Censorship on the official forums...

trancejeremy

In this thread on the official site where a K2 employee touts a glowing review of Sword:

http://forum.swordofthenewworld.com/index.php?showtopic=22870

 

I had a post pointing out that the site the favorable "review" it was on, actually reviewed pretty much every game in existence with high numbers (and gave a list of examples of other free RPGs - Mabinogi was the lowest at 89, Archlord was 95, I can't remember the others they were all 93-96)

I also pointed out the favorable review was accompanied by an affiliate link, so the whole thing was basically a scam to get people to click through.

And my post pointing these things out was deleted. 

 

Now admittedly, most MMORPG websites are basically ad driven. This place has essentially been a Conan ad for the last month. But that site (MMOFury) is pretty blatantly a marketing site (to get affiliate money from all the free MMORPGs out there), not a "review" site.  Companies shouldn't use sneaky tactics like this as pass them off as reviews, nor should they delete posts that point out the sneakiness.

Indeed, my post just said that site looked suspicious; K2's deleting of my post pretty much confrims it is, and they are ashamed to let people know they use underhanded marketing schemes like that.

xrandomflip

its called advertising right? you dont get more players by keeping all your game information on the main website. you spread it around.  

jmerriex

Ok, I just went through the trash can and found no posts related to that thread that were deleted. Are you sure the post successfully went live? Do you remember what date you posted it?

As far as MMOFury, at no point did we persue them.  They came to us and asked if they could do a review of our games and we said yes. The review itself was written by THEIR staff writers one of whom is a big fan of Sword. We have not purchased any ad space with that website and currently don't have intent to purchase ad space with them.

horizon_hold

So you don't denny they are your bussiness partners.

The link does have something about partnership and affiliate in it.

You did not pay them for ad spaces but actually do for each person that arrives at your site from them, am I wrong?

Don't get me wrong, I really like granado espada, played it back in closed beta and I felt it could be time to go back, but I found that the asian GE is quickly sinking to hell so I will try Sword of the New World and see if it deserves my hard earned money.

But you got to agree that mmofury isn't even near being a decent site for reviews, but in the end, which site is? The only way you can know how a game is faring is by reading what players say both in the game forums and in external forums like this one.

 

 

jmerriex

We track all traffic coming to our website. MMOFury once again came to us and asked to do a story. I don't see what you are trying to get at. We do the same thing with EVERY website that does stories on us. We like to know where traffic is coming from so that we can better spend our money advertising.

If you feel MMOFury is 'selling out' please take that up with them. We currently are not in the business of saying no to press asking us to do interviews or articles on the game. We also did not pay them for it. So again, I don't know what you are trying to get at.

horizon_hold

OK, I believe you and kind of understand your position.