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MMORPG.com and Age of Conan--what happened?
The.Watcher
Member Posts: 6
Good day all. For obvious reasons, I am not using my primary account at these forums. What I am about to say will likely be quickly deleted and this username banned, so please consider this carefully. I do not mean to imply any wrongdoing on MMORPG.com's part, but recent history in the AoC forum has inclined me to bring this issue to the community's attention. So: here is what I have seen over the last few days.
Before beginning, I need to express how disappointed I am to be saying this. MMORPG.com has been, over the years, an excellent source of information and community contact for the MMORPG industry. Recently, however, my faith in the available opinions and information at this site has been destroyed. It seems the administration of this once-phenomenal operation have lost sight of this site's intent. MMORPG.com, wtf mates? Why?
That said, the community forums for Age of Conan--a game that has just recently been released, as most of you well know--were, a week ago, absolutely flooded with criticisms, bashes, and general "This game is crap" posts. The game's rating, as reported by MMORPG.com's number-based voting system, was somewhere around 7.6, and the combined reports of the rating and the posts agreed quite well with my own opinion of the game. In my opinion, AoC simply is not fun--but that opinion is not the focus of this post.
A few days ago, between 17-18 May 2008, all of the AoC criticism's in MMORPG.com's forum were deleted. Some of the authors of these posts were notified that the messages were deleted because they were off topic. Mods? Admins? Criticisms, off topic? All of them? I find that hard to believe. The game's praises were left in place. Coincidentally, the game's rating also jumped to a 9.0 literally overnight. Amazing, right? At the time this article is being written, the rating is at 8.9. I have not seen a game score that high on MMORPG.com EVER. Not even WoW, if I remember right, ranked that high. So are we seeing an instantaneous revolution among the MMORPG.com community? Something inside me tells me--probably not.
Today, visiting MMORPG.com's homepage, all I see are AoC ads. Everywhere. Lots of them. More than half of the slides in the front page slide show are representative of Age of Conan, with each other in-development game receiving maybe one--maybe two. The news clip right below the banner--also AoC--cleverly complements the slew of AoC news links in the pane directly to the right--a pane, I should mention, that is supposed to cover news for all MMORPGs equally. And if you somehow do manage to get by without seeing any of these things, the top banner is also dedicated to AoC, and in ridiculously huge fashion. Visiting MMORPG.com's main page, I could easily mistake it for an AoC fansite, and as far as I can tell, that is exactly what this site has become.
I don't know why MMORPG.com has deleted the critical AoC posts or why eight hundred million (hyperbole) ads have magically shown up. I do understand that it makes sense for AoC to be receiving better-than-normal coverage on account of its impending release. But seriously? Nothing else is being covered--or at least not with any substance. The lack of coverage, though, can be rationally justified. What seriously bothers me is MMORPG.com's censorship of the forums, seeming manipulation of the vote system (and I must emphasize "seeming"--with only observation of the final rating, it is -technically- possible that the rating legitimately increased by so much in so short a period), and blatant support for Age of Conan's advertising campaign.
As far as I can tell, MMORPG.com is no longer a neutral entity in terms of journalistic MMO reporting. That bothers me. It should bother you, too. If you don't care, please simply disregard this message. If you do care, speak up. Let them know you've noticed what's going on around here lately. I know I'm not the only one. As far as I'm concerned, I'm done with this site unless/until they change this policy of censorship.
And no, I'm not please to be posting this. I have relied on this site for a long time for excellent information and good reviews from fellow MMO players. Sad day when I can't trust that information anymore.
(Also, sorry for the wall of text. This is a pretty wtf move on the administrators' part. I felt compelled to elaborate.)
Comments
You know i did find something strange the other day i saw a new topic in general. The title was something along the lines of AOC is a wow clone with better graphic's . I read it it's got about 7 posts in it none of them are vulgur or in anyway would have broke any rules of this site .
So anyway's about an hour later i go to check that thread and its been deleted . Yes i think you are right on the money friend and all use my real account because quite frankly am sick of this site and there biased moderators
The rating thing has happened before. I think it was with LotRO or Tabula Rasa. It's rating jumped really high and all the others fell quite substantially. I think it was a bug
It's easy...
MMORPG.com is paid by Funcom, Blizzard, SOE, and other developer/publishers to advertise on this site. They moderate accordingly. It happens all over these forums. Their moderation is very erratic.
However, I would do the same thing. If Funcom dishes out some cash to delete some negative threads, who wouldn't?
Tecmo Bowl.
Get real , yes i can understand them been " AOC themed " thats perfectly fine,but deleting posts that dont break the rules of this site is bull
1. Are you certain all these AoC posts have been 'deleted'? Or were they buried by the 250+ AoC posts per day over the last couple days?
2. Looking on the main home page... as of a couple minutes ago... I see a top banner ad (scrolls for various games, including EVE)... I see an AoC banner ad just below it (Heads will roll).... a small AoC blog ad... news teasers (10, scrolling, the first of which is Stargate), another scrolling ad to the right, which was EVE but is some other game atm that I've never heard of.... and another ad on the right for PotCO....
Is that overdoing it for AoC? I think not.
3. Um... why not post this with your main account, eh?
its up at a 8.9 now because the fans of the game just rates it , but within a month it will be down and the other will be back up when the fanboys of other games rate aoc low its the way the site works you can edit a review when ever you want. so if you like game X you can rate all at 10 then game Y comes out rate that at 10, and lower game X to 0 because you want game Y too look better.
All new games jump to astronomical ratings when they are first released. There's a technical reason for it which has been posted here in each case, and over time you will see AOC's rating fall more in line with the other games.
There's no conspiracy. Some posts might appear benign, but they are just rehashing the same tired topics covered in previous threads. Since most folks would rather start a new thread than search for a previous one, the only real surprise is that the moderators don't lock down/delete more threads than they do.
If you don't like how they run things here, feel free to visit other sites. I think you'll find they tend to be more heavily moderated than this one, and I doubt you'll find any forum of credibility that has FFA forum discussions on any game, regardless of their advertising policies.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The ratings on this site really mean nothing, no one takes them seriously. 1 person and his alt accounts is all it takes for a rating to suddenly improve.
I have not noticed any messages being deleted and I have not been banned for saying negative things about age of conan, nor have others that I have seen posting negativly about the game. Age of Conans forums is very active to the point where posts disappear to the next couple of pages very quickly.
The adds on this site are most likely because Funcom, like Turbine, CCP, Blizzard, SOE, etc before it have payed for advertisments to be put on their site. Yet they contenue to do news, previews etc on other games even when there are advertisements for say LOTRO covering the entire site.
As someone suggested it is probably best to take off the tin foil hat.
This is indeed troubling. While some threads may have been trolling, most were just personal opinions. In fact, it was a number of the hardcore defenders of AoC that would accuse the slightest criticism of AoC as trolling. Apparently you cannot dislike a new game.
Sad to see MMORPG.com succumbing to the all mighty dollar. Hey, it's fine to make a buck, but when MMORPG loses its objectivity it will also lose its credibility. In turn, less people will visit this site. The ultimate result? Less visitors means less ads. A vicious cycle.
1. Positive. Many of the original threads still exist, as noted by an above poster, except critical posts inside of them have been removed (often including the OP). Entire threads have also been deleted. And as I noted in my OP, authors of some removed posts were notified of their removal.
2. The news is understandable, but the prevalence of ads and news articles as they pertain to AoC is much higher than I have seen in quite awhile. As I noted in my OP, this is understandable given the game's release--however, they are still more populous than they ought be, and the reason this is bothersome is because it closely approximates the forum censorship and rating jump in chronological order.
3. I'd prefer not to get my primary account banned. I use the same name for all MMOs I play--and I often play as a crafter and guild leader--so keeping that name active has its purposes, even if those purposes aren't necessarily advantages for me.
First off, let me start by re-posting my email, community@mmorpg.com, and reminding that this is a perfect, valid reason to use it! No account will ever be banned for emailing me concerns about the site. No account has ever been banned for emailing me outside of real life threats or illegal content.
Now that that's out of the way...
The MMORPG.com moderation team is not in any way related to our advertisement team. Moderators and, heck, myself, do not know what ads are going up until we see em, just like you guys. Moderators - and again myself - are not influanced, given instructions, or paid for moderation based on advertisements or any other scheme. Moderators are strictly observed to guarantee they are providing unbias service, and if they are not, they are let go.
The actions and deletions on the Age of Conan forums lately have been based purely off the rules of our site: no trolling, no spamming, no flaming, etc. MMORPG.com allows negative opinions and posts, what we don't allow is spam of those posts, posts baiting others to break our rules, posts insulting other users, and unsubstantiated game attacks (spamming a forum with "this game sux!" does no good; please tell us why it sucks
). This is evident, I believe, by the fact that there are still undeleted posts in the Age of Conan section that are purely negative, but do not break our rules.
For example, issues with preorders. Issues with billing. This whole thread wants their 5$ back. In fact, while there are deleted posts in various threads, the last deleted THREAD I can find is 267 threads back, and that was a duplicate post from an account seemingly created just to bash AoC.
If your post or thread is deleted and you feel it did not break our rules, as said above, please email me. Please! I want to help
Otherwise, I will keep an eye on the AoC forum and to ensure that the moderation continues to be unbias and professional.
Laura "Taera" Genender
Community Manager
MMORPG.com
1. Positive. Many of the original threads still exist, as noted by an above poster, except critical posts inside of them have been removed (often including the OP). Entire threads have also been deleted. And as I noted in my OP, authors of some removed posts were notified of their removal.
2. The news is understandable, but the prevalence of ads and news articles as they pertain to AoC is much higher than I have seen in quite awhile. As I noted in my OP, this is understandable given the game's release--however, they are still more populous than they ought be, and the reason this is bothersome is because it closely approximates the forum censorship and rating jump in chronological order.
3. I'd prefer not to get my primary account banned. I use the same name for all MMOs I play--and I often play as a crafter and guild leader--so keeping that name active has its purposes, even if those purposes aren't necessarily advantages for me.
I'm going to just quickly chime in, as Taera did a great job of talking about our moderation procedures.Speaking as the Managing Editor, and thus the guy that's in charge of the content on the site, I want to talk a little bit about why we've had so much Age of Conan coverage lately, and it's a fairly obvious reason: People are reading it.
MMORPG.com operates via hits. The more hits we get, the better we're doing. Lately, Conan has been the "hot topic" as it's moved from Open Beta and into launch. As you can see by looking at the hit counter on the front page, it's been doing very well lately.
We work hard to try to bring MMORPG.com readers a little bit of everything, and we try to balance that with covering the day's big stories. For the last few weeks, the biggest stories have been AoC. Even today though (AoC launch day), we have a great article up on Stargate Worlds, so we're not ignoring everything else. I wouldn't be doing my job properly though if we didn't continue to follow Age of Conan when it's the big thing on the minds of many MMORPG fans.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about the theory that we do favors for advertisers. I've said this before, but I realize not everyone has read those responses, so I'll give it a go again.
First, like Taera said, content and advertising don't coordinate in terms of site content. Even geographically, we're separate. The content office is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia while advertisements run out of Hawaii. The ad guys don't consult any of us about the ads that we will be taking in and like Taera said, we don't know ahead of time who will be advertising on any given day and I personally like it that way. I don't think I'd want to do this job if my content was decided by who was advertising. That would just suck.
It makes sense to me that Funcom would want to buy ad space on our site around launch day. They want to advertise their game to MMO players, and without tooting our own horn (ok, maybe a little) our ad space is a pretty good way to reach MMO gamers. Good bang for your advertising dollar.
Now, I'm quickly going to point out the logic of not bowing to advertisers:
Advertisers come and go. There is no reason for us to throw away our reputation with the community by "doing favors" for advertisers. Putting aside the moral issues for a second, let's just talk economics. If we lost hits because we were say, deleting unfriendly threads (and we would lose hits. Heck, I'd stop coming here), that would hurt us forever, long after any ad campaign was over. This would prevent us from making more money in the future. One advertiser isn't going to make or break this site, but losing members will. It makes no long term financial sense for us to show bias for advertisers.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw my two cents in the ring.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com