Thank you for your concern. I am not outraged after reading your article, because I disagree with your point. My reply is below, should you care to read it. I hope you enjoy the next game you choose to play.
It is your responsibility, as an individual, to evaluate information about a game for yourself. Whether it is a trailer from the developer/publisher, review from a site/magazine, discussion in a forum, or game footage from an event like E3 - it is up to you to process the information and gauge whether or not the game could be fun for you. There is usually a ton of information about a game, including game footage on YouTube, to help you make a decision.
Regarding Star Wars : The Old Republic, I played it and the game was fairly fun until the endgame, like you said. However, people who write about games before they are released, are only granted access to play the games in short duration, usually, and can only write about what they experienced. I've read plenty of articles pre-launch, that explain what class, race, levels, areas, the writer was able to experience. They can attempt to predict how the game will be, based on their experience so far, but it's still up to you to take the chance based on someone else's best guess.
If you don't agree with someone who writes about the games, then you can choose to stop reading what they write, or read their articles and skip the games they enjoy (and vice versa). You can also wait a couple of months until people reach the endgame, then read more complete reviews, and make your evaluation then. You have choices. Making an unrealistic demand, for reviews to be more complete, when it is only up to the developers/publishers to decide what can be reviewed/experienced, will get us nowhere.
OP is just upset his game of choice has a low score. Why anyone would care what the game you like got for score is beoynd me. I wont enjoy a game, then read a bad review and think "oh, this game is bad, what am I doing!?"
Furthermore people need to get over Teras amazing combat. WHile the idea and system is nice, the fact that mobs more times then not just stand facing the wrong way and do absolutely nothing can't possibly be considered awesome gameplay.
As for endgame, Tera offers dungeons, in hardmode. While SWTOR's endgame raids weren't that ace, it actually has more endgame. The fact that the OP does't like it doesn't mean it ain't there.
Should SW:TOR's score be drastically lower? Would Tera's have been drastically higher? Is the next big MMO going to be more overhyped garbage? We'll never know because there's No longer any Quality Control. The reason why I'm angry and you should be too is because we're back to the bad old days of gaming where developers can make a trash game, slap an IP on it and make millions of dollars because players keep being suckered into buying it. People think that the problem is the industry itself, but my argument is that it's the lack of a reliable Quality Control medium that used to help players make smarter choices, and protect us from big developers that like to rehash a poor product, slap an popular IP on it, and charge full price for it. But what we have now is bad reviewers, overhyping bad games, made by big bad million dollar businesses, which is bad for our pockets, and bad for the industry.
Sure. Any mature mmo enthusiast knows that there was blatent editorial misconduct by sites; on http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic look at PC Gamer, G4 TV, IGN Ten Ton Ton Hammer, MMORPG.COM, to name a few. Contrast that with the consumer review. At no time in my mmo history have I seen the gross level of irresponsible reviewing for what should have been a "Massively-Multiplayer" game.
Know who reviewed them and question whether you'd trust thier judgement again. Sure some people dont read reviews, but the vast majority do; otherwise the sites and magazines wouldn't be getting "Advertising" money from the publishers; to think otherwise is rediculas.
The bad reviewers have been proven horribly horribly wrong, their credibility challenged, and the more mmo-enthusiast type gamer knows it; hundreds of thousands. Players dont need an objective review recipe, they need honesty in reporting; It is so painfully obvious that that did not occur with the reviewers for TOR, but even more painfully obvious that the consumers called them on it. Even if a reviewer only spent 20-hours playing TOR, any fair minded person knows that even with that amount of time, the core mechanics of game-play were blatently obvious.
As consumers, just keep making your view known, as the editorial reviewers will try to shut you up. The consequence of not doing so will result with more shoddy & shallow games that are inappropriately reviewed for a buck.
First a quick history lesson. A long long time ago there was no game reviewers there were just people that made games, and people that brought them. Most games made back then were trash but they sold because they had some IP we liked like Ghost Busters or Ninja Turtles. Eventually people got angry, like the Angry Video Game Nerd and started actually reviewing games. Developers still made trash games but almost nobody brought them because there was a whole media division of Quality Control professional game reviewers that could tell us if a game was good or not before we brought it.
Now I'm not picking on any particular site or blogger, as I know a lot of you guys try your best. But the community is outraged once again at the lack of quality MMOs being released. And players want to blame the developers to stop making bad games, but that's never going to happen because we keep buying them! So why do we keep buying bad games? Because the gaming media bloggers and reviewers tell us these games are GOOD and we should buy them! I'm outraged at the lack of Quality Control that time after time has mislead people into buying completely overhyped, underdeveloped games. It hurts gamers pockets and it helps big developers make money off a bad product.
My case in point is how SW:TOR not only got great reviews but even got called game of the year by many publications despite only being out a few weeks! Fast forward to Tera, a game that majority of players would consider a better then SW:TOR but has a drastically lower score. Now a lot of publications are backpedaling on SW:TOR's outrageous scores, saying stuff like it was fun at the time, and that they didn't know the game wasn't good. Well guess what? It's your JOB to know if a game is good or bad. I don't get paid to play games for a living, and even I could tell that SW:TOR was drastically overhyped. Just like every other AAA MMO that came out after WoW was ridiculously overhyped.
I'll tell you exactly why Tera got a worse score then SW:TOR. If you look at both reviews of the game you'll see the same issue and that's the fact that the reviewers themselves only played one portion of the game! If you take SW:TOR's leveling and compare it to Tera's leveling portion of the MMO, then the scores make sense, because that's all that was actually taken into account. But if the reviewers actually did their jobs and played both the leveling portion and the endgame portion of the MMOs they would have given an more accurate review.
TL;DR
Should SW:TOR's score be drastically lower? Would Tera's have been drastically higher? Is the next big MMO going to be more overhyped garbage? We'll never know because there's No longer any Quality Control. The reason why I'm angry and you should be too is because we're back to the bad old days of gaming where developers can make a trash game, slap an IP on it and make millions of dollars because players keep being suckered into buying it. People think that the problem is the industry itself, but my argument is that it's the lack of a reliable Quality Control medium that used to help players make smarter choices, and protect us from big developers that like to rehash a poor product, slap an popular IP on it, and charge full price for it. But what we have now is bad reviewers, overhyping bad games, made by big bad million dollar businesses, which is bad for our pockets, and bad for the industry.
Its not reviewers its people like you who think Tera is a far better game than SWTOR...LOL. Tera will die out after a few months because people will get tired of it. Tera is not better than SWTOR. The graphics are nice and the game just lacks about everything. A completely off the mark post.
My case in point is how SW:TOR not only got great reviews but even got called game of the year by many publications despite only being out a few weeks! Fast forward to Tera, a game that majority of players would consider a better then SW:TOR but has a drastically lower score. Now a lot of publications are backpedaling on SW:TOR's outrageous scores, saying stuff like it was fun at the time, and that they didn't know the game wasn't good. Well guess what? It's your JOB to know if a game is good or bad. I don't get paid to play games for a living, and even I could tell that SW:TOR was drastically overhyped. Just like every other AAA MMO that came out after WoW was ridiculously overhyped.
This site is a business. Someone throws them a bone, and their job is to say that the game is the best thing since sliced bread.
It's nothing to get upset about.
Throw me $500 and I'll give a review that states Pac-Man is 10/10, the most fun I've had while gaming, and well worth a $60 price tag.
I simply don't trust any opinion I read on the internet that is not from someone I know because I have seen first hand how the industry works behind the scenes.
ah, but I do the same. I don't trust any 1 opinion that's given as a review: what I do is take a look at a host of reviews, positive as well as negative ones, professional as well as amateur, preferrably also from people with different stances and tastes in gaming.
Taken these altogether, I'm old and wise enough to glean enough about a game to have a general impression, and how the gameplay is regarded by people with different tastes from eachother. I usually combine that with what I know about the things that I like in games, and this combined works for me to make my choices.
Cool, if that works for you it's a reasonable approach.
Like I say I just disregard them all, whether I want to like the game or not. They are all equally as worthless to me.
If a game has features and theme to it that I find attractive I just buy it and play it. If my RL friends have played it I will ask them first for their opinion and take that on board.
That's as complicated as I get really...
I used the same approach as Cutthecrap but more to see if there fundamental flaw in the technical side of things, such as bugs and camera issues. But like you said, i started disregarding reviewers opinions on the major games like CoD and Elder scrolls because I cant imagine how non of those people could have possibly missed all those issue with Skyrim.
As consumers, just keep making your view known, as the editorial reviewers will try to shut you up. The consequence of not doing so will result with more shoddy & shallow games that are inappropriately reviewed for a buck.
Ten points to everyone who correctly identified the slippery slope in the closing remarks.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Tera offers zero that is new. Not a single thing. Its so called action combat is not new either...there are other action MMOs with virtually identical combat.
Wrong, as usual.
Originally posted by ozmono
Originally posted by jtcgs
Tera offers zero that is new. Not a single thing. Its so called action combat is not new either...there are other action MMOs with virtually identical combat.
Care to name them?
Rebel, thats all you ever say...because you seem to be unable to actually refute anything. Try naming a single thing the game does that is new...you cant, because it doesnt.
Ozmono, Vindictus outside of dodge being directional double tap...want to now try to name something Tera does that is new?
Sure, there were plenty of bad games back then but there were also plenty of good game. In fact every 2 weeks there were about 15 games that sounded interesting and 10 that I liked.
Nowadays there is about one game releasing each month that sounds interesting and maybe 3 or 4 good each year.
But you know what? That had nothing to do with reviews whatsoever. Games back then were made by gamers for gamers. Now big corps are making all games in a factory styled enviroment, and people in suits decide what gamers want. It is kinda like compared a great homemade meal to a cheap TV dinner.
Don't you think that at least partially that has got something to do that you've grown older and have maybe 30+ yrs of gaming behind you? That for kids that are now at the age you were back then, there still are like 15 games that sound interesting and 10 that they like, or that if you were that kid you were in the '80s but then grown up today, that you also'd have looked upon the current batch of games differently?
Just like maybe how tv shows like Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers and The A-Team might have been awesome as a kid or teen, but years later as a grown up just might look silly, the taste of people after years of tv shows having changed in the course of time.
Not saying that games haven't become big business that caters more to a mainstream audience than just the small population of hardcore gamers that it catered to in past decades. But I think jadedness after decades of playing games also plays a role. Just like sex isn't as magical after many years of doing it as it was in the first year(s), same with other things that people've been entertained with for years to decades. I see a lot less jadedness and pickiness among kids and teens regarding games and gaming than among people who've played games for decades.
Nope, because the fact is, when I come across something interesting, I still have a great time, all these years later. For example, I'm really loving the emergent gameplay in 'Day Z', which is really just an FPS mod that has turned into an interesting multiplayer persistent RPG game. It's more interesting that just about any other game out there, and it's a clunky alpha mod.
Same goes with FPS games. I've been playing them since the beginning way back in the early 90's, and good new innovative FPS games are always a blast. Regurgitated copy-cats are boring. I'm loving Tribes Ascend right now, and it's based on a 10+ year old franchise. They innovated the game while keeping the core values intact, and people are loving it.
I see this argument come up all the time here. "Maybe you're just burned out on the MMORPGgenre" or "Maybe you've just become jaded". This is only true if I am forced to keep playing the same game with a new skin on it, which has been the case for at least 7-8 years now.
I agree with the OP about the ludicrous game reviews right after SWTOR released. I was laughing at the level of praise it was getting before anyone had really gotten into the game. I've learned that I need a minimum of two weeks worth of regular gameplay before I start judging a game, and sometimes it can take up to a month for me to realize I'm really not enjoying it. To call SWTOR game of the year days after launch was just unfounded hype, IMO.
Hell, my first impressions of TOR were positive, and I even came here and made a post about it, but it turned out that I was just excited to be playing a new game. It only took a week or two before the whole contrived nature of it started to bother me and I had to force myself to log in. That was when I knew I was done.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
My case in point is how SW:TOR not only got great reviews but even got called game of the year by many publications despite only being out a few weeks! Fast forward to Tera, a game that majority of players would consider a better then SW:TOR but has a drastically lower score. Now a lot of publications are backpedaling on SW:TOR's outrageous scores, saying stuff like it was fun at the time, and that they didn't know the game wasn't good. Well guess what? It's your JOB to know if a game is good or bad. I don't get paid to play games for a living, and even I could tell that SW:TOR was drastically overhyped. Just like every other AAA MMO that came out after WoW was ridiculously overhyped.
This site is a business. Someone throws them a bone, and their job is to say that the game is the best thing since sliced bread.
It's nothing to get upset about.
Throw me $500 and I'll give a review that states Pac-Man is 10/10, the most fun I've had while gaming, and well worth a $60 price tag.
When people catch on to your paid-for reviews, your reputation and your worthless articles will be called out.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Without good reviews for bad games mmo sites like these wouldn't be needed. Most official reviewers are paid off in some shape or form to get a good review. Just about every mmo since vanilla WoW has been bad and mostly all of them get good reviews. Amazing how that works isn't it ? If some reviewers would just be honest and say this mmo is bad it would actually help make the mmo industry better because it would help force devs to actually make much better games. If players stop buying bad mmos this would actually be a huge leap forward.
Without good reviews for bad games mmo sites like these wouldn't be needed. Most official reviewers are paid off in some shape or form to get a good review. Just about every mmo since vanilla WoW has been bad and mostly all of them get good reviews. Amazing how that works isn't it ? If some reviewers would just be honest and say this mmo is bad it would actually help make the mmo industry better because it would help force devs to actually make much better games. If players stop buys bad mmos this would actually be a huge leap forward.
Really? Because for me, this site is more about finding information on games, and being able to discuss them in the forums with other gamers. I would still come here if they stopped doing reviews and just occasionally posted news articles.
What sucks is, they deal with Indy games harshly here, and expect them to be of the same quality and polish as AAA games. Personally I think they should be broken off into their own section so they can get some respect, all things considered. I'm not talking about giving indy games arbitrarily higher reviews, but to see them in the proper context.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Without good reviews for bad games mmo sites like these wouldn't be needed. Most official reviewers are paid off in some shape or form to get a good review. Just about every mmo since vanilla WoW has been bad and mostly all of them get good reviews. Amazing how that works isn't it ? If some reviewers would just be honest and say this mmo is bad it would actually help make the mmo industry better because it would help force devs to actually make much better games. If players stop buying bad mmos this would actually be a huge leap forward.
This makes no sense at all. The fact that you apparently disliked all MMO's since WoW, doesn't make them bad games, just games of a type that you hated or despised. So what?
A game can be good quality while still being bad to a person that doesn't like that type of gameplay.
IGN is a walking testament on how to be a bad reviewer. This is in part why I decided to do writing for MMORPG instead, the site is pretty untouched by the tendrils of big companies.
I have no trust in any writer or any site for reviews of games, all reviews are self opinionated, and my believe is all sites and magazines are bought. My opinion on that will never change.
Well yeah, they are going to be self-opinionated. We have yet to perfect that kind of robot technology. Then again, most writers try to use their opinion to sway the masses, and in doing so they relate to the people and what they want.
Believing that everyone can be bought, however, is kind of silly.
Reviewing MMOs is a questionable process as the necessary time commitment to do and see everything the game has to offer is usually very high. This is usually counter-productive for game reviewers or publications as they want to be the first to put their reviews out there. Some MMOs may even frontload their best content, leaving the end-game with nothing to show.
With that said, MMOs are games that change over time. New patches update the game, expansions are released, new payment models are introduced, you name it. In any case, I don't believe that a single review of a MMO at any given point in time cannot be representative of its past or future versions. For example, vanilla WoW is a very different game from its next incarnation - The Burning Crusade - which is also different from Wrath of the Lich King and Mists of Pandaria. Even with these expansions numerous patches and changes have been made to shape the game experience. These cannot be accounted for by single game reviews.
Since my green friend was removed from my first post in this thread by mods (he's in my profile pics if you want to say hi), let me say this instead. If SWTOR had received a lower score than TERA, does that mean TERA would have gotten a higher score than it did? Probably not. Not that I agree with all of Bill Murphy's reviews (see DCU, esp. when he failed to mention that a good friend of his held a key postion with the game) but he shouldn't change his review just because butthurt fanboys are raging at him. If you look at the review ratings on metacritic, the critic and user scores are both almost identical to what Bill rated TERA.
Without good reviews for bad games mmo sites like these wouldn't be needed. Most official reviewers are paid off in some shape or form to get a good review. Just about every mmo since vanilla WoW has been bad and mostly all of them get good reviews. Amazing how that works isn't it ? If some reviewers would just be honest and say this mmo is bad it would actually help make the mmo industry better because it would help force devs to actually make much better games. If players stop buys bad mmos this would actually be a huge leap forward.
Really? Because for me, this site is more about finding information on games, and being able to discuss them in the forums with other gamers. I would still come here if they stopped doing reviews and just occasionally posted news articles.
What sucks is, they deal with Indy games harshly here, and expect them to be of the same quality and polish as AAA games. Personally I think they should be broken off into their own section so they can get some respect, all things considered. I'm not talking about giving indy games arbitrarily higher reviews, but to see them in the proper context.
If indie games are charging the same price as AAA games yet aren't of the same quality and polish then they deserve to be treated harshly. Being indie doesn't give you a free pass to release garbage.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Except you're 29 years old and many on this site are far older and lived a bit more of it thus having first hand experience.
er, what is your take on video game articles that started in the late 70's? if you want to talk history let's talk history.
Otherwise, I think SWToR is a good game as well as Tera. So regardless of good or bad reviews I can make up my own mind.
Maybe the problem is that too many people are getting outraged over silly things. Or that they have created some impossible game in their mind that just can never be and are living in a constant state of outrage because that's the type of drama they want.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I think it's very expensive to make a first rate game, so devs are looking for assurances from investors to secure funds. This leads to a formulaic approach that leads us down the path we are on. Across all gaming genres there is sequalitis and 'something missing' syndrome going on, as gamers realize that many of these games lack soul and feel very lifeless and contrived.
Blaming gamers or reviewers or anyone won't change this fact. It's up to the gaming industry to change things.
We'll still see the occasional amazing game. I think it's more luck than anything else.
I for one have gone back and started playing older games that I missed or am investing my time in other pursuits outside gaming.
Even here, when other players give reviews we're either called trolls or fanbois, so no one believes what we say, but if its a professional review (which most likely means they got paid by someone), then people tend to believe it more.....In truth I find my peers on game websites to be more accountable than professional reviewers......ALso gamers like us have often played the game longer than the reviewers have so we have a better feel for whether SWTOR is good in the long run or not.
Even here, when other players give reviews we're either called trolls or fanbois, so no one believes what we say, but if its a professional review (which most likely means they got paid by someone), then people tend to believe it more.....In truth I find my peers on game websites to be more accountable than professional reviewers......ALso gamers like us have often played the game longer than the reviewers have so we have a better feel for whether SWTOR is good in the long run or not.
I'm kind of the same way. I know a lot of people go on about all the negativity here, but I'd much rather read player impressions, reviews, etc.
My case in point is how SW:TOR not only got great reviews but even got called game of the year by many publications despite only being out a few weeks! Fast forward to Tera, a game that majority of players would consider a better then SW:TOR but has a drastically lower score. Now a lot of publications are backpedaling on SW:TOR's outrageous scores, saying stuff like it was fun at the time, and that they didn't know the game wasn't good. Well guess what? It's your JOB to know if a game is good or bad. I don't get paid to play games for a living, and even I could tell that SW:TOR was drastically overhyped. Just like every other AAA MMO that came out after WoW was ridiculously overhyped.
This site is a business. Someone throws them a bone, and their job is to say that the game is the best thing since sliced bread.
It's nothing to get upset about.
Throw me $500 and I'll give a review that states Pac-Man is 10/10, the most fun I've had while gaming, and well worth a $60 price tag.
When people catch on to your paid-for reviews, your reputation and your worthless articles will be called out.
That's when and if they would catch on (Which seems highly unlikely judging by the norm I see frequenting these sites). And if one person finally does, he looks like a disgruntled gamer that is easily swept under the rug.
Deep down, people don't want to hear truth. They want to hear how Warcraft has 10.2 million people paying $15 a month and MoP is going to make the game fresh and new again, Aion is not grindy now, and how Guild Wars 2 is going to break the mold in MMO's.
People get paid to tell these gamers the things they want to hear. It's not a bad thing.
After I read the Review on SWTOR on this site back in december, i stopped reading any kind of review on this site, will never ever trust anyone who do any form of offical review who get add money.
Comments
Bigbadwlf
Thank you for your concern. I am not outraged after reading your article, because I disagree with your point. My reply is below, should you care to read it. I hope you enjoy the next game you choose to play.
It is your responsibility, as an individual, to evaluate information about a game for yourself. Whether it is a trailer from the developer/publisher, review from a site/magazine, discussion in a forum, or game footage from an event like E3 - it is up to you to process the information and gauge whether or not the game could be fun for you. There is usually a ton of information about a game, including game footage on YouTube, to help you make a decision.
Regarding Star Wars : The Old Republic, I played it and the game was fairly fun until the endgame, like you said. However, people who write about games before they are released, are only granted access to play the games in short duration, usually, and can only write about what they experienced. I've read plenty of articles pre-launch, that explain what class, race, levels, areas, the writer was able to experience. They can attempt to predict how the game will be, based on their experience so far, but it's still up to you to take the chance based on someone else's best guess.
If you don't agree with someone who writes about the games, then you can choose to stop reading what they write, or read their articles and skip the games they enjoy (and vice versa). You can also wait a couple of months until people reach the endgame, then read more complete reviews, and make your evaluation then. You have choices. Making an unrealistic demand, for reviews to be more complete, when it is only up to the developers/publishers to decide what can be reviewed/experienced, will get us nowhere.
OP is just upset his game of choice has a low score. Why anyone would care what the game you like got for score is beoynd me. I wont enjoy a game, then read a bad review and think "oh, this game is bad, what am I doing!?"
Furthermore people need to get over Teras amazing combat. WHile the idea and system is nice, the fact that mobs more times then not just stand facing the wrong way and do absolutely nothing can't possibly be considered awesome gameplay.
As for endgame, Tera offers dungeons, in hardmode. While SWTOR's endgame raids weren't that ace, it actually has more endgame. The fact that the OP does't like it doesn't mean it ain't there.
Sure. Any mature mmo enthusiast knows that there was blatent editorial misconduct by sites; on http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic look at PC Gamer, G4 TV, IGN Ten Ton Ton Hammer, MMORPG.COM, to name a few. Contrast that with the consumer review. At no time in my mmo history have I seen the gross level of irresponsible reviewing for what should have been a "Massively-Multiplayer" game.
Know who reviewed them and question whether you'd trust thier judgement again. Sure some people dont read reviews, but the vast majority do; otherwise the sites and magazines wouldn't be getting "Advertising" money from the publishers; to think otherwise is rediculas.
The bad reviewers have been proven horribly horribly wrong, their credibility challenged, and the more mmo-enthusiast type gamer knows it; hundreds of thousands. Players dont need an objective review recipe, they need honesty in reporting; It is so painfully obvious that that did not occur with the reviewers for TOR, but even more painfully obvious that the consumers called them on it. Even if a reviewer only spent 20-hours playing TOR, any fair minded person knows that even with that amount of time, the core mechanics of game-play were blatently obvious.
As consumers, just keep making your view known, as the editorial reviewers will try to shut you up. The consequence of not doing so will result with more shoddy & shallow games that are inappropriately reviewed for a buck.
Its not reviewers its people like you who think Tera is a far better game than SWTOR...LOL. Tera will die out after a few months because people will get tired of it. Tera is not better than SWTOR. The graphics are nice and the game just lacks about everything. A completely off the mark post.
This site is a business. Someone throws them a bone, and their job is to say that the game is the best thing since sliced bread.
It's nothing to get upset about.
Throw me $500 and I'll give a review that states Pac-Man is 10/10, the most fun I've had while gaming, and well worth a $60 price tag.
I used the same approach as Cutthecrap but more to see if there fundamental flaw in the technical side of things, such as bugs and camera issues. But like you said, i started disregarding reviewers opinions on the major games like CoD and Elder scrolls because I cant imagine how non of those people could have possibly missed all those issue with Skyrim.
Ten points to everyone who correctly identified the slippery slope in the closing remarks.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Raiderz
Nope, because the fact is, when I come across something interesting, I still have a great time, all these years later. For example, I'm really loving the emergent gameplay in 'Day Z', which is really just an FPS mod that has turned into an interesting multiplayer persistent RPG game. It's more interesting that just about any other game out there, and it's a clunky alpha mod.
Same goes with FPS games. I've been playing them since the beginning way back in the early 90's, and good new innovative FPS games are always a blast. Regurgitated copy-cats are boring. I'm loving Tribes Ascend right now, and it's based on a 10+ year old franchise. They innovated the game while keeping the core values intact, and people are loving it.
I see this argument come up all the time here. "Maybe you're just burned out on the MMORPGgenre" or "Maybe you've just become jaded". This is only true if I am forced to keep playing the same game with a new skin on it, which has been the case for at least 7-8 years now.
I agree with the OP about the ludicrous game reviews right after SWTOR released. I was laughing at the level of praise it was getting before anyone had really gotten into the game. I've learned that I need a minimum of two weeks worth of regular gameplay before I start judging a game, and sometimes it can take up to a month for me to realize I'm really not enjoying it. To call SWTOR game of the year days after launch was just unfounded hype, IMO.
Hell, my first impressions of TOR were positive, and I even came here and made a post about it, but it turned out that I was just excited to be playing a new game. It only took a week or two before the whole contrived nature of it started to bother me and I had to force myself to log in. That was when I knew I was done.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
When people catch on to your paid-for reviews, your reputation and your worthless articles will be called out.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
For years now, Gamespy.com has the most honest reviews.
They gave Tera 3.5 out of 5 stars, and SWTOR 4 out of 5.
I would give both 3.5 out of 5, but still they are consistently very close to my personal opinion.
NEW IDEAS that can refresh the STALE state of MMORPGs
Without good reviews for bad games mmo sites like these wouldn't be needed. Most official reviewers are paid off in some shape or form to get a good review. Just about every mmo since vanilla WoW has been bad and mostly all of them get good reviews. Amazing how that works isn't it ? If some reviewers would just be honest and say this mmo is bad it would actually help make the mmo industry better because it would help force devs to actually make much better games. If players stop buying bad mmos this would actually be a huge leap forward.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
Really? Because for me, this site is more about finding information on games, and being able to discuss them in the forums with other gamers. I would still come here if they stopped doing reviews and just occasionally posted news articles.
What sucks is, they deal with Indy games harshly here, and expect them to be of the same quality and polish as AAA games. Personally I think they should be broken off into their own section so they can get some respect, all things considered. I'm not talking about giving indy games arbitrarily higher reviews, but to see them in the proper context.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
This makes no sense at all. The fact that you apparently disliked all MMO's since WoW, doesn't make them bad games, just games of a type that you hated or despised. So what?
A game can be good quality while still being bad to a person that doesn't like that type of gameplay.
Well yeah, they are going to be self-opinionated. We have yet to perfect that kind of robot technology. Then again, most writers try to use their opinion to sway the masses, and in doing so they relate to the people and what they want.
Believing that everyone can be bought, however, is kind of silly.
Reviewing MMOs is a questionable process as the necessary time commitment to do and see everything the game has to offer is usually very high. This is usually counter-productive for game reviewers or publications as they want to be the first to put their reviews out there. Some MMOs may even frontload their best content, leaving the end-game with nothing to show.
With that said, MMOs are games that change over time. New patches update the game, expansions are released, new payment models are introduced, you name it. In any case, I don't believe that a single review of a MMO at any given point in time cannot be representative of its past or future versions. For example, vanilla WoW is a very different game from its next incarnation - The Burning Crusade - which is also different from Wrath of the Lich King and Mists of Pandaria. Even with these expansions numerous patches and changes have been made to shape the game experience. These cannot be accounted for by single game reviews.
League of Legends | Guild Wars 2
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Since my green friend was removed from my first post in this thread by mods (he's in my profile pics if you want to say hi), let me say this instead. If SWTOR had received a lower score than TERA, does that mean TERA would have gotten a higher score than it did? Probably not. Not that I agree with all of Bill Murphy's reviews (see DCU, esp. when he failed to mention that a good friend of his held a key postion with the game) but he shouldn't change his review just because butthurt fanboys are raging at him. If you look at the review ratings on metacritic, the critic and user scores are both almost identical to what Bill rated TERA.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/tera
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
If indie games are charging the same price as AAA games yet aren't of the same quality and polish then they deserve to be treated harshly. Being indie doesn't give you a free pass to release garbage.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
Except you're 29 years old and many on this site are far older and lived a bit more of it thus having first hand experience.
er, what is your take on video game articles that started in the late 70's? if you want to talk history let's talk history.
Otherwise, I think SWToR is a good game as well as Tera. So regardless of good or bad reviews I can make up my own mind.
Maybe the problem is that too many people are getting outraged over silly things. Or that they have created some impossible game in their mind that just can never be and are living in a constant state of outrage because that's the type of drama they want.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I think it's very expensive to make a first rate game, so devs are looking for assurances from investors to secure funds. This leads to a formulaic approach that leads us down the path we are on. Across all gaming genres there is sequalitis and 'something missing' syndrome going on, as gamers realize that many of these games lack soul and feel very lifeless and contrived.
Blaming gamers or reviewers or anyone won't change this fact. It's up to the gaming industry to change things.
We'll still see the occasional amazing game. I think it's more luck than anything else.
I for one have gone back and started playing older games that I missed or am investing my time in other pursuits outside gaming.
Even here, when other players give reviews we're either called trolls or fanbois, so no one believes what we say, but if its a professional review (which most likely means they got paid by someone), then people tend to believe it more.....In truth I find my peers on game websites to be more accountable than professional reviewers......ALso gamers like us have often played the game longer than the reviewers have so we have a better feel for whether SWTOR is good in the long run or not.
I'm kind of the same way. I know a lot of people go on about all the negativity here, but I'd much rather read player impressions, reviews, etc.
That's when and if they would catch on (Which seems highly unlikely judging by the norm I see frequenting these sites). And if one person finally does, he looks like a disgruntled gamer that is easily swept under the rug.
Deep down, people don't want to hear truth. They want to hear how Warcraft has 10.2 million people paying $15 a month and MoP is going to make the game fresh and new again, Aion is not grindy now, and how Guild Wars 2 is going to break the mold in MMO's.
People get paid to tell these gamers the things they want to hear. It's not a bad thing.
After I read the Review on SWTOR on this site back in december, i stopped reading any kind of review on this site, will never ever trust anyone who do any form of offical review who get add money.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
Hence the outrage over IGN's review of TERA