, so that you can show consistency in your ability to rates games. This is no personal attack against one reviewer. Overall I really enjoy using this site and find a wealth of information. but they need to work on their reviews.
World of Warcraft makes good use of Lighting, art and detail, and that is why WoW gets such high numbers in the graphic department. You also have to take into consideration that WoW was released in 2004, LOTRO, 2007. such high numbers? 10/10 means perfect graphics lol, eq2 was released 1 month before wow so should have 11/10 on graphics by your point of view.
ok here the prove that something is very wrong with this review.
LOTRO mmorpg graphics rating 8
guild wars mmorpg graphics rating 9
eq2 mmorpg graphics rating 9
WOW mmorpg graphics rating 10
DAOC mmorpg graphics rating 9
DDO mmorpg graphics rating 9
ok i could post more, but this is enough, so this means LOTRO as the worst graphics? DDO is the same engine and gets a 9, how come WOW gets 10 on graphics? now i see how this review is BS. only one game out there can compete with LOTRO in graphics that game Name is vanguard.
WoW got a 10 because of the art direction. Shiny pretty real-to-life are not the END ALL of graphics. They are eye candy, and look "cool" but every game tries for that. WoW took a different path and made a world that reflects the visual STYLE of thier previous games, and pulled it off SO well that it derserves nothing but a 10.
Also, WoW was released years ago, if it were reviewed again (check TBC review) it'd score lower then 10.
Point is, LOTR got a 7 because though it has pretty graphics better then games released years before it, the art direction, styling, and overall ambience do not reflect what a 2007 release should in order to score a 10.
edit: And VG doesn't deserve a 10 either because only people with room sized super computers can make the darn thing run at a decent enough frame rate to warrant giving a 10 in the graphics catagory. If all you care about is pretty eye candy, go buy a 360 or PS3 lol.
ok here the prove that something is very wrong with this review.
LOTRO mmorpg graphics rating 8
guild wars mmorpg graphics rating 9
eq2 mmorpg graphics rating 9
WOW mmorpg graphics rating 10
DAOC mmorpg graphics rating 9
DDO mmorpg graphics rating 9
ok i could post more, but this is enough, so this means LOTRO as the worst graphics? DDO is the same engine and gets a 9, how come WOW gets 10 on graphics? now i see how this review is BS. only one game out there can compete with LOTRO in graphics that game Name is vanguard.
WoW got a 10 because of the art direction. Shiny pretty real-to-life are not the END ALL of graphics. They are eye candy, and look "cool" but every game tries for that. WoW took a different path and made a world that reflects the visual STYLE of thier previous games, and pulled it off SO well that it derserves nothing but a 10.
Also, WoW was released years ago, if it were reviewed again (check TBC review) it'd score lower then 10.
Point is, LOTR got a 7 because though it has pretty graphics better then games released years before it, the art direction, styling, and overall ambience do not reflect what a 2007 release should in order to score a 10.
edit: And VG doesn't deserve a 10 either because only people with room sized super computers can make the darn thing run at a decent enough frame rate to warrant giving a 10 in the graphics catagory. If all you care about is pretty eye candy, go buy a 360 or PS3 lol.
lotro only got low score on graphics on this site, all other reviews gave over 9 on graphics, so what you saying is that war, and aoc gonna get 7 on graphics because they release this year or next. anyway did you ever played lotro with high resolution cd to compare? i think not.
I just wish people here would understand that most do not complain about the score, but the totally unprofessional level of the actual review. In site that is one the most important mmorpg-sites in existence. I would expect at least semi-professional stuff from mmorpg.com staff.
Originally posted by KertscherBut surely! Better to provoke a reaction from your readership than to fill a review site with bland, grey descriptive reviews? Is that not a sure-fire way to ensure that readers simply look elsewhere for reviews that form opinions? be they good or bad?
A review is just that, a personal account of the feelings you had when playing the game made public so others can judge whether to partake based on those trusted opinions of the reviewer.
If reviews are to be "dumbed-down" to avoid fanbois and flamers anger then the reasons for coming to this site at all to look for an opinion become so much weaker.
At the end of the day though, I suspect most of those issues are mute, and that what we are in fact dealing with here is a lack of effort from the reviewer. This smacks of "being up til 4am the day before the deadline"
An uninspired review that took 5 minutes to write, compared to the years of effort that went into making the game. At least tell us what it's like to play the game and not just read off a list of game content.
If there's controversy, let it come from the game. This takes me back to what I said earlier, you can inform, or you can entertain - to varying degrees. When it comes to a game -personally - I would rather be informed so that I can make up my own mind.
One also has to consider that there's a rush on sites to get reviews out the door on releases, its competetive and neither the beta nor the preview time will have given enough time to get solid opinions on RP/Community/Service. Personally I'd have given those an average score of 5, given that they're still being shaken down.
Hello Children, I'd like to introduce you to my friend, Professor Math.
Take it away Professor Math.
Hello boys and girls.
Today we're going to talk about averages, high numbers and low numbers! Won't that be exciting.
Say 'Yes Professor Math'.
Good kids!
What you call an average, we math folk typically call one of three things, mean, median and mode.
The 'mean' is what you probably mean by average. You'd get this by totting up all the results and then dividing by the number of results. For a range of 1-10 as in, say, a software review, this is 5.5 rather than 5. This is also the 'average' result on the roll of a ten sided dice.
The 'median' is what divides one half of the results from the other. Half the numbers are above, half the numbers are below. In odd ranges, say '3' the median is the middle number, in this case '2'. In even ranges, say '10', the median is the two middle numbers added together and then divided by 2. So that would be 5+6 divide by 2, 5.5 again!
The 'mode' is the most commonly occuring number in a range, if you have 1-10 then there's an even distribution, which means 'mode' isn't much use to us here!
So, to go back to using 'average' the AVERAGE score for a quality in an MMO review should be 5.5.
Now lets talk about high and low numbers shall we?
High and low values are pretty relative since numbers stretch all the way into infinity in each direction, + infinity and - infinity. So no number, not even a hundred billion kajillion, not even a google-plex multiplied by a google-plex can really be said to be a 'big' number since there's ALWAYS a bigger number.
If we limit ourselves to a particular range of numbers, let's say 1-10 again, then we can say certain numbers are 'bigger' than others relative to that range.
'1', for example, is quite a small number in that range, the smallest you can get.
'10', on the other hang, is quite a big number in that range, the largest you can get.
From our 'averages' lesson we've learned that the middle, or 'average' score on a 1-10 range is 5.5. This means that any number above that could be considered 'big' and any number below that could be considered 'small'!
So, I know you're wondering how this might relate to computer game reviews, aren't you?
What it means is that these scores can represent relative value. '1' might be thought of as, bad, say, and '10' might be thought of as the best thing since sliced bread! '5' on the other hand would be considered 'average', typical, everyday, nothing special.
So, if a game gets a score in a category above '5', say, oh, I don't know, seven or eight, that means it has scored highly and has a GOOD score! Whereas, conversely, if it scored a '2' or '3' that would be 'bad'!
The practical upshot of which is, anyone regarding a '7' or an '8' as a low score should probably be neutered for the sake of humanity's future!
Pip pip!
Thanks Professor Math, that cleared that up nicely. I'll get the gamma-ray pistol and start irradiating people's genitals right away!
Here are a couple of things everyone reading a review should think about:
First you must consider the source or affiliation of the person posting the review. Is the site or company this person is reviewing under reputable in all review? Do they have an abnormal amount of drama associated with reviews?
Second you have to take what the person is saying with a grain of salt. It's their opinion of how they see the game. You like steak they like chicken your not gonna agree.
I do think people who review products and services should pay more attention to the details. I understand that this reviewer played the beta for months with high graphic settings and all but I think you are being reckless in reviewing a game released 1 day ago using information you obtained during a beta. It's not fair to the company who worked hard on the game and it's not fair to the people who come to sites such as this looking for some guidance on if they should purchase a game or not.
MMORPG.com shares in this reckless review as they are the ones who gave it to the reviewer and said we need this go get it done. The sad part is there will be no retractions, no statements saying ok maybe we did jump the gun on this a little. All we will get is a lone reviewer posting from time to time defending her views and words.
I do think people who review products and services should pay more attention to the details. I understand that this reviewer played the beta for months with high graphic settings and all but I think you are being reckless in reviewing a game released 1 day ago using information you obtained during a beta. It's not fair to the company who worked hard on the game and it's not fair to the people who come to sites such as this looking for some guidance on if they should purchase a game or not.
Here are a couple of things everyone reading a review should think about: First you must consider the source or affiliation of the person posting the review. Is the site or company this person is reviewing under reputable in all review? Do they have an abnormal amount of drama associated with reviews? Second you have to take what the person is saying with a grain of salt. It's their opinion of how they see the game. You like steak they like chicken your not gonna agree. I do think people who review products and services should pay more attention to the details. I understand that this reviewer played the beta for months with high graphic settings and all but I think you are being reckless in reviewing a game released 1 day ago using information you obtained during a beta. It's not fair to the company who worked hard on the game and it's not fair to the people who come to sites such as this looking for some guidance on if they should purchase a game or not. MMORPG.com shares in this reckless review as they are the ones who gave it to the reviewer and said we need this go get it done. The sad part is there will be no retractions, no statements saying ok maybe we did jump the gun on this a little. All we will get is a lone reviewer posting from time to time defending her views and words.
Did the game Turbine launch after beta suddenly change and become a different game all of a sudden? If not, you people that say the reviewer should not have based their review on their beta experience(part of which was an open beta - play for free sorta thing - come sample it) are being so anal. The game is essentually the same today as it was in the last phase of beta and open beta. Your complaint has no weight.
Originally posted by KertscherBut surely! Better to provoke a reaction from your readership than to fill a review site with bland, grey descriptive reviews? Is that not a sure-fire way to ensure that readers simply look elsewhere for reviews that form opinions? be they good or bad?
A review is just that, a personal account of the feelings you had when playing the game made public so others can judge whether to partake based on those trusted opinions of the reviewer.
If reviews are to be "dumbed-down" to avoid fanbois and flamers anger then the reasons for coming to this site at all to look for an opinion become so much weaker.
At the end of the day though, I suspect most of those issues are mute, and that what we are in fact dealing with here is a lack of effort from the reviewer. This smacks of "being up til 4am the day before the deadline"
An uninspired review that took 5 minutes to write, compared to the years of effort that went into making the game. At least tell us what it's like to play the game and not just read off a list of game content.
If there's controversy, let it come from the game. This takes me back to what I said earlier, you can inform, or you can entertain - to varying degrees. When it comes to a game -personally - I would rather be informed so that I can make up my own mind.
One also has to consider that there's a rush on sites to get reviews out the door on releases, its competetive and neither the beta nor the preview time will have given enough time to get solid opinions on RP/Community/Service. Personally I'd have given those an average score of 5, given that they're still being shaken down.
We have to take into account that a review is about judging a game based on first-hand information and experience, enabling the reviewer to support his or her views with valid arguments. The controversy around a review comes not from the game itself, but from what people say about it. A review should have a good balance of opinion AND information, so that those people looking for in-depth info are satisfied, and those looking for a "respected" or "trustable" opinion about a game are satisfied as well.
This review is a total failure in those respects. It's just some vague info neutrally handed out to you. The reviewer, with all due respect, is evidently afraid of making a judgement on the game based on something. Anything, for god's sake! The scores reveal a decision and a position towards the game, but the article reveals only a bunch of Preview-style info. This lack of coherence and general blandness is what's putting everyone on their nerves. Like the poster you quoted said, the review is "dumbed-down" in order to avoid the flames of haters and fanboys alike, and that's just plain silly and childish.
I mean I'm interested in LOTRO, but not interested enough as to research and sign up for beta and all that. I clicked to get in the review to have a good look at what I could expect from the game, and also to have an opinion from someone who is supposedly more reliable than fansite forums. What I got was an incoherent piece of writing that left me just where I was, if not worse, because now I have to go look at other sites for a good review.
MMORPG needs to get professional again, and leave the rushed "OMG THE GAME IS OUT REVIEW TIME" articles to lesser sites.
I propose you remove the review until the reviewer has spent some time with the game, analyzed her position towards it, and constructed a good, argumentative article. Too bad it's too late already and many people are starting to question their trust for your staff reviewers. You can still prove them wrong by re-writing the article, though.
Rating WoW graphics better than EQ2 and LOTR, then I cannot take this review seriously. I enjoyed WoW for two years and the graphics are nothing spectacular to rate a 10, while EQ2 gets a 9 and LOTR gets an 8. Even worse is MMORPG rates the WoW community to be almost as good as EQ2 and better than LOTRs. Please, the WoW community is notorisouly one of the worst. There are good people playing the game, but too many bad apples and it shows. Please standardize your game reviews, so that you can show consistency in your ability to rates games. This is no personal attack against one reviewer. Overall I really enjoy using this site and find a wealth of information. but they need to work on their reviews.
World of Warcraft makes good use of Lighting, art and detail, and that is why WoW gets such high numbers in the graphic department. You also have to take into consideration that WoW was released in 2004, LOTRO, 2007. such high numbers? 10/10 means perfect graphics lol, eq2 was released 1 month before wow so should have 11/10 on graphics by your point of view. Not at all. Everquest 2 had a fancy Engine, but the Imo, the art..SUCKED. big time. Characters look like plastic dolls and the world detail can't match WoW's.
As so many others have said before, I am appalled at the scores in the the review versus the actual prose that accompanies them. I'm not sure I found a single negative comment in the entire article, yet we get scores of 7 in many areas? Trust me, I can come up with many negative details why i score LoTRO with mostly 8's and 9's at this time...and not 10's.
If you are going to call something a 7, (or a 10) you need to say why.... but scoring a game lower than probably any other sites review w/o a single detail smacks of someone with a bad attitude (or lack of will) with a bias against the game. (but afraid to say why they believe the way they do)
Reviewers need to show the courage to defend their convictions, and not shirk from their responsibility to provide details behind their opinions.
All we can hope is that this writer is "not" assigned any more upcoming games to review. Maybe there's a nice opening interviewing the developers of DnL at the next game geek convention or something.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I do think people who review products and services should pay more attention to the details. I understand that this reviewer played the beta for months with high graphic settings and all but I think you are being reckless in reviewing a game released 1 day ago using information you obtained during a beta. It's not fair to the company who worked hard on the game and it's not fair to the people who come to sites such as this looking for some guidance on if they should purchase a game or not.
Comments
I ordered LOTR without playing beta or any of that, and was looking for a review to justify or denounce my purchase for better or for worse. This IS a mere description as many others have said. I dont really care what score the game gets, the reader should be able to make a choice from the reviewers words without even seeing a score.
Reviewer - get some PASSION into your writing and at least give the reader a stimulating opinion of what you thought be it good or bad!!!
Take a look at www.eurogamer.net , those guys do a good job in my opinion, you get the essential facts about the game, what YOU as a potential buyer REALLY want's to know before splashing out hard earned cash.
GET SOME PASSION!
It is more a comment and a good one for that though.
Seems to me that aim was accomplished better by being neutral and professional than by deliberately posting flamebait.
Postmortem Studios
Roleplaying games to DIE for
Shop here
Nothing to review....
How to play LOTRO
1. Enter town
2. Get main quest and all side quests
3. Do side quests
4. Do main quest
5. Watch short little movie
6. Go to number 1. Rinse and repeat.
**Crafting....sucks
**Monster PVP...boring. Really, who wants to play a pre-made level 50 toon?
Graphics: Good, nothing spectacular. I have a Geforce 8800GTX and I still think EQ2 graphics are better.
Sound: Ok, besides still hearing bears and some other glitches.
Fighting: Nothing new here.
Other than that, nothing new, typical MMO to keep people occupied until the big dogs come out to play.
Seems to me that aim was accomplished better by being neutral and professional than by deliberately posting flamebait. But surely! Better to provoke a reaction from your readership than to fill a review site with bland, grey descriptive reviews? Is that not a sure-fire way to ensure that readers simply look elsewhere for reviews that form opinions? be they good or bad?
A review is just that, a personal account of the feelings you had when playing the game made public so others can judge whether to partake based on those trusted opinions of the reviewer.
If reviews are to be "dumbed-down" to avoid fanbois and flamers anger then the reasons for coming to this site at all to look for an opinion become so much weaker.
At the end of the day though, I suspect most of those issues are mute, and that what we are in fact dealing with here is a lack of effort from the reviewer. This smacks of "being up til 4am the day before the deadline"
An uninspired review that took 5 minutes to write, compared to the years of effort that went into making the game. At least tell us what it's like to play the game and not just read off a list of game content.
My review of the reviewer is 3.2 / 10 ... must try harder.
Rating WoW graphics better than EQ2 and LOTR, then I cannot take this review seriously. I enjoyed WoW for two years and the graphics are nothing spectacular to rate a 10, while EQ2 gets a 9 and LOTR gets an 8.
Even worse is MMORPG rates the WoW community to be almost as good as EQ2 and better than LOTRs. Please, the WoW community is notorisouly one of the worst. There are good people playing the game, but too many bad apples and it shows.
Please standardize your game reviews, so that you can show consistency in your ability to rates games.
This is no personal attack against one reviewer. Overall I really enjoy using this site and find a wealth of information. but they need to work on their reviews.
Triston Master Carbine/Master Swords (SWG Eclipse)
Triston 29 Warden (EQ2 Permafrost)
Weland 70 Hunter (WoW Hellscream)
Suidan 36 Cleric (Vanguard Flamehammer)
Suidan 50 Champion (LOTR Gladden)
This is a joke right?
Overall - 7.8
Graphics - 8, right............
Last night I watched "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" and you my dear are just like those MPAA movie reviewers. Actually, you're more like those reviewers on Gamespot. I think you should go and apply for a position there. You'll do a fantastic job!
I'm not too impressed with this review. To me it just smells of something.
I have a run of the mill, unmodified $1200.00 HP from Costco. ( HP Pavilion a1657c w/ XP media center )
I have played LOTRO through closed beta and a lot of this just doesn't make much sense. Since I was in the market for a new MMO, the last couple weeks I have downloaded every MMO with a trial on the list on this site. Even WWII, hehe ( kinda fun ).
Graphics? There isnt a game that I downloaded that had graphics comparable to LOTRO. This was the only game that actually had 'moments' as to where you would stop what your doing and just gaze at the scenery. Eve probably has an honorable mention as some of the sites comming out of warp looked pretty sweet... but that might just be because it's different. After seeing WoW get a 10 in graphics.. I think MMORPG.com kinda loses credibility. WoW is a low pixel CARTOON...not a bad idea as it can run on very low systems and doesn't have too much to render.
Content? On the surface, it's not something that smacks you in the face, but after a few months in LOTRO you start to see the depth of it and it's pretty sweet. Great barrows dungeon, Conjunctions, trait management, the chapter quests, dread in Angmar, Monsterplay is very addicting. It seems like I'm still finding new things about this game and many of it is seen in MMOs for the first time.
My Cons of this game are kinda my cons for the current genre.
It's another dumbed down game that puts an 'easy button' out there so that anyone ( including my 7 year old ) can progress with minimal effort. I don't know if I can effectively use this to rate the game as it seems the player base is wanting this. I'm an 8 year EQ veteran from an end-game raid guild. I think it may be awhile before I find another tough, long lasting MMO. ( WoW raiders claiming to be 'hardcore' make my giggle ). I'm pretty sure that the end-game LOTRO will be more of same kind of raiding.
Crafting system. I'm very unimpressed with it. I prefer a system to where crafting progression is part of the economy and take a long time to master. again... easy button.
My Pros of this game.
Being used to SOE programming its weird comming from a game with 8 years of maturity and full of bugs to a beta. In all honesty, I was expecting horrible bugs, crashes, pathing, itemization, broken quests, etc. I was simply amazed at the polish that Turbine put on this game. Sure, if you look hard enough you can find a bug...but nothing that effects gameplay. I think after 8 years I was just trained to accept poor programming... hopefully Turbine will be setting a precedence for future MMOs.
Lag. Compared to other games its very low. Yes, you will run into it in bree sometimes, especially now when there are hundreds of folks taking off from level 15. It will clear though as folks get spread out. Again.. I don't think many games could take the concentration of players I've seen in LOTRO without crashing. Someone mentioned earlier how 24 vs 24 monsterplay would be a lagfest... well, thats someone who hasn't played the game. In closed beta we had 48 (creeps) vs. 24 (freeps) many times and I'm sure it can do more. At the end of closed beta, we had several hundred players in rivendale ( a high pixal zone to start with ) ganging up on the devs monsters. click to low settings and turn off names and it was a sea of players without lag. To put this in perspective.. EQ on low settings starts to lag around 60-70 players if not slightly less.
Monster Play. A great addition. I think what turns folks off is the fact that they call it monster play. Its pretty much just RvR shoehorned into a PvE game. Missing is ganking lowbies in noobie zones... but I fail to see the PvP challenge in that anyways. I had a real hard time peeling myself out of there to go back to my main character. Ya..theres no levels, theres ranks ( not much different). lots of quests, skills, abilities to buff up your monster or you'll get owned by a creep. LOTS of potential here, and I'm sure it'll just get better.
Turbine. After dealing with SOE for 8 years... its a breath of fresh air. 'nuff said.
8.8/10
With whats out on the market, this is my ranking.
I'll be playing LOTRO for a PvE game and when Warhammer comes out I'll probably play it for PvP ( if its polished like LOTRO ).
Pal
Palazious <The Vindicators> Darkfall
Palazious r40, rr45 SW War
Palazious 50 Pirate PoTBS
Palazious 35 Sorcerer Vanguard
Palazious 75 wizard EQ
Paladori 50 Champion LOTRO
Poppa Reaver bugged at rank15
I agree the review was alittle hasty at best. I do find it very ammusing that the reviewer is backtracking and trying to defend the rushed review and questionable low score. They should have waited a week for the dust to settle, launch week needs to be evaluated in full. What if the servers start crashing non stop? The score of 7.8 is also pretty low considering how polished, stable and bug free the game is.
All in All its not that big of a deal as this site isn't very credible as far as reviews go. I have seen tons of bad games get great scores and vice versa. LoTRO is obviosly an 8+ rating game which would be considered good and will probably reviewed as such on much more influential gaming sites and publications.
That's a pretty strange score, given the good review overall. The score doesn't seem to reflect what what said in the review - I expected an 8.5 mark based on what was said...
And an 8 for graphics? What was that compared to? EQ2? - That seems pretty low to me, especially after returning from Rivendell - one of the most beautiful areas of any computer game I have ever played (I have about 26 years of experience here) It's not just the quality of the graphics - Oblivion beats that for it's bump mapping, etc - but it's the artwork too, which is amazing.. I think that a 7 for the community was a strange score to give as well - the community is extremely new after all.
Perhaps it was too early to publish a review on this game. I say that because it's still early days yet, and no one has played a good portion of the finished game yet to give a definitive score for certain aspects of it.
Nice overview of the game though, Donna; Nicely written.
WoW got a 10 because of the art direction. Shiny pretty real-to-life are not the END ALL of graphics. They are eye candy, and look "cool" but every game tries for that. WoW took a different path and made a world that reflects the visual STYLE of thier previous games, and pulled it off SO well that it derserves nothing but a 10.
Also, WoW was released years ago, if it were reviewed again (check TBC review) it'd score lower then 10.
Point is, LOTR got a 7 because though it has pretty graphics better then games released years before it, the art direction, styling, and overall ambience do not reflect what a 2007 release should in order to score a 10.
edit: And VG doesn't deserve a 10 either because only people with room sized super computers can make the darn thing run at a decent enough frame rate to warrant giving a 10 in the graphics catagory. If all you care about is pretty eye candy, go buy a 360 or PS3 lol.
WoW got a 10 because of the art direction. Shiny pretty real-to-life are not the END ALL of graphics. They are eye candy, and look "cool" but every game tries for that. WoW took a different path and made a world that reflects the visual STYLE of thier previous games, and pulled it off SO well that it derserves nothing but a 10.
Also, WoW was released years ago, if it were reviewed again (check TBC review) it'd score lower then 10.
Point is, LOTR got a 7 because though it has pretty graphics better then games released years before it, the art direction, styling, and overall ambience do not reflect what a 2007 release should in order to score a 10.
edit: And VG doesn't deserve a 10 either because only people with room sized super computers can make the darn thing run at a decent enough frame rate to warrant giving a 10 in the graphics catagory. If all you care about is pretty eye candy, go buy a 360 or PS3 lol.
lotro only got low score on graphics on this site, all other reviews gave over 9 on graphics, so what you saying is that war, and aoc gonna get 7 on graphics because they release this year or next. anyway did you ever played lotro with high resolution cd to compare? i think not.One also has to consider that there's a rush on sites to get reviews out the door on releases, its competetive and neither the beta nor the preview time will have given enough time to get solid opinions on RP/Community/Service. Personally I'd have given those an average score of 5, given that they're still being shaken down.
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Take it away Professor Math.
Hello boys and girls.
Today we're going to talk about averages, high numbers and low numbers! Won't that be exciting.
Say 'Yes Professor Math'.
Good kids!
What you call an average, we math folk typically call one of three things, mean, median and mode.
The 'mean' is what you probably mean by average. You'd get this by totting up all the results and then dividing by the number of results. For a range of 1-10 as in, say, a software review, this is 5.5 rather than 5. This is also the 'average' result on the roll of a ten sided dice.
The 'median' is what divides one half of the results from the other. Half the numbers are above, half the numbers are below. In odd ranges, say '3' the median is the middle number, in this case '2'. In even ranges, say '10', the median is the two middle numbers added together and then divided by 2. So that would be 5+6 divide by 2, 5.5 again!
The 'mode' is the most commonly occuring number in a range, if you have 1-10 then there's an even distribution, which means 'mode' isn't much use to us here!
So, to go back to using 'average' the AVERAGE score for a quality in an MMO review should be 5.5.
Now lets talk about high and low numbers shall we?
High and low values are pretty relative since numbers stretch all the way into infinity in each direction, + infinity and - infinity. So no number, not even a hundred billion kajillion, not even a google-plex multiplied by a google-plex can really be said to be a 'big' number since there's ALWAYS a bigger number.
If we limit ourselves to a particular range of numbers, let's say 1-10 again, then we can say certain numbers are 'bigger' than others relative to that range.
'1', for example, is quite a small number in that range, the smallest you can get.
'10', on the other hang, is quite a big number in that range, the largest you can get.
From our 'averages' lesson we've learned that the middle, or 'average' score on a 1-10 range is 5.5. This means that any number above that could be considered 'big' and any number below that could be considered 'small'!
So, I know you're wondering how this might relate to computer game reviews, aren't you?
What it means is that these scores can represent relative value. '1' might be thought of as, bad, say, and '10' might be thought of as the best thing since sliced bread! '5' on the other hand would be considered 'average', typical, everyday, nothing special.
So, if a game gets a score in a category above '5', say, oh, I don't know, seven or eight, that means it has scored highly and has a GOOD score! Whereas, conversely, if it scored a '2' or '3' that would be 'bad'!
The practical upshot of which is, anyone regarding a '7' or an '8' as a low score should probably be neutered for the sake of humanity's future!
Pip pip!
Thanks Professor Math, that cleared that up nicely. I'll get the gamma-ray pistol and start irradiating people's genitals right away!
Postmortem Studios
Roleplaying games to DIE for
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Here are a couple of things everyone reading a review should think about:
First you must consider the source or affiliation of the person posting the review. Is the site or company this person is reviewing under reputable in all review? Do they have an abnormal amount of drama associated with reviews?
Second you have to take what the person is saying with a grain of salt. It's their opinion of how they see the game. You like steak they like chicken your not gonna agree.
I do think people who review products and services should pay more attention to the details. I understand that this reviewer played the beta for months with high graphic settings and all but I think you are being reckless in reviewing a game released 1 day ago using information you obtained during a beta. It's not fair to the company who worked hard on the game and it's not fair to the people who come to sites such as this looking for some guidance on if they should purchase a game or not.
MMORPG.com shares in this reckless review as they are the ones who gave it to the reviewer and said we need this go get it done. The sad part is there will be no retractions, no statements saying ok maybe we did jump the gun on this a little. All we will get is a lone reviewer posting from time to time defending her views and words.
Next.
Postmortem Studios
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Did the game Turbine launch after beta suddenly change and become a different game all of a sudden? If not, you people that say the reviewer should not have based their review on their beta experience(part of which was an open beta - play for free sorta thing - come sample it) are being so anal. The game is essentually the same today as it was in the last phase of beta and open beta. Your complaint has no weight.
One also has to consider that there's a rush on sites to get reviews out the door on releases, its competetive and neither the beta nor the preview time will have given enough time to get solid opinions on RP/Community/Service. Personally I'd have given those an average score of 5, given that they're still being shaken down.
We have to take into account that a review is about judging a game based on first-hand information and experience, enabling the reviewer to support his or her views with valid arguments. The controversy around a review comes not from the game itself, but from what people say about it. A review should have a good balance of opinion AND information, so that those people looking for in-depth info are satisfied, and those looking for a "respected" or "trustable" opinion about a game are satisfied as well.
This review is a total failure in those respects. It's just some vague info neutrally handed out to you. The reviewer, with all due respect, is evidently afraid of making a judgement on the game based on something. Anything, for god's sake! The scores reveal a decision and a position towards the game, but the article reveals only a bunch of Preview-style info. This lack of coherence and general blandness is what's putting everyone on their nerves. Like the poster you quoted said, the review is "dumbed-down" in order to avoid the flames of haters and fanboys alike, and that's just plain silly and childish.
I mean I'm interested in LOTRO, but not interested enough as to research and sign up for beta and all that. I clicked to get in the review to have a good look at what I could expect from the game, and also to have an opinion from someone who is supposedly more reliable than fansite forums. What I got was an incoherent piece of writing that left me just where I was, if not worse, because now I have to go look at other sites for a good review.
MMORPG needs to get professional again, and leave the rushed "OMG THE GAME IS OUT REVIEW TIME" articles to lesser sites.
I propose you remove the review until the reviewer has spent some time with the game, analyzed her position towards it, and constructed a good, argumentative article. Too bad it's too late already and many people are starting to question their trust for your staff reviewers. You can still prove them wrong by re-writing the article, though.
If you are going to call something a 7, (or a 10) you need to say why.... but scoring a game lower than probably any other sites review w/o a single detail smacks of someone with a bad attitude (or lack of will) with a bias against the game. (but afraid to say why they believe the way they do)
Reviewers need to show the courage to defend their convictions, and not shirk from their responsibility to provide details behind their opinions.
All we can hope is that this writer is "not" assigned any more upcoming games to review. Maybe there's a nice opening interviewing the developers of DnL at the next game geek convention or something.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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** Troll alert **