sigh......okie, I give a quick review. After years of hype and fan boy drooling over screen shotsof Age of Conan I am here to tell you it's not worth playing..........
The game is slow, boring and unimaginative. The graphics are decent at higher levels, but when turned up that high the game slows to an unplayable crawl. Though my system far exceeds the requirements of the game, I can only play at the "Low" settings, which means textures that look like Quake 2 and boring effects. For a game that consumes 24GB of hard disk space you'd really expect more on the visual side. Even when set at "Low" I frequently have to stop moving to let things "catch up".
Even worse, I can never play for more than an hour before the game crashes. This is such a common issue that they even address it in a recent survey. Though it is common, it hasn't been fixed.
The fighting system, which is supposed to be revolutionary, feels just like a hundred other button mashers found mostly on consoles. It is more tedious than fun, and adds nothing to the game. On top of that it just doesn't work very well.
The quests are all cookie cutter - go kill this guy, go fetch this, go tell this person something for me, etc. You have done all this before in better MMOs. Yawn.
Small annoying problems abound in AoC. Hiding doesn't work very well - you never know when they AI will see you. You can only sprint for a few seconds at a time because your stamina drains at an alarming rate. Loads times are still horrible, although they have improved over the development of the game. The world that has been created isn't very visually appealing, though it isn't for a lack of content. The NPC's are all the same type of character - all weathered old soldiers who are angry at something but need you to run some lame errand for them because they are too busy .
This game gets boring fast. If this were a real review I'd tear into it further, but it's not worth the time. Just don't waste yours!
Reading so called "professional" reviews is mostly a waste of time.
People will try and claim "theres no conspiracy",but they are just putting forth a bad argument and then defeating it.
Its not about some organized conspiracy.its about self interest.
Games get bad reviews, they sell less, they spend less on advertising , both parties lose.
No conspiracy needed.No direct open exchange of bribes needed.Its just self interest.
No need to even consider the effect of the mindset of fans writing reviews.Because even that boils down to self interest.
You want to get an accurate picture of a game,put the time into reading what its players say about it.And for the love of every myth that man embraces,wait til the product is out for a while before leaping.
The relationship between print advertising and reviews is known and as old as the hills. I personally experienced it when I released a game in 1992 and bought advertising. Back then it was more a matter of will your game get reviewed at all, than about the score. It was print media or no media back at the time.
Is the above an indictment of the "game reviewing industry?" No, I don't think any jounalists lied about what they saw in Age of Conan. However at the time any new game is released, the whole story may not be available to be told.
The problem as I see it is that it's unfeasible for any individual reviewer to spend enough time in an MMORPG to really know it. Too many aspects of an MMORPG don't become apparent until you are part of a community playing. I suspect most game reviews are written after a relatively short solo examination of a game. In the case of AoC, I think most writers wrote their reviews based on the Tortage experience. That experience was awesome. I remember being floored myself.
Back in 1992 the reporters who reviewed my game played maybe 20 hours each--one of them a bit more because he genuinely liked the game. In AoC I played 4 to 6 hours daily for weeks. I didn't start getting unhappy in AoC until about level 50 when content got thin. I didn't angry until I hit the end game and began to realize the extent of the problems. That was a full 60 days into the game--almost the entire lead time for a print publication between putting an issue to bed and when it's available on the stands.
Reporters for print publications reviewing AoC could have only seen whatever pre-beta dog and pony show Funcom gave them. Is this an indictment of the "game reviewing industry?" No but it's another example why print media is less and less relevant--especially for MMORPGs.
Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either.
The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed.
What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time.
Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game.
In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild.
On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole.
I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I believe game reviewers should only be ex-game developers. They know the ins and outs of the games and the industry, and therefore will most likely not compare the recent game review to a World of Warcraft wet dream.
It would be like a group of judges instead of a LaN PaRtAy.
I never use a reviewer to decide whether to buy a game or not....They are often given freebies by companies and often either play for a very short time, get a short demo from a company rep, or get some otehr representation that makes the game look better than it is......If I want info on a game I'll look it up online and go with actual users......Yeah the public can be brutal at times but overall I find they are much more in depth and will be more honest about the state of a game.......
I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue. I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176 Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either. The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed. What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time. Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game. In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild. On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole. I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.
That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.
But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80. And then played each for 2 days.
Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time. No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through. But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.
The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there. And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.
But so what? Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging. But they didn't to that. Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.
As journalists you should assume the worst. And then prove that its the best. Not assume its ok and see what happens. Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.
Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player. And that is fine. Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea. But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it.
You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself. You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.
BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were. That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.
Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time. But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.
You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews. It took both of you about a month. That is fine. But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.
Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild. But that is not really the issue. We do not need 100% comprehensive review. What we need is a good survey of the entire game. Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.
Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses. There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily. But there are TONS things that can be done and are not. And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people. And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.
Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things. Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal.
But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess. Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it. But that didn't happen and does not happen. Well that is just plain negligent.
But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game? Seriously wtf?
You told us that. It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man. But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews. All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.
Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent. And as a professional they should try to shore those things up. And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should. And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.
No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review. But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60.
That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure. The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time. Oh really? Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.
Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.
Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played. Its that simple.
If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day. And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?
They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.
yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild. But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time. And that information is pretty darn important.
But no. They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest. Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.
The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying. They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).
The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.
If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously? Not many people.
Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change? Yes it would. The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time. Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.
I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue. I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176 Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either. The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed. What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time. Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game. In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild. On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole. I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.
I think your review was objective and fair.I also agree with the above post ,I look forward to Part 2
I got suckered into buying it by the rating on this site.
(flashback to May) ....Oh AoC has 8.8 rating I'llhave to give it a try must be good to have an 8.8, boy did i get screwed out of $50. Should have been a 4.8 in my opinion since the only thing its got is graphics and they all look the same.
But I learned never buy an MMO without trying it in beta or a free trail first.
Keep in mind that people reviewing AoC before it came out were likely only reviewing the polished Tortage part of the game, which is a fairly well made Massive Multiplayer Online Single Player Game. If the whole game was done on the same scale, it would've likely kept the high scores and subs.
This game ruined me! I have learned my lesson well and i will never pre-order a game unless i have been involved in the beta and i actually liked it. Worst 60 bucks i have ever spent. Good looking box though, i have been throwing darts at it as i am bored as hell with no MMO to play. I do want to say thanks to Funcom for teaching me a valuable lesson!
Reviews are a poor measure of a game just like movie and book reviews are poor, but there is something else weighing in on the game review industry.
Whether a book, movie, or game is good or not is a matter of perspective. Myself, I am 37 years old and been gaming (off and on) for 30 years. No gaming *cough* journalist *cough* has enough of a background to be able to give a review let alone tell me what I may or may not like.
Now, about that something else. Every single site out there (including this one) and magazine out there depends heavily on ad revenues. There is a conflict of interest here in that why would, for example, Electronic Arts pay for advertising on a site that tells its readers to stay away from every single EA game? So, why would a game reviewer give an honest review of an EA game when that could very well cost them their job?
Reviews are a poor measure of a game just like movie and book reviews are poor, but there is something else weighing in on the game review industry. Whether a book, movie, or game is good or not is a matter of perspective. Myself, I am 37 years old and been gaming (off and on) for 30 years. No gaming *cough* journalist *cough* has enough of a background to be able to give a review let alone tell me what I may or may not like. Now, about that something else. Every single site out there (including this one) and magazine out there depends heavily on ad revenues. There is a conflict of interest here in that why would, for example, Electronic Arts pay for advertising on a site that tells its readers to stay away from every single EA game? So, why would a game reviewer give an honest review of an EA game when that could very well cost them their job?
If he had enough traffic they would advertise on the Devil's website. I guarantee you that.
People forget. Companies may have money to spend but they also have money to make or they go bankrupt.
Plus there is competition. This is highly unlikely to really effect anything in a systematic without collusion between most publishers. And that would be highly illegal in the US.
I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue. I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176 Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either. The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed. What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time. Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game. In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild. On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole. I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.
That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.
But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80. And then played each for 2 days.
Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time. No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through. But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.
The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there. And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.
But so what? Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging. But they didn't to that. Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.
As journalists you should assume the worst. And then prove that its the best. Not assume its ok and see what happens. Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.
Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player. And that is fine. Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea. But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it.
You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself. You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.
BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were. That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.
Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time. But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.
You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews. It took both of you about a month. That is fine. But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.
Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild. But that is not really the issue. We do not need 100% comprehensive review. What we need is a good survey of the entire game. Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.
Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses. There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily. But there are TONS things that can be done and are not. And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people. And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.
Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things. Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal.
But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess. Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it. But that didn't happen and does not happen. Well that is just plain negligent.
But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game? Seriously wtf?
You told us that. It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man. But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews. All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.
Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent. And as a professional they should try to shore those things up. And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should. And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.
No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review. But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60.
That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure. The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time. Oh really? Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.
Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.
Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played. Its that simple.
If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day. And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?
They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.
yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild. But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time. And that information is pretty darn important.
But no. They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest. Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.
The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying. They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).
The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.
If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously? Not many people.
Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change? Yes it would. The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time. Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.
Alright, I'd like to continue my original post here.
There are a few things in particular that you're neglecting here about the industry as well.
Unlike MMORPG.com, which specializes solely in MMO reviews, most major gaming sites have multiple game genres on multiple platforms which they have to review at a time. It's very, very easy to attack said websites as a result because 1) reviews tend to see MUCH less time per game, and 2) as has already been said, they generate most of their revenue off of ads and hits. Essentially, as sad as it may seem, the site/magazine that releases the first review about a new, hyped game will generate a LOT of attention, whether it's accurate or not.
I feel like you have somewhat of a chip on your shoulder regarding journalists in general. We're taught from the get-go never to assume anything; it gets you in trouble in the field. You can't decide to assume everything works, nor that everything doesn't. While I doubt I'd ever get in trouble for libel in this field from a gaming company, when you practice outside of just video game reviews, you have to go only on what you can prove, or what you have experienced. I have not and will not ever start off playing a game with the thought of "...this is going to be one huge, heaping pile of garbage", because if I'm going into the game with that mindset, I'm not going to enjoy myself at all.
Another particular issue that is present with reviewing games like Age of Conan in a timely manner is the fact you mentioned regarding performance issues. In light of this game, I don't think it's really possible for us to have known that 10 people, all of whom have the same exact specs, could have run the game on the same settings with entirely different results. Age of Conan, from a technical perspective, is an anomaly. Some people were running this game lag-free, 40 fps, on the highest settings possible; others couldn't even get above 10 fps without turning their sound off, and running it on medium settings, because the "low" video settings actually damper performance. It's not possible for one reviewer to know that this would happen, professional reviewer or not.
I also personally believe that you're giving the developers entirely too much credit. It's hard to write a timely review when the NDA isn't even removed until the day of release. On top of that, I don't believe in writing a forced, half-assed review immediately post-release. Look at how many people pre-ordered AoC in the first month; some 400,000 if I'm not mistaken, no? That means that before I could have posted any sort of competent review, 400,000 people had already bought the game anyway. My opinion wasn't going to sway that chunk of the consumer base, regardless. So I did what I felt was most beneficial; I took the time to dissect the game for the people who were, in fact, waiting for the comprehensive reviews.
Lastly, I can not think of a single developer who would willingly give you a quick peak to all levels of their game post-release for the sake of writing a review. The free level 20,40,60,80 idea sounds good on paper, but in a practical sense it's a bit idealistic. By that same standard, they should also give game reviewers 1, 10, and 100 gold so that we can test out mounts, mounted combat, crafting, and all the other elements of the game. However, this is where the line is drawn between BETA and release. However, Funcom was particularly devious, and as mentioned before, would not break their NDA until the game was released.
This industry is a dirty business. It's not unusual to see genuine, sincere reviews edited for being too harsh/honest on a major gaming website. While I haven't had it happen here, on other websites (which I will not cite nor reference) I have submitted reviews and been told outright that my wording was "a little too harsh", and then shown a re-write that they would have been willing to run. In other cases, you'll submit a review to see whole chunks of what was originally produced MIA in the posted review, often times done so without your approval. You have to work around all the PR, spin, and hype amongst major game developers as well (for example, Vanguard in the MMO community, and say... Fable among the console community).
Compliment these already troublesome hurdles with the rampant wars between obvious "fanboys" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a positive light) and "haters" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a negative light) and it gets even more difficult to discern which writers are credible, and which ones generally have a hidden agenda. I personally follow a person who is consistent, and try to dodge the polar-style writers (extreme highs and lows).
A final thought regarding this industry though. If you follow the trend of major MMO releases in the past year or so, they tend to have a similar issue. They release prematurely, while hyping their game up to epic proportions. They fail to include all of their promised content and lack functionality. The developers pretend there isn't a problem for anywhere from 1-3 months. The game begins to nose-dive in terms of subscriptions as more and more comprehensive reviews begin to surface. The game developers come out and apologize, and admit their game has more problems than initially reported. The game fails.
I think the trend above shows what a lack of scruples there are by a lot of the companies we reviewers deal with these days. A lot of the time, what we're privileged enough to see isn't what we needed to see to make an accurate review. So we're left with the choice; quit the industry, and walk away from the business (because we're not indispensible), or give it our best effort to see through all the fog, and give it our best shot at presenting a review to the public using what we have available.
These are my thoughts on the matter...
...and I'm still here
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue. I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176 Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either. The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed. What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time. Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game. In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild. On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole. I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.
That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.
But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80. And then played each for 2 days.
Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time. No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through. But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.
The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there. And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.
But so what? Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging. But they didn't to that. Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.
As journalists you should assume the worst. And then prove that its the best. Not assume its ok and see what happens. Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.
Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player. And that is fine. Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea. But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it.
You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself. You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.
BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were. That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.
Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time. But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.
You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews. It took both of you about a month. That is fine. But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.
Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild. But that is not really the issue. We do not need 100% comprehensive review. What we need is a good survey of the entire game. Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.
Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses. There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily. But there are TONS things that can be done and are not. And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people. And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.
Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things. Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal.
But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess. Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it. But that didn't happen and does not happen. Well that is just plain negligent.
But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game? Seriously wtf?
You told us that. It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man. But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews. All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.
Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent. And as a professional they should try to shore those things up. And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should. And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.
No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review. But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60.
That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure. The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time. Oh really? Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.
Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.
Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played. Its that simple.
If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day. And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?
They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.
yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild. But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time. And that information is pretty darn important.
But no. They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest. Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.
The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying. They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).
The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.
If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously? Not many people.
Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change? Yes it would. The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time. Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.
Alright, I'd like to continue my original post here.
There are a few things in particular that you're neglecting here about the industry as well.
Unlike MMORPG.com, which specializes solely in MMO reviews, most major gaming sites have multiple game genres on multiple platforms which they have to review at a time. It's very, very easy to attack said websites as a result because 1) reviews tend to see MUCH less time per game, and 2) as has already been said, they generate most of their revenue off of ads and hits. Essentially, as sad as it may seem, the site/magazine that releases the first review about a new, hyped game will generate a LOT of attention, whether it's accurate or not.
I feel like you have somewhat of a chip on your shoulder regarding journalists in general. We're taught from the get-go never to assume anything; it gets you in trouble in the field. You can't decide to assume everything works, nor that everything doesn't. While I doubt I'd ever get in trouble for libel in this field from a gaming company, when you practice outside of just video game reviews, you have to go only on what you can prove, or what you have experienced. I have not and will not ever start off playing a game with the thought of "...this is going to be one huge, heaping pile of garbage", because if I'm going into the game with that mindset, I'm not going to enjoy myself at all.
Another particular issue that is present with reviewing games like Age of Conan in a timely manner is the fact you mentioned regarding performance issues. In light of this game, I don't think it's really possible for us to have known that 10 people, all of whom have the same exact specs, could have run the game on the same settings with entirely different results. Age of Conan, from a technical perspective, is an anomaly. Some people were running this game lag-free, 40 fps, on the highest settings possible; others couldn't even get above 10 fps without turning their sound off, and running it on medium settings, because the "low" video settings actually damper performance. It's not possible for one reviewer to know that this would happen, professional reviewer or not.
I also personally believe that you're giving the developers entirely too much credit. It's hard to write a timely review when the NDA isn't even removed until the day of release. On top of that, I don't believe in writing a forced, half-assed review immediately post-release. Look at how many people pre-ordered AoC in the first month; some 400,000 if I'm not mistaken, no? That means that before I could have posted any sort of competent review, 400,000 people had already bought the game anyway. My opinion wasn't going to sway that chunk of the consumer base, regardless. So I did what I felt was most beneficial; I took the time to dissect the game for the people who were, in fact, waiting for the comprehensive reviews.
Lastly, I can not think of a single developer who would willingly give you a quick peak to all levels of their game post-release for the sake of writing a review. The free level 20,40,60,80 idea sounds good on paper, but in a practical sense it's a bit idealistic. By that same standard, they should also give game reviewers 1, 10, and 100 gold so that we can test out mounts, mounted combat, crafting, and all the other elements of the game. However, this is where the line is drawn between BETA and release. However, Funcom was particularly devious, and as mentioned before, would not break their NDA until the game was released.
This industry is a dirty business. It's not unusual to see genuine, sincere reviews edited for being too harsh/honest on a major gaming website. While I haven't had it happen here, on other websites (which I will not cite nor reference) I have submitted reviews and been told outright that my wording was "a little too harsh", and then shown a re-write that they would have been willing to run. In other cases, you'll submit a review to see whole chunks of what was originally produced MIA in the posted review, often times done so without your approval. You have to work around all the PR, spin, and hype amongst major game developers as well (for example, Vanguard in the MMO community, and say... Fable among the console community).
Compliment these already troublesome hurdles with the rampant wars between obvious "fanboys" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a positive light) and "haters" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a negative light) and it gets even more difficult to discern which writers are credible, and which ones generally have a hidden agenda. I personally follow a person who is consistent, and try to dodge the polar-style writers (extreme highs and lows).
A final thought regarding this industry though. If you follow the trend of major MMO releases in the past year or so, they tend to have a similar issue. They release prematurely, while hyping their game up to epic proportions. They fail to include all of their promised content and lack functionality. The developers pretend there isn't a problem for anywhere from 1-3 months. The game begins to nose-dive in terms of subscriptions as more and more comprehensive reviews begin to surface. The game developers come out and apologize, and admit their game has more problems than initially reported. The game fails.
I think the trend above shows what a lack of scruples there are by a lot of the companies we reviewers deal with these days. A lot of the time, what we're privileged enough to see isn't what we needed to see to make an accurate review. So we're left with the choice; quit the industry, and walk away from the business (because we're not indispensible), or give it our best effort to see through all the fog, and give it our best shot at presenting a review to the public using what we have available.
These are my thoughts on the matter...
...and I'm still here
If, for the sake of argument, we simply accept this whole cloth. Then everyone here including me "who has a chip on their shoulder" seems entirely justified.
The majority of reveiws should be derided. And anyone claiming a review from a professional has any special standing what so ever should be laughed at.
Originally posted by tapeworm00 If they had given it awful scores, you wouldn't be turning this issue up, and you know why? Because reviews are subjective too - I bet there's not few people who agree with those reviews. People who, if Conan would've been given a low score, would be "calling them out" just like you think you are. No offense, but this post reflects your bias, not theirs.
Besides, most reviews concentrate on two things: gameplay and stability. The gameplay in Conan is cool, and the game works... most of the time. They don't cover things like endgame content (in Conan's case, mid-game-on content ), class balance, and so on. That's why the reviews were mostly positive. They give you an impression of what it's like to play the game, not a detailed, full experience of it (another story it would've been... low scores aplenty!). Warning: rambling now, but I do think that MMO reviews should be handled in an entirely different way than normal games. They should tend to describe the full experience. I think MMORPG.com went the right direction by reviewing the first twenty levels of this game only, because more attention to detail was paid. Of course, we're missing the next 60, but until they decide to do it, we'll have to see. In any case Conan's relevance is about to fade with the release of WAR.
I think this is the case. The actual experience one has is very subjective and a hard thing to reviews as "fact". Stability, graphics, presentation, and what the gameplay (combat for example) is like on the other hand is easier to review and something can be given a score. In that regard the reviewers did a good and reasonable job.
Those are the aspects one can hit initially. There is no end to mmorpg and as a result one can not review it like a non-mmorpg game. Look at the reviews of so many other mmorpgs and check out what they cover. You won't see one that covers end game content or even mid-level content unless they go back and do additional reviews on the game and focus on the game world itself. It's the mechanics of the game that get reviewed.
Unfortunately professional reviewers are that profesional reviewers. They have a large number of games released each month that they have review. Playing a game, setting up an intelligent commentary and getting it out so it's still news leaves little actual playing time. The most you can hope for in most games is a gemeral flavour of the game. Not a total experience.
This unfortunately doesn't work for MMOs. Most MMOs have a lengthy story line. The also have so called end game content. These things cannot be completely experienced in the short time a reviewer has before he hits his press deadline. So if the game has a great/good beginners area, and some decent begginers quests (like Tortage) it will get by most critics.
The relationship between print advertising and reviews is known and as old as the hills. I personally experienced it when I released a game in 1992 and bought advertising. Back then it was more a matter of will your game get reviewed at all, than about the score. It was print media or no media back at the time. Is the above an indictment of the "game reviewing industry?" No, I don't think any jounalists lied about what they saw in Age of Conan. However at the time any new game is released, the whole story may not be available to be told. The problem as I see it is that it's unfeasible for any individual reviewer to spend enough time in an MMORPG to really know it. Too many aspects of an MMORPG don't become apparent until you are part of a community playing. I suspect most game reviews are written after a relatively short solo examination of a game. In the case of AoC, I think most writers wrote their reviews based on the Tortage experience. That experience was awesome. I remember being floored myself. Back in 1992 the reporters who reviewed my game played maybe 20 hours each--one of them a bit more because he genuinely liked the game. In AoC I played 4 to 6 hours daily for weeks. I didn't start getting unhappy in AoC until about level 50 when content got thin. I didn't angry until I hit the end game and began to realize the extent of the problems. That was a full 60 days into the game--almost the entire lead time for a print publication between putting an issue to bed and when it's available on the stands. Reporters for print publications reviewing AoC could have only seen whatever pre-beta dog and pony show Funcom gave them. Is this an indictment of the "game reviewing industry?" No but it's another example why print media is less and less relevant--especially for MMORPGs.
I would have to agree in regards to this game and other mmo's, reviewers do not have enough time to evaluate the game properly. Funcom put all there polish into the start of AoC for good reason. With the initial 'wow' you get with AoC combined with the promises with the end game, all the hype etc, its not hard to see why reviewers gave this game such rave reviews.
On the issue of game review sites/magazines being paid by publishers to give good reviews, thats definately true. Most of the 'payment' is through advertising. If a game review site gives bad scores, the publishers will threaten to revoke all advertising from the site. Reviewers are given 'encouragement' from employers to give good reviews.
Take the Kane and Lynch reviews on Gamespot for example
On that note I will say Funcom did a very good thing. They created a great first impression which is extremely important. The nature of the ever evolving game that a MMORPG gives them some room to work with if the end game isn't 100% there. No game has ever come out perfect, World of Warcraft is a rare example instead of the norm and we should all know this. It's a rare situation in a lot of things and that has to do with Blizzard as a company. A first impression is an important thing and that is something Funcom learned from Anarchy Online.
Now the lack of content I think can't 100% be put at their foot. What mmorpg out there has full end game content at release? Why is it when some of the hardcore players blow through everything in a matter of weeks (content that most likely took months or years to created) Funcom or any other company catches the blame and hate as a result?
Lack of unplayability of the game, bugs, lack of content all together, horrible first impression etc are things I'd agree one should go after them before. I hate the lack of content argument at the high level. If one were to go through things at a sane pace I'm sure that would give them time to add more stuff. I'd even go so far to say the normal player (not the hardcore) hasn't maxed out on content) and won't for a while since the game came out recently.
Subscription drop offs is a common thing. What game has kept most of it's initially buyers? 800K down to 400K or even a little less then that (only have their word until one can prove otherwise) is still good. Everyone would love more but really how many active subscribers do other successful MMORPGs have that are not World of Warcraft? People seem to act as if the game dropped to only a few thousand and stable nature of the game doesn't even make that possible I think. A lot of people always want to try out the new thing. Some say and others don't. With so many games to pick from not everyone can play them all even if they want to.
Not trying to blindly defend the game (only just signed back up today), just trying to present a different picture here.
Comments
sigh......okie, I give a quick review. After years of hype and fan boy drooling over screen shotsof Age of Conan I am here to tell you it's not worth playing..........
The game is slow, boring and unimaginative. The graphics are decent at higher levels, but when turned up that high the game slows to an unplayable crawl. Though my system far exceeds the requirements of the game, I can only play at the "Low" settings, which means textures that look like Quake 2 and boring effects. For a game that consumes 24GB of hard disk space you'd really expect more on the visual side. Even when set at "Low" I frequently have to stop moving to let things "catch up".
Even worse, I can never play for more than an hour before the game crashes. This is such a common issue that they even address it in a recent survey. Though it is common, it hasn't been fixed.
The fighting system, which is supposed to be revolutionary, feels just like a hundred other button mashers found mostly on consoles. It is more tedious than fun, and adds nothing to the game. On top of that it just doesn't work very well.
The quests are all cookie cutter - go kill this guy, go fetch this, go tell this person something for me, etc. You have done all this before in better MMOs. Yawn.
Small annoying problems abound in AoC. Hiding doesn't work very well - you never know when they AI will see you. You can only sprint for a few seconds at a time because your stamina drains at an alarming rate. Loads times are still horrible, although they have improved over the development of the game. The world that has been created isn't very visually appealing, though it isn't for a lack of content. The NPC's are all the same type of character - all weathered old soldiers who are angry at something but need you to run some lame errand for them because they are too busy .
This game gets boring fast. If this were a real review I'd tear into it further, but it's not worth the time. Just don't waste yours!
Reading so called "professional" reviews is mostly a waste of time.
People will try and claim "theres no conspiracy",but they are just putting forth a bad argument and then defeating it.
Its not about some organized conspiracy.its about self interest.
Games get bad reviews, they sell less, they spend less on advertising , both parties lose.
No conspiracy needed.No direct open exchange of bribes needed.Its just self interest.
No need to even consider the effect of the mindset of fans writing reviews.Because even that boils down to self interest.
You want to get an accurate picture of a game,put the time into reading what its players say about it.And for the love of every myth that man embraces,wait til the product is out for a while before leaping.
The relationship between print advertising and reviews is known and as old as the hills. I personally experienced it when I released a game in 1992 and bought advertising. Back then it was more a matter of will your game get reviewed at all, than about the score. It was print media or no media back at the time.
Is the above an indictment of the "game reviewing industry?" No, I don't think any jounalists lied about what they saw in Age of Conan. However at the time any new game is released, the whole story may not be available to be told.
The problem as I see it is that it's unfeasible for any individual reviewer to spend enough time in an MMORPG to really know it. Too many aspects of an MMORPG don't become apparent until you are part of a community playing. I suspect most game reviews are written after a relatively short solo examination of a game. In the case of AoC, I think most writers wrote their reviews based on the Tortage experience. That experience was awesome. I remember being floored myself.
Back in 1992 the reporters who reviewed my game played maybe 20 hours each--one of them a bit more because he genuinely liked the game. In AoC I played 4 to 6 hours daily for weeks. I didn't start getting unhappy in AoC until about level 50 when content got thin. I didn't angry until I hit the end game and began to realize the extent of the problems. That was a full 60 days into the game--almost the entire lead time for a print publication between putting an issue to bed and when it's available on the stands.
Reporters for print publications reviewing AoC could have only seen whatever pre-beta dog and pony show Funcom gave them. Is this an indictment of the "game reviewing industry?" No but it's another example why print media is less and less relevant--especially for MMORPGs.
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I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue.
I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176
Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either.
The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed.
What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time.
Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game.
In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild.
On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole.
I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I believe game reviewers should only be ex-game developers. They know the ins and outs of the games and the industry, and therefore will most likely not compare the recent game review to a World of Warcraft wet dream.
It would be like a group of judges instead of a LaN PaRtAy.
The reason AoC got such good reviews, was because Funcom knew the content being reviewed was almost flawless.
'Tortage' will become the new gaming term for 'scamming' and 'duping'.
GM: Greetings! How may I be of assistance today?'
Player: Hi, some noob just tortaged me
GM: Omg, really?! Don't worry, this lowlife will be contacted and expunged. We do not want this kind of trash in OUR game!
Player: Great, glad to see you care about your customers
GM: You guys are our family! Tortaging will NOT be tolerated - who do you think we are? Failcom?!? Have a great day!1!one..
I never use a reviewer to decide whether to buy a game or not....They are often given freebies by companies and often either play for a very short time, get a short demo from a company rep, or get some otehr representation that makes the game look better than it is......If I want info on a game I'll look it up online and go with actual users......Yeah the public can be brutal at times but overall I find they are much more in depth and will be more honest about the state of a game.......
That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.
But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80. And then played each for 2 days.
Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time. No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through. But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.
The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there. And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.
But so what? Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging. But they didn't to that. Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.
As journalists you should assume the worst. And then prove that its the best. Not assume its ok and see what happens. Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.
Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player. And that is fine. Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea. But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it.
You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself. You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.
BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were. That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.
Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time. But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.
You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews. It took both of you about a month. That is fine. But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.
Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild. But that is not really the issue. We do not need 100% comprehensive review. What we need is a good survey of the entire game. Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.
Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses. There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily. But there are TONS things that can be done and are not. And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people. And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.
Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things. Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal.
But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess. Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it. But that didn't happen and does not happen. Well that is just plain negligent.
But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game? Seriously wtf?
You told us that. It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man. But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews. All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.
Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent. And as a professional they should try to shore those things up. And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should. And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.
No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review. But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60.
That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure. The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time. Oh really? Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.
Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.
Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played. Its that simple.
If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day. And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?
They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.
yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild. But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time. And that information is pretty darn important.
But no. They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest. Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.
The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying. They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).
The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.
If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously? Not many people.
Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change? Yes it would. The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time. Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.
I think your review was objective and fair.I also agree with the above post ,I look forward to Part 2
"after the time of dice came the day of mice "
I got suckered into buying it by the rating on this site.
(flashback to May) ....Oh AoC has 8.8 rating I'llhave to give it a try must be good to have an 8.8, boy did i get screwed out of $50. Should have been a 4.8 in my opinion since the only thing its got is graphics and they all look the same.
But I learned never buy an MMO without trying it in beta or a free trail first.
Keep in mind that people reviewing AoC before it came out were likely only reviewing the polished Tortage part of the game, which is a fairly well made Massive Multiplayer Online Single Player Game. If the whole game was done on the same scale, it would've likely kept the high scores and subs.
This game ruined me! I have learned my lesson well and i will never pre-order a game unless i have been involved in the beta and i actually liked it. Worst 60 bucks i have ever spent. Good looking box though, i have been throwing darts at it as i am bored as hell with no MMO to play. I do want to say thanks to Funcom for teaching me a valuable lesson!
Reviews are a poor measure of a game just like movie and book reviews are poor, but there is something else weighing in on the game review industry.
Whether a book, movie, or game is good or not is a matter of perspective. Myself, I am 37 years old and been gaming (off and on) for 30 years. No gaming *cough* journalist *cough* has enough of a background to be able to give a review let alone tell me what I may or may not like.
Now, about that something else. Every single site out there (including this one) and magazine out there depends heavily on ad revenues. There is a conflict of interest here in that why would, for example, Electronic Arts pay for advertising on a site that tells its readers to stay away from every single EA game? So, why would a game reviewer give an honest review of an EA game when that could very well cost them their job?
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Remember folks sonner or later they have to post there real numbers to stock holders and they will not be able to lie then.
MAGA
If he had enough traffic they would advertise on the Devil's website. I guarantee you that.
People forget. Companies may have money to spend but they also have money to make or they go bankrupt.
Plus there is competition. This is highly unlikely to really effect anything in a systematic without collusion between most publishers. And that would be highly illegal in the US.
That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.
But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80. And then played each for 2 days.
Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time. No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through. But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.
The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there. And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.
But so what? Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging. But they didn't to that. Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.
As journalists you should assume the worst. And then prove that its the best. Not assume its ok and see what happens. Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.
Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player. And that is fine. Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea. But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it.
You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself. You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.
BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were. That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.
Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time. But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.
You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews. It took both of you about a month. That is fine. But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.
Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild. But that is not really the issue. We do not need 100% comprehensive review. What we need is a good survey of the entire game. Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.
Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses. There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily. But there are TONS things that can be done and are not. And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people. And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.
Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things. Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal.
But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess. Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it. But that didn't happen and does not happen. Well that is just plain negligent.
But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game? Seriously wtf?
You told us that. It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man. But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews. All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.
Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent. And as a professional they should try to shore those things up. And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should. And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.
No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review. But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60.
That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure. The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time. Oh really? Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.
Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.
Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played. Its that simple.
If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day. And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?
They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.
yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild. But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time. And that information is pretty darn important.
But no. They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest. Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.
The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying. They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).
The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.
If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously? Not many people.
Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change? Yes it would. The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time. Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.
Alright, I'd like to continue my original post here.
There are a few things in particular that you're neglecting here about the industry as well.
Unlike MMORPG.com, which specializes solely in MMO reviews, most major gaming sites have multiple game genres on multiple platforms which they have to review at a time. It's very, very easy to attack said websites as a result because 1) reviews tend to see MUCH less time per game, and 2) as has already been said, they generate most of their revenue off of ads and hits. Essentially, as sad as it may seem, the site/magazine that releases the first review about a new, hyped game will generate a LOT of attention, whether it's accurate or not.
I feel like you have somewhat of a chip on your shoulder regarding journalists in general. We're taught from the get-go never to assume anything; it gets you in trouble in the field. You can't decide to assume everything works, nor that everything doesn't. While I doubt I'd ever get in trouble for libel in this field from a gaming company, when you practice outside of just video game reviews, you have to go only on what you can prove, or what you have experienced. I have not and will not ever start off playing a game with the thought of "...this is going to be one huge, heaping pile of garbage", because if I'm going into the game with that mindset, I'm not going to enjoy myself at all.
Another particular issue that is present with reviewing games like Age of Conan in a timely manner is the fact you mentioned regarding performance issues. In light of this game, I don't think it's really possible for us to have known that 10 people, all of whom have the same exact specs, could have run the game on the same settings with entirely different results. Age of Conan, from a technical perspective, is an anomaly. Some people were running this game lag-free, 40 fps, on the highest settings possible; others couldn't even get above 10 fps without turning their sound off, and running it on medium settings, because the "low" video settings actually damper performance. It's not possible for one reviewer to know that this would happen, professional reviewer or not.
I also personally believe that you're giving the developers entirely too much credit. It's hard to write a timely review when the NDA isn't even removed until the day of release. On top of that, I don't believe in writing a forced, half-assed review immediately post-release. Look at how many people pre-ordered AoC in the first month; some 400,000 if I'm not mistaken, no? That means that before I could have posted any sort of competent review, 400,000 people had already bought the game anyway. My opinion wasn't going to sway that chunk of the consumer base, regardless. So I did what I felt was most beneficial; I took the time to dissect the game for the people who were, in fact, waiting for the comprehensive reviews.
Lastly, I can not think of a single developer who would willingly give you a quick peak to all levels of their game post-release for the sake of writing a review. The free level 20,40,60,80 idea sounds good on paper, but in a practical sense it's a bit idealistic. By that same standard, they should also give game reviewers 1, 10, and 100 gold so that we can test out mounts, mounted combat, crafting, and all the other elements of the game. However, this is where the line is drawn between BETA and release. However, Funcom was particularly devious, and as mentioned before, would not break their NDA until the game was released.
This industry is a dirty business. It's not unusual to see genuine, sincere reviews edited for being too harsh/honest on a major gaming website. While I haven't had it happen here, on other websites (which I will not cite nor reference) I have submitted reviews and been told outright that my wording was "a little too harsh", and then shown a re-write that they would have been willing to run. In other cases, you'll submit a review to see whole chunks of what was originally produced MIA in the posted review, often times done so without your approval. You have to work around all the PR, spin, and hype amongst major game developers as well (for example, Vanguard in the MMO community, and say... Fable among the console community).
Compliment these already troublesome hurdles with the rampant wars between obvious "fanboys" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a positive light) and "haters" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a negative light) and it gets even more difficult to discern which writers are credible, and which ones generally have a hidden agenda. I personally follow a person who is consistent, and try to dodge the polar-style writers (extreme highs and lows).
A final thought regarding this industry though. If you follow the trend of major MMO releases in the past year or so, they tend to have a similar issue. They release prematurely, while hyping their game up to epic proportions. They fail to include all of their promised content and lack functionality. The developers pretend there isn't a problem for anywhere from 1-3 months. The game begins to nose-dive in terms of subscriptions as more and more comprehensive reviews begin to surface. The game developers come out and apologize, and admit their game has more problems than initially reported. The game fails.
I think the trend above shows what a lack of scruples there are by a lot of the companies we reviewers deal with these days. A lot of the time, what we're privileged enough to see isn't what we needed to see to make an accurate review. So we're left with the choice; quit the industry, and walk away from the business (because we're not indispensible), or give it our best effort to see through all the fog, and give it our best shot at presenting a review to the public using what we have available.
These are my thoughts on the matter...
...and I'm still here
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.
But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80. And then played each for 2 days.
Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time. No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through. But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.
The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there. And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.
But so what? Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging. But they didn't to that. Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.
As journalists you should assume the worst. And then prove that its the best. Not assume its ok and see what happens. Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.
Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player. And that is fine. Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea. But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it.
You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself. You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.
BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were. That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.
Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time. But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.
You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews. It took both of you about a month. That is fine. But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.
Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild. But that is not really the issue. We do not need 100% comprehensive review. What we need is a good survey of the entire game. Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.
Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses. There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily. But there are TONS things that can be done and are not. And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people. And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.
Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things. Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal.
But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess. Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it. But that didn't happen and does not happen. Well that is just plain negligent.
But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game? Seriously wtf?
You told us that. It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man. But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews. All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.
Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent. And as a professional they should try to shore those things up. And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should. And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.
No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review. But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60.
That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure. The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time. Oh really? Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.
Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.
Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played. Its that simple.
If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day. And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?
They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.
yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild. But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time. And that information is pretty darn important.
But no. They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest. Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.
The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying. They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).
The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.
If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously? Not many people.
Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change? Yes it would. The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time. Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.
Alright, I'd like to continue my original post here.
There are a few things in particular that you're neglecting here about the industry as well.
Unlike MMORPG.com, which specializes solely in MMO reviews, most major gaming sites have multiple game genres on multiple platforms which they have to review at a time. It's very, very easy to attack said websites as a result because 1) reviews tend to see MUCH less time per game, and 2) as has already been said, they generate most of their revenue off of ads and hits. Essentially, as sad as it may seem, the site/magazine that releases the first review about a new, hyped game will generate a LOT of attention, whether it's accurate or not.
I feel like you have somewhat of a chip on your shoulder regarding journalists in general. We're taught from the get-go never to assume anything; it gets you in trouble in the field. You can't decide to assume everything works, nor that everything doesn't. While I doubt I'd ever get in trouble for libel in this field from a gaming company, when you practice outside of just video game reviews, you have to go only on what you can prove, or what you have experienced. I have not and will not ever start off playing a game with the thought of "...this is going to be one huge, heaping pile of garbage", because if I'm going into the game with that mindset, I'm not going to enjoy myself at all.
Another particular issue that is present with reviewing games like Age of Conan in a timely manner is the fact you mentioned regarding performance issues. In light of this game, I don't think it's really possible for us to have known that 10 people, all of whom have the same exact specs, could have run the game on the same settings with entirely different results. Age of Conan, from a technical perspective, is an anomaly. Some people were running this game lag-free, 40 fps, on the highest settings possible; others couldn't even get above 10 fps without turning their sound off, and running it on medium settings, because the "low" video settings actually damper performance. It's not possible for one reviewer to know that this would happen, professional reviewer or not.
I also personally believe that you're giving the developers entirely too much credit. It's hard to write a timely review when the NDA isn't even removed until the day of release. On top of that, I don't believe in writing a forced, half-assed review immediately post-release. Look at how many people pre-ordered AoC in the first month; some 400,000 if I'm not mistaken, no? That means that before I could have posted any sort of competent review, 400,000 people had already bought the game anyway. My opinion wasn't going to sway that chunk of the consumer base, regardless. So I did what I felt was most beneficial; I took the time to dissect the game for the people who were, in fact, waiting for the comprehensive reviews.
Lastly, I can not think of a single developer who would willingly give you a quick peak to all levels of their game post-release for the sake of writing a review. The free level 20,40,60,80 idea sounds good on paper, but in a practical sense it's a bit idealistic. By that same standard, they should also give game reviewers 1, 10, and 100 gold so that we can test out mounts, mounted combat, crafting, and all the other elements of the game. However, this is where the line is drawn between BETA and release. However, Funcom was particularly devious, and as mentioned before, would not break their NDA until the game was released.
This industry is a dirty business. It's not unusual to see genuine, sincere reviews edited for being too harsh/honest on a major gaming website. While I haven't had it happen here, on other websites (which I will not cite nor reference) I have submitted reviews and been told outright that my wording was "a little too harsh", and then shown a re-write that they would have been willing to run. In other cases, you'll submit a review to see whole chunks of what was originally produced MIA in the posted review, often times done so without your approval. You have to work around all the PR, spin, and hype amongst major game developers as well (for example, Vanguard in the MMO community, and say... Fable among the console community).
Compliment these already troublesome hurdles with the rampant wars between obvious "fanboys" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a positive light) and "haters" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a negative light) and it gets even more difficult to discern which writers are credible, and which ones generally have a hidden agenda. I personally follow a person who is consistent, and try to dodge the polar-style writers (extreme highs and lows).
A final thought regarding this industry though. If you follow the trend of major MMO releases in the past year or so, they tend to have a similar issue. They release prematurely, while hyping their game up to epic proportions. They fail to include all of their promised content and lack functionality. The developers pretend there isn't a problem for anywhere from 1-3 months. The game begins to nose-dive in terms of subscriptions as more and more comprehensive reviews begin to surface. The game developers come out and apologize, and admit their game has more problems than initially reported. The game fails.
I think the trend above shows what a lack of scruples there are by a lot of the companies we reviewers deal with these days. A lot of the time, what we're privileged enough to see isn't what we needed to see to make an accurate review. So we're left with the choice; quit the industry, and walk away from the business (because we're not indispensible), or give it our best effort to see through all the fog, and give it our best shot at presenting a review to the public using what we have available.
These are my thoughts on the matter...
...and I'm still here
If, for the sake of argument, we simply accept this whole cloth. Then everyone here including me "who has a chip on their shoulder" seems entirely justified.
The majority of reveiws should be derided. And anyone claiming a review from a professional has any special standing what so ever should be laughed at.
I think this is the case. The actual experience one has is very subjective and a hard thing to reviews as "fact". Stability, graphics, presentation, and what the gameplay (combat for example) is like on the other hand is easier to review and something can be given a score. In that regard the reviewers did a good and reasonable job.
Those are the aspects one can hit initially. There is no end to mmorpg and as a result one can not review it like a non-mmorpg game. Look at the reviews of so many other mmorpgs and check out what they cover. You won't see one that covers end game content or even mid-level content unless they go back and do additional reviews on the game and focus on the game world itself. It's the mechanics of the game that get reviewed.
Unfortunately professional reviewers are that profesional reviewers. They have a large number of games released each month that they have review. Playing a game, setting up an intelligent commentary and getting it out so it's still news leaves little actual playing time. The most you can hope for in most games is a gemeral flavour of the game. Not a total experience.
This unfortunately doesn't work for MMOs. Most MMOs have a lengthy story line. The also have so called end game content. These things cannot be completely experienced in the short time a reviewer has before he hits his press deadline. So if the game has a great/good beginners area, and some decent begginers quests (like Tortage) it will get by most critics.
Waiting for the next thing
I would have to agree in regards to this game and other mmo's, reviewers do not have enough time to evaluate the game properly. Funcom put all there polish into the start of AoC for good reason. With the initial 'wow' you get with AoC combined with the promises with the end game, all the hype etc, its not hard to see why reviewers gave this game such rave reviews.
On the issue of game review sites/magazines being paid by publishers to give good reviews, thats definately true. Most of the 'payment' is through advertising. If a game review site gives bad scores, the publishers will threaten to revoke all advertising from the site. Reviewers are given 'encouragement' from employers to give good reviews.
Take the Kane and Lynch reviews on Gamespot for example
http://blog.wired.com/games/2007/11/sources-gamespo.html
Gamespot has no credibility from gamers for this reason.
So....what game did you make in 1992?
On that note I will say Funcom did a very good thing. They created a great first impression which is extremely important. The nature of the ever evolving game that a MMORPG gives them some room to work with if the end game isn't 100% there. No game has ever come out perfect, World of Warcraft is a rare example instead of the norm and we should all know this. It's a rare situation in a lot of things and that has to do with Blizzard as a company. A first impression is an important thing and that is something Funcom learned from Anarchy Online.
Now the lack of content I think can't 100% be put at their foot. What mmorpg out there has full end game content at release? Why is it when some of the hardcore players blow through everything in a matter of weeks (content that most likely took months or years to created) Funcom or any other company catches the blame and hate as a result?
Lack of unplayability of the game, bugs, lack of content all together, horrible first impression etc are things I'd agree one should go after them before. I hate the lack of content argument at the high level. If one were to go through things at a sane pace I'm sure that would give them time to add more stuff. I'd even go so far to say the normal player (not the hardcore) hasn't maxed out on content) and won't for a while since the game came out recently.
Subscription drop offs is a common thing. What game has kept most of it's initially buyers? 800K down to 400K or even a little less then that (only have their word until one can prove otherwise) is still good. Everyone would love more but really how many active subscribers do other successful MMORPGs have that are not World of Warcraft? People seem to act as if the game dropped to only a few thousand and stable nature of the game doesn't even make that possible I think. A lot of people always want to try out the new thing. Some say and others don't. With so many games to pick from not everyone can play them all even if they want to.
Not trying to blindly defend the game (only just signed back up today), just trying to present a different picture here.