Biggest troll? No that would be Kasmos or whatever, but you area always in here trolling and trying to steer people to play WAR...
Let me tell you, I almost joined lot of people over there, till they told me how boring the game was... { Mod Edit }
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours.
I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers.
I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
Biggest troll? No that would be Kasmos or whatever, but you area always in here trolling and trying to steer people to play WAR...
Let me tell you, I almost joined lot of people over there, till they told me how boring the game was... { Mod Edit }
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours.
I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers.
I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
i enjoyed WAR PvP too.
but thats exactly the Propblem with WAR, it doese not feel like an RPG at all, besides the good PvP system there is nothing to it, so depending on how long its gonna take you to be bored of watching the same people beating the crap out of each other every day, youre gonna quit eventually, the productive quality of both sounds and gfx are ok, just ok...
PvP is BUT one part among many parts making a good MMORPG especially when it comes to fantasy based worlds.
AoC is not WAR nor WoW and will never be, so if you are expoecting it to be either one of them you will be always disapointed, and giving vague and pointless reasons why you somhow dont like the game even if you cant think of anything wrong with it specifically... thats defined as TROLLING.
maybe AoC is just not your type of MMO anyways, if thats true then dont generalize.
The game has beed rated 6.0 by the official forum review. Even if all this haters insist in speaking bad of this game, those of us who play the game know it got alot better since launch, new content, new zones, new raids and dungeons. So now I ask, isnt it time to ask for a re-review?
Hey guys,
I just want to jump in here with a little bit about our policy. Generally speaking, we want to re-review a game every year. That being said, in some cases, we do it in 6 months if the game has showed some kind of significant change and if a qualified writer presents him / herself.
Age of Conan, I believe, has gone through significant enough changes that we'll want to check back in with it (again, I might add) after 6 months from the last one. That means we're coming up on the time.
As such, I've actually picked the game up again with the intention of writing, if not the review, then another look at the game via a gameplay diary.
That's just to let you all know what's up in terms of AoC.
*Edit: I'd also like to pop in to remind that we've actually done two reviews of AoC. The first, a level 1-20 review, was published shortly after launch. The full review wsn't published uintil October, a full five months after the game's release. Similarly, with Warhammer, we reviewed it early on (though policies had changed and we listed it as a preview not a review), and will be taking another look at it in the next week or two.
I think MMORPG.com should be VERY carefull in rewriting reviews from some games while leaving others unchanged for long time - alot longer than a year. How often would WOW have had new reviews?
And what exactly is MMORPG.com reviewing in AOC? So far most of the reviews here on MMORPG.com are based on personal opinions. Should a game get 8 or 9 because it has "improved" (again personal opinions) in some aspects ? Are games like WOW or LOTRO automaticly getting a score of 15.2 in 3 more years just cause they add new content ?
The game had a review based on WHAT WAS IN THE BOX ! Im sorry but even a score of 6.0 is to high for that. The game had huge problems - it was missing content - memory leaks (again everthing coming OUT OF THE BOX !) This is what a review should be telling ppl. It might not be accurate 5 years later but it was for the product that was orginally launched.
Now - If MMORPG.COM wants to revisit AOC and judge it on new factors - then thats ok. As long as MMORPG.COM is gonna do exactly the same to other MMOs that are also releasing new content monthly to improve their games.
Last but not least. Its the player's reviews that matter. They are based on multiple scores rather than a score for 1 single personal opinion of a person that might be getting payed for giving a game a positive look.
The game sucked at launch. Rating of 6.0 was partly based on the potentials and now some aspects of the game have been fixed. Other have not. Its that simple.
MMORPG games should NOT be games that are allowed to throw out crappy content out of the box and then fix it up in the next 3 years. They should be judged on exactly the same basic values as other games are based on. The ACTUAL game out of the box when it is released. Cause MMO gamers should NOT have to pay extra for waiting for a MMO game to fix huge amount of bugs, problems or missing content. This is something that should be READY at launch.
I think MMORPG.com should be VERY carefull in rewriting reviews from some games while leaving others unchanged for long time - alot longer than a year. How often would WOW have had new reviews? And what exactly is MMORPG.com reviewing in AOC? So far most of the reviews here on MMORPG.com are based on personal opinions. Should a game get 8 or 9 because it has "improved" (again personal opinions) in some aspects ? Are games like WOW or LOTRO automaticly getting a score of 15.2 in 3 more years just cause they add new content ? The game had a review based on WHAT WAS IN THE BOX ! Im sorry but even a score of 6.0 is to high for that. The game had huge problems - it was missing content - memory leaks (again everthing coming OUT OF THE BOX !) This is what a review should be telling ppl. It might not be accurate 5 years later but it was for the product that was orginally launched. Now - If MMORPG.COM wants to revisit AOC and judge it on new factors - then thats ok. As long as MMORPG.COM is gonna do exactly the same to other MMOs that are also releasing new content monthly to improve their games. Last but not least. Its the player's reviews that matter. They are based on multiple scores rather than a score for 1 single personal opinion of a person that might be getting payed for giving a game a positive look. The game sucked at launch. Rating of 6.0 was partly based on the potentials and now some aspects of the game have been fixed. Other have not. Its that simple
As much as what you're saying sounds great on paper and as much as we might like to revisit every single game that we review, we simply don't have the manpower. While we are improving our review system, it is still impossible to look at every single game as often as we would like.
That's why we do two things: first,we always label the second and all further reviews as re-reviews so that people know that the particular game is being looked at a second tme. Second, we print the date of our review on the review so that people know how currernt or out-dated it is.
Also, I really don't understand your statement that the reviews should be based on the games right out of the box. In fact, I think that's rather absurd in terms of MMORPGs and any other game that updates and changes frequestly. A game that was garbage might be excellent a year after launch. It would be absolutely crazy not to mention that.
Now, I would also like to point out at this point that the scores from our reiews are not and should not be seen as , a contest or even a comparison between games. Our reviews are written by different people (freelancers mostly who I'm sure would be offended by your implication that they would take money for a good review), and scored by different people. This is why we don't list games in the review section by final score, by date and why we don't list our "top MMORPG.com rated games" on our front page.
From reading your post here, you just don't like sactioned reviews. That's fine, I would suggest that you simply don't read them.
i agree that all games should be re-reviewd periodically if changes to it are made, but saying that in games like MMOs that change and evolve over time should forever keep the review they were given at first is funny, should a good game at atart enjoy a good score after being wrecked by the company handling it?
Changes in MMO's can turn them into completley different experiences, and reviews should reflect that, otherwise they simply shouldn't place nay review of their own of any game, or state directly that the review for each game don't reflect the current state of them, but the reviewer appreciation at the date it was posted.
User reviews are more valid, yes, but they are also tainted by extreme fans placing perfect 10's and extrem dislikers placing absolute zeroes.
i agree that all games should be re-reviewd periodically if changes to it are made, but saying that in games like MMOs that change and evolve over time should forever keep the review they were given at first is funny, should a good game at atart enjoy a good score after being wrecked by the company handling it?
Changes in MMO's can turn them into completley different experiences, and reviews should reflect that, otherwise they simply shouldn't place nay review of their own of any game, or state directly that the review for each game don't reflect the current state of them, but the reviewer appreciation at the date it was posted.
User reviews are more valid, yes, but they are also tainted by extreme fans placing perfect 10's and extrem dislikers placing absolute zeroes.
Its be nice if they could get like 3 volunteers, have them all have the same deadline, then post the reviews back to back, or have a worksheet with different specific topic they wanted covered, then have it go down point by point list all 3 opinion for each.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
It's all about individual preference. Some people like AoC some people like WAR. According to subscription estimates a lot more people like WAR which doesn't surprise me.
WAR is a much better PvP game than AoC. In WAR you can start PvP from level one and the whole game is based around massive PvP.
In AoC you need to go through that painful process of single-player Tortage before you have any change of decent PvP. And even after that PvP is mainly random ganking because of low population and small instanced zones.
For PvP players I would definitely recommend to WAR over AoC.
I think MMORPG.com should be VERY carefull in rewriting reviews from some games while leaving others unchanged for long time - alot longer than a year. How often would WOW have had new reviews? And what exactly is MMORPG.com reviewing in AOC? So far most of the reviews here on MMORPG.com are based on personal opinions. Should a game get 8 or 9 because it has "improved" (again personal opinions) in some aspects ? Are games like WOW or LOTRO automaticly getting a score of 15.2 in 3 more years just cause they add new content ? The game had a review based on WHAT WAS IN THE BOX ! Im sorry but even a score of 6.0 is to high for that. The game had huge problems - it was missing content - memory leaks (again everthing coming OUT OF THE BOX !) This is what a review should be telling ppl. It might not be accurate 5 years later but it was for the product that was orginally launched. Now - If MMORPG.COM wants to revisit AOC and judge it on new factors - then thats ok. As long as MMORPG.COM is gonna do exactly the same to other MMOs that are also releasing new content monthly to improve their games. Last but not least. Its the player's reviews that matter. They are based on multiple scores rather than a score for 1 single personal opinion of a person that might be getting payed for giving a game a positive look. The game sucked at launch. Rating of 6.0 was partly based on the potentials and now some aspects of the game have been fixed. Other have not. Its that simple
As much as what you're saying sounds great on paper and as much as we might like to revisit every single game that we review, we simply don't have the manpower. While we are improving our review system, it is still impossible to look at every single game as often as we would like.
That's why we do two things: first,we always label the second and all further reviews as re-reviews so that people know that the particular game is being looked at a second tme. Second, we print the date of our review on the review so that people know how currernt or out-dated it is.
Also, I really don't understand your statement that the reviews should be based on the games right out of the box. In fact, I think that's rather absurd in terms of MMORPGs and any other game that updates and changes frequestly. A game that was garbage might be excellent a year after launch. It would be absolutely crazy not to mention that.
Now, I would also like to point out at this point that the scores from our reiews are not and should not be seen as , a contest or even a comparison between games. Our reviews are written by different people (freelancers mostly who I'm sure would be offended by your implication that they would take money for a good review), and scored by different people. This is why we don't list games in the review section by final score, by date and why we don't list our "top MMORPG.com rated games" on our front page.
From reading your post here, you just don't like sactioned reviews. That's fine, I would suggest that you simply don't read them.
Your right in the sense that I dont like reviews based on opinions of one person. SPECIALLY when its a MMORPG game cause the gaming experience in these games are also based on what other ppl are doing. You can not give a review saying you had a blast cause you met one person that you played with for 20 days while 99 other ppl were bored to death not finding anyone to group up with.
Again - as far as MMORPGs reviews re-visited... thats fine. But then again - ALL games should be getting the same fair re-reviews then based on 1 or 2 good or bad patches. If MMORPG.COM is taking one game and giving it a diffrent treatment in this way then it shows obvious biased view.
Im in no way saying that AOC is 2 or 6 or 9. I couldn't care less. I made my raiting long time ago based on my opinion and experience in the game. So did alot of ppl. I will not change anything of my opinions until FREE TRIAL is out. Besides - We all know tho that even PPL raitings on MMORPG:COM is based on new games beeing released and are not showing actual raitings. Thats probably the reason why AOC is now slowly moving up again from 6.7 when WAR launched. Maybe sites like MMORPG.COM are partly to blame for the hypes that are created around games. Specially considering that MMORPG.COM seems to care very little if the game is launched half finished or not. Or with bugs - or with memory leaks - or with missing DX 10 support. As long as the game is ok on the 2nd or 3rd review... thats just fine.
Judging a MMORPG game out of the box is absurd to you. I disagree. Its a personal opinion. Just like 90% of liking or hating particulare MMO is based on personal opinions. I dont know if the "re-visit" of AOC will include the extra amount of time it takes to redownload almost an entire game. I hope it does. And I hope the "freelancher" does not include anything "Amazing" in his/her name.
When should AOC be revisited for review ? How about when the game can offer a FREE trial? Then ppl can actually make their own mind based on their personal preferneces to what they like and what they hate. And then they can put a review from a "freelancer" into right perspective. Alot of ppl have been burned on AOC and I think its only fair that from now on - the game will be judged by what it is. NOT what others think of it. But that will not happen until Funcom gets the game into free trial. And then I mean REAL free trial. Not payed for one.
Your right in the sense that I dont like reviews based on opinions of one person. SPECIALLY when its a MMORPG game cause the gaming experience in these games are also based on what other ppl are doing. You can not give a review saying you had a blast cause you met one person that you played with for 20 days while 99 other ppl were bored to death not finding anyone to group up with. Again - as far as MMORPGs reviews re-visited... thats fine. But then again - ALL games should be getting the same fair re-reviews then based on 1 or 2 good or bad patches. If MMORPG.COM is taking one game and giving it a diffrent treatment in this way then it shows obvious biased view. Im in no way saying that AOC is 2 or 6 or 9. I couldn't care less. I made my raiting long time ago based on my opinion and experience in the game. So did alot of ppl. We all know tho that even those raitings are changed by MMORPG.COM based on new games beeing released and are not showing actual raitings. Thats probably the reason why AOC is now slowly moving up again from 6.7 when WAR launched. Maybe sites like MMORPG.COM are partly to blame for the hypes that are created around games. Specially considering that MMORPG.COM seems to care very little if the game is launched half finished or not. Or with bugs - or with memory leaks - or with missing DX 10 support. Judging a MMORPG game out of the box is absurd to you. I disagree. Its a personal opinion. Just like 90% of liking or hating particulare MMO is based on personal opinions. I dont know if the "re-visit" of AOC will include the extra amount of time it takes to redownload almost an entire game. I hope it does. And I hope the "freelancher" does not include anything "Amazing" in his/her name. When should AOC be revisited for review ? How about when the game can offer a free trial? Then ppl can actually make their own mind based on their personal preferneces to what they like and what they hate. And then they can put a review from a "freelancer" into right perspective.
I have already exaplined our policy to you. I have already explained the act that while our goal is to review every game every six months to a year, the reality is that it isn't possible.
The user ratings, \: If Age of Conan's rating is going up, it's because people are voting that way, nothing more, nothing less.
I'd like to know how it is you think that we don't care about half-finished products, and whatever else it was that you said. These issues were and are covered when they crop up.
I have no idea what you're talking about when you say that download time should be taken into account in a re-review. I can't see any serious writer taking points away from a game because of patch time...
Amazing Avery isn't a freelance writer. I'm not suire why you'd even have that impression, or where you would get the idea that he had written or would write an official review of the game. Not that I don't think that he would be capable of such a thing. I'm sure that you can see on our reviews that they were written by myself and Jef Reahard.
Why would we wait for a free trial? What random criteria is that? We encourage people to make up their own minds about games, again I tell you, for the second time now, that reviews are nothing more than opinion and shouldn't be taken as more than that.
Look, no offense, but you seem to just be looking for a fight here. I've already explained the situation to you politely. That should be more than enough. If you don't like our reviews, or the way that we do our reviews, don't read them.
I don't understand why all the opposition for a new, updated review.
Noone has said "a new review with higher score" nor "we will give it better standing", what it's gonna happen is that the game it's gonna be reviewed again, and the review will reflect what the writer finds out aboput the current state of things.
If things are good, a good review is in ordere, if it's all the same, same score, if it's worse, lower score, simple, don't really see what is the problem in making a review that more closely reflect (according to the reviewer) the state of the game nowadays.
I have already exaplined our policy to you. I have already explained the act that while our goal is to review every game every six months to a year, the reality is that it isn't possible. The user ratings, \: If Age of Conan's rating is going up, it's because people are voting that way, nothing more, nothing less. I'd like to know how it is you think that we don't care about half-finished products, and whatever else it was that you said. These issues were and are covered when they crop up. I have no idea what you're talking about when you say that download time should be taken into account in a re-review. I can't see any serious writer taking points away from a game because of patch time... Amazing Avery isn't a freelance writer. I'm not suire why you'd even have that impression, or where you would get the idea that he had written or would write an official review of the game. Not that I don't think that he would be capable of such a thing. I'm sure that you can see on our reviews that they were written by myself and Jef Reahard. Why would we wait for a free trial? What random criteria is that? We encourage people to make up their own minds about games, again I tell you, for the second time now, that reviews are nothing more than opinion and shouldn't be taken as more than that. Look, no offense, but you seem to just be looking for a fight here. I've already explained the situation to you politely. That should be more than enough. If you don't like our reviews, or the way that we do our reviews, don't read them.
Not looking for fight or anything else - Just putting forward my opinion on how things should be done. If you dont like my opinions then ok - so be it. But these are forums and they are created for ppl to put forward their opinions.
Launching a free trial version of a MMO game is not a random critera. If thats not a perfect time to start up fresh and test the same basics from the orginal game - then I dont know what is ... There must be a reason why AOCis not in free trial yet while games released later on have one now. Maybe Funcom wants to do MORE before it opens it up for free trial? Is MMORPG.COM then gonna make another revisit while other games have gotten big fat Zero revisits ?
I personally would recomend MMORPG.COM to make their next revisit of AOC when a free trial version of the game is out. Thats my opinion. And forums are created for ppl to tell their opinions. If you are taking my words personally then Im sorry. Was not intented.
About patch up times tho ... I dont know of a person that sits to play a MMORPG game and enjoys watching the patcher for next 1-2 hours (Now... thats based on speed so NOT opinion). Should a serious revisit be written without taking a note on how often the game is updated and how big those updates are ? Remember it can be BOTH positives and negatives. Whats wrong with a revisit review to have a totally fresh install and give FACTS on how big the patch is ? Whats wrong with that ? Should a serious reviewer skip these facts ? Just wondering.
I don't understand why all the opposition for a new, updated review.
Noone has said "a new review with higher score" nor "we will give it better standing", what it's gonna happen is that the game it's gonna be reviewed again, and the review will reflect what the writer finds out aboput the current state of things.
If things are good, a good review is in ordere, if it's all the same, same score, if it's worse, lower score, simple, don't really see what is the problem in making a review that more closely reflect (according to the reviewer) the state of the game nowadays.
My point is that like John has said - MMORPG.COM can not revisit every game. So either the revisits should be random or based on some factors that have changed - for good or for the worse.
And then... we come to the parts of what re-reviews should contain. Should it include facts (like how big the patch from the orginal game is to the latest version or how often the game has been updated since last review and so on) or should it be about personal opinions of the gameplay or the class balance.
My suggestion is that MMORPG.COM makes a basic list of things that their revisit reviews should contain. It gives those revisits more cretibilty - specially when some of the revisited games are not in free trial yet.
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
It's all about individual preference. Some people like AoC some people like WAR. According to subscription estimates a lot more people like WAR which doesn't surprise me.
WAR is a much better PvP game than AoC. In WAR you can start PvP from level one and the whole game is based around massive PvP.
In AoC you need to go through that painful process of single-player Tortage before you have any change of decent PvP. And even after that PvP is mainly random ganking because of low population and small instanced zones.
For PvP players I would definitely recommend to WAR over AoC.
Estimates are not solid proof. You keep speaking of "low population" yet you provide absolutely no proof on it. Until you provide sold, irrefutable proof on these "estimates" and "low population" then its not fact.
Now, I accept that people have different tastes than me (if we did not, then we would be all robots). However, posting "estimates" and "lower populations" and trying to pass them off as facts rather than your opinion is quite pathetic.
clearly 50% of voters atleast ( not everyone votes who checks mmogrp.com ) disagree with those naysayers who says there shouldnt be reviews or rereviews..
If anything most other sites should review AoC and score it lower because they rated it before playing past Tortage.
Since this game has the content and population of or lower than many free to play games it seems that 6 is about right, to this day though.
EDIT: those playing the game were able to sit through nothingness for almost 9 months and somehow liked or loved this title....though this title is still ages from being a 7.5, which I deem average because of a myriad of reasons.....the devs are not even fully backing the game ATM, otherwise "free trials" would be released.
Biggest troll? No that would be Kasmos or whatever, but you area always in here trolling and trying to steer people to play WAR...
Let me tell you, I almost joined lot of people over there, till they told me how boring the game was... { Mod Edit }
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours.
I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers.
I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
i enjoyed WAR PvP too.
but thats exactly the Propblem with WAR, it doese not feel like an RPG at all, besides the good PvP system there is nothing to it, so depending on how long its gonna take you to be bored of watching the same people beating the crap out of each other every day, youre gonna quit eventually, the productive quality of both sounds and gfx are ok, just ok...
PvP is BUT one part among many parts making a good MMORPG especially when it comes to fantasy based worlds.
AoC is not WAR nor WoW and will never be, so if you are expoecting it to be either one of them you will be always disapointed, and giving vague and pointless reasons why you somhow dont like the game even if you cant think of anything wrong with it specifically... thats defined as TROLLING.
maybe AoC is just not your type of MMO anyways, if thats true then dont generalize.
Good to see that you won the official "trolling police chief" election
The game has beed rated 6.0 by the official forum review. Even if all this haters insist in speaking bad of this game, those of us who play the game know it got alot better since launch, new content, new zones, new raids and dungeons. So now I ask, isnt it time to ask for a re-review?
Hey guys,
I just want to jump in here with a little bit about our policy. Generally speaking, we want to re-review a game every year. That being said, in some cases, we do it in 6 months if the game has showed some kind of significant change and if a qualified writer presents him / herself.
Age of Conan, I believe, has gone through significant enough changes that we'll want to check back in with it (again, I might add) after 6 months from the last one. That means we're coming up on the time.
As such, I've actually picked the game up again with the intention of writing, if not the review, then another look at the game via a gameplay diary.
That's just to let you all know what's up in terms of AoC.
*Edit: I'd also like to pop in to remind that we've actually done two reviews of AoC. The first, a level 1-20 review, was published shortly after launch. The full review wsn't published uintil October, a full five months after the game's release. Similarly, with Warhammer, we reviewed it early on (though policies had changed and we listed it as a preview not a review), and will be taking another look at it in the next week or two.
I guess what I would like to see is some kind of standardilization of the rating system. When I saw the review of Age of Conan, I was a bit shocked when I compared that to the ratings that other games have. A 6.0 put it nearly at the very bottam of the rankings for all games reviewed. Seriously, matrix online ranks higher! As did Vanguard's first review. The Conan review just really seemed like someone had played Conan and PvP made them sad, so they gave it a rating that was terrible.
Until some kind of system or criteria is built into the reviews they lack total credibility as far as I am concerned. Players post all of the time about how a game is a "5 star" or a "1 star", the difference is that it does not end up on a MMO news and review website on the front page. Until you guys make some kind of standard in your review system as opposed to pulling numbers out of a hat, these reviews will not have credibility.
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
It's all about individual preference. Some people like AoC some people like WAR. According to subscription estimates a lot more people like WAR which doesn't surprise me.
WAR is a much better PvP game than AoC. In WAR you can start PvP from level one and the whole game is based around massive PvP.
In AoC you need to go through that painful process of single-player Tortage before you have any change of decent PvP. And even after that PvP is mainly random ganking because of low population and small instanced zones.
For PvP players I would definitely recommend to WAR over AoC.
Estimates are not solid proof. You keep speaking of "low population" yet you provide absolutely no proof on it. Until you provide sold, irrefutable proof on these "estimates" and "low population" then its not fact.
Now, I accept that people have different tastes than me (if we did not, then we would be all robots). However, posting "estimates" and "lower populations" and trying to pass them off as facts rather than your opinion is quite pathetic.
So since you refuse to accept any numbers or even a range of numbers I expect you to be here to correct everyone who plays the game and announces how much the population has increased since there is no "proof"
Or do your standards just apply to those "lower population" posts?
I hav ebeen more than generous with the commonly accepted numbers and even padded tghem in AOC's favor and yet you still cling to your hypocritical standards. One more time...boxes sold-active players. FC said 800k months ago so it should be over 1 million and Ill spot you 200k players which is higher than even fanboy estimates. We will all be waiting to see if you break out the calculator or if you just sit on your hypocritical high horse
Originally posted by Pelaaja You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours. I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers. I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
i enjoyed WAR PvP too.
but thats exactly the Propblem with WAR, it doese not feel like an RPG at all, besides the good PvP system there is nothing to it, so depending on how long its gonna take you to be bored of watching the same people beating the crap out of each other every day, youre gonna quit eventually, the productive quality of both sounds and gfx are ok, just ok...
PvP is BUT one part among many parts making a good MMORPG especially when it comes to fantasy based worlds.
AoC is not WAR nor WoW and will never be, so if you are expoecting it to be either one of them you will be always disapointed, and giving vague and pointless reasons why you somhow dont like the game even if you cant think of anything wrong with it specifically... thats defined as TROLLING.
maybe AoC is just not your type of MMO anyways, if thats true then dont generalize.
Hmm, I'm not sure how academic reasons are required here to tell one isn't quite satisfied with certain game, but I don't think voicing ones opinion is defined as trolling.
What I wanted AoC to be was a realistic world with large scale sieges and battle mounts. And a world where I can be the noble hero or the evil henceman. As it seems to be, one can't be either.
To contribute something to OP: No, I don't think there is a time for a MMORPG-review.
Comments
Yeah, the game did a complete 180 since launch. It finally is a great game. Definitely time for a re-review.
I hope they add more gear, but make it no more relevant than it already is... gear driven grinds = EQ/WoW
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours.
I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers.
I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours.
I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers.
I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
i enjoyed WAR PvP too.
but thats exactly the Propblem with WAR, it doese not feel like an RPG at all, besides the good PvP system there is nothing to it, so depending on how long its gonna take you to be bored of watching the same people beating the crap out of each other every day, youre gonna quit eventually, the productive quality of both sounds and gfx are ok, just ok...
PvP is BUT one part among many parts making a good MMORPG especially when it comes to fantasy based worlds.
AoC is not WAR nor WoW and will never be, so if you are expoecting it to be either one of them you will be always disapointed, and giving vague and pointless reasons why you somhow dont like the game even if you cant think of anything wrong with it specifically... thats defined as TROLLING.
maybe AoC is just not your type of MMO anyways, if thats true then dont generalize.
Yes, agree 100%
------------------------------
Bear Grylls : I need to get out of this frozen hellhole!
Bear Grylls : (Holds a beetle in his hand) 4 times more protein then Beef
Hey guys,
I just want to jump in here with a little bit about our policy. Generally speaking, we want to re-review a game every year. That being said, in some cases, we do it in 6 months if the game has showed some kind of significant change and if a qualified writer presents him / herself.
Age of Conan, I believe, has gone through significant enough changes that we'll want to check back in with it (again, I might add) after 6 months from the last one. That means we're coming up on the time.
As such, I've actually picked the game up again with the intention of writing, if not the review, then another look at the game via a gameplay diary.
That's just to let you all know what's up in terms of AoC.
*Edit: I'd also like to pop in to remind that we've actually done two reviews of AoC. The first, a level 1-20 review, was published shortly after launch. The full review wsn't published uintil October, a full five months after the game's release. Similarly, with Warhammer, we reviewed it early on (though policies had changed and we listed it as a preview not a review), and will be taking another look at it in the next week or two.
I think MMORPG.com should be VERY carefull in rewriting reviews from some games while leaving others unchanged for long time - alot longer than a year. How often would WOW have had new reviews?
And what exactly is MMORPG.com reviewing in AOC? So far most of the reviews here on MMORPG.com are based on personal opinions. Should a game get 8 or 9 because it has "improved" (again personal opinions) in some aspects ? Are games like WOW or LOTRO automaticly getting a score of 15.2 in 3 more years just cause they add new content ?
The game had a review based on WHAT WAS IN THE BOX ! Im sorry but even a score of 6.0 is to high for that. The game had huge problems - it was missing content - memory leaks (again everthing coming OUT OF THE BOX !) This is what a review should be telling ppl. It might not be accurate 5 years later but it was for the product that was orginally launched.
Now - If MMORPG.COM wants to revisit AOC and judge it on new factors - then thats ok. As long as MMORPG.COM is gonna do exactly the same to other MMOs that are also releasing new content monthly to improve their games.
Last but not least. Its the player's reviews that matter. They are based on multiple scores rather than a score for 1 single personal opinion of a person that might be getting payed for giving a game a positive look.
The game sucked at launch. Rating of 6.0 was partly based on the potentials and now some aspects of the game have been fixed. Other have not. Its that simple.
MMORPG games should NOT be games that are allowed to throw out crappy content out of the box and then fix it up in the next 3 years. They should be judged on exactly the same basic values as other games are based on. The ACTUAL game out of the box when it is released. Cause MMO gamers should NOT have to pay extra for waiting for a MMO game to fix huge amount of bugs, problems or missing content. This is something that should be READY at launch.
As much as what you're saying sounds great on paper and as much as we might like to revisit every single game that we review, we simply don't have the manpower. While we are improving our review system, it is still impossible to look at every single game as often as we would like.
That's why we do two things: first,we always label the second and all further reviews as re-reviews so that people know that the particular game is being looked at a second tme. Second, we print the date of our review on the review so that people know how currernt or out-dated it is.
Also, I really don't understand your statement that the reviews should be based on the games right out of the box. In fact, I think that's rather absurd in terms of MMORPGs and any other game that updates and changes frequestly. A game that was garbage might be excellent a year after launch. It would be absolutely crazy not to mention that.
Now, I would also like to point out at this point that the scores from our reiews are not and should not be seen as , a contest or even a comparison between games. Our reviews are written by different people (freelancers mostly who I'm sure would be offended by your implication that they would take money for a good review), and scored by different people. This is why we don't list games in the review section by final score, by date and why we don't list our "top MMORPG.com rated games" on our front page.
From reading your post here, you just don't like sactioned reviews. That's fine, I would suggest that you simply don't read them.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
You should add to your sig:
You just got a piece of Jon Wood, how does it feel?
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
i agree that all games should be re-reviewd periodically if changes to it are made, but saying that in games like MMOs that change and evolve over time should forever keep the review they were given at first is funny, should a good game at atart enjoy a good score after being wrecked by the company handling it?
Changes in MMO's can turn them into completley different experiences, and reviews should reflect that, otherwise they simply shouldn't place nay review of their own of any game, or state directly that the review for each game don't reflect the current state of them, but the reviewer appreciation at the date it was posted.
User reviews are more valid, yes, but they are also tainted by extreme fans placing perfect 10's and extrem dislikers placing absolute zeroes.
Its be nice if they could get like 3 volunteers, have them all have the same deadline, then post the reviews back to back, or have a worksheet with different specific topic they wanted covered, then have it go down point by point list all 3 opinion for each.
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
It's all about individual preference. Some people like AoC some people like WAR. According to subscription estimates a lot more people like WAR which doesn't surprise me.
WAR is a much better PvP game than AoC. In WAR you can start PvP from level one and the whole game is based around massive PvP.
In AoC you need to go through that painful process of single-player Tortage before you have any change of decent PvP. And even after that PvP is mainly random ganking because of low population and small instanced zones.
For PvP players I would definitely recommend to WAR over AoC.
As much as what you're saying sounds great on paper and as much as we might like to revisit every single game that we review, we simply don't have the manpower. While we are improving our review system, it is still impossible to look at every single game as often as we would like.
That's why we do two things: first,we always label the second and all further reviews as re-reviews so that people know that the particular game is being looked at a second tme. Second, we print the date of our review on the review so that people know how currernt or out-dated it is.
Also, I really don't understand your statement that the reviews should be based on the games right out of the box. In fact, I think that's rather absurd in terms of MMORPGs and any other game that updates and changes frequestly. A game that was garbage might be excellent a year after launch. It would be absolutely crazy not to mention that.
Now, I would also like to point out at this point that the scores from our reiews are not and should not be seen as , a contest or even a comparison between games. Our reviews are written by different people (freelancers mostly who I'm sure would be offended by your implication that they would take money for a good review), and scored by different people. This is why we don't list games in the review section by final score, by date and why we don't list our "top MMORPG.com rated games" on our front page.
From reading your post here, you just don't like sactioned reviews. That's fine, I would suggest that you simply don't read them.
Your right in the sense that I dont like reviews based on opinions of one person. SPECIALLY when its a MMORPG game cause the gaming experience in these games are also based on what other ppl are doing. You can not give a review saying you had a blast cause you met one person that you played with for 20 days while 99 other ppl were bored to death not finding anyone to group up with.
Again - as far as MMORPGs reviews re-visited... thats fine. But then again - ALL games should be getting the same fair re-reviews then based on 1 or 2 good or bad patches. If MMORPG.COM is taking one game and giving it a diffrent treatment in this way then it shows obvious biased view.
Im in no way saying that AOC is 2 or 6 or 9. I couldn't care less. I made my raiting long time ago based on my opinion and experience in the game. So did alot of ppl. I will not change anything of my opinions until FREE TRIAL is out. Besides - We all know tho that even PPL raitings on MMORPG:COM is based on new games beeing released and are not showing actual raitings. Thats probably the reason why AOC is now slowly moving up again from 6.7 when WAR launched. Maybe sites like MMORPG.COM are partly to blame for the hypes that are created around games. Specially considering that MMORPG.COM seems to care very little if the game is launched half finished or not. Or with bugs - or with memory leaks - or with missing DX 10 support. As long as the game is ok on the 2nd or 3rd review... thats just fine.
Judging a MMORPG game out of the box is absurd to you. I disagree. Its a personal opinion. Just like 90% of liking or hating particulare MMO is based on personal opinions. I dont know if the "re-visit" of AOC will include the extra amount of time it takes to redownload almost an entire game. I hope it does. And I hope the "freelancher" does not include anything "Amazing" in his/her name.
When should AOC be revisited for review ? How about when the game can offer a FREE trial? Then ppl can actually make their own mind based on their personal preferneces to what they like and what they hate. And then they can put a review from a "freelancer" into right perspective. Alot of ppl have been burned on AOC and I think its only fair that from now on - the game will be judged by what it is. NOT what others think of it. But that will not happen until Funcom gets the game into free trial. And then I mean REAL free trial. Not payed for one.
I have already exaplined our policy to you. I have already explained the act that while our goal is to review every game every six months to a year, the reality is that it isn't possible.
The user ratings, \: If Age of Conan's rating is going up, it's because people are voting that way, nothing more, nothing less.
I'd like to know how it is you think that we don't care about half-finished products, and whatever else it was that you said. These issues were and are covered when they crop up.
I have no idea what you're talking about when you say that download time should be taken into account in a re-review. I can't see any serious writer taking points away from a game because of patch time...
Amazing Avery isn't a freelance writer. I'm not suire why you'd even have that impression, or where you would get the idea that he had written or would write an official review of the game. Not that I don't think that he would be capable of such a thing. I'm sure that you can see on our reviews that they were written by myself and Jef Reahard.
Why would we wait for a free trial? What random criteria is that? We encourage people to make up their own minds about games, again I tell you, for the second time now, that reviews are nothing more than opinion and shouldn't be taken as more than that.
Look, no offense, but you seem to just be looking for a fight here. I've already explained the situation to you politely. That should be more than enough. If you don't like our reviews, or the way that we do our reviews, don't read them.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
I don't understand why all the opposition for a new, updated review.
Noone has said "a new review with higher score" nor "we will give it better standing", what it's gonna happen is that the game it's gonna be reviewed again, and the review will reflect what the writer finds out aboput the current state of things.
If things are good, a good review is in ordere, if it's all the same, same score, if it's worse, lower score, simple, don't really see what is the problem in making a review that more closely reflect (according to the reviewer) the state of the game nowadays.
Not looking for fight or anything else - Just putting forward my opinion on how things should be done. If you dont like my opinions then ok - so be it. But these are forums and they are created for ppl to put forward their opinions.
Launching a free trial version of a MMO game is not a random critera. If thats not a perfect time to start up fresh and test the same basics from the orginal game - then I dont know what is ... There must be a reason why AOCis not in free trial yet while games released later on have one now. Maybe Funcom wants to do MORE before it opens it up for free trial? Is MMORPG.COM then gonna make another revisit while other games have gotten big fat Zero revisits ?
I personally would recomend MMORPG.COM to make their next revisit of AOC when a free trial version of the game is out. Thats my opinion. And forums are created for ppl to tell their opinions. If you are taking my words personally then Im sorry. Was not intented.
About patch up times tho ... I dont know of a person that sits to play a MMORPG game and enjoys watching the patcher for next 1-2 hours (Now... thats based on speed so NOT opinion). Should a serious revisit be written without taking a note on how often the game is updated and how big those updates are ? Remember it can be BOTH positives and negatives. Whats wrong with a revisit review to have a totally fresh install and give FACTS on how big the patch is ? Whats wrong with that ? Should a serious reviewer skip these facts ? Just wondering.
My point is that like John has said - MMORPG.COM can not revisit every game. So either the revisits should be random or based on some factors that have changed - for good or for the worse.
And then... we come to the parts of what re-reviews should contain. Should it include facts (like how big the patch from the orginal game is to the latest version or how often the game has been updated since last review and so on) or should it be about personal opinions of the gameplay or the class balance.
My suggestion is that MMORPG.COM makes a basic list of things that their revisit reviews should contain. It gives those revisits more cretibilty - specially when some of the revisited games are not in free trial yet.
lmao
awesome
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
It's all about individual preference. Some people like AoC some people like WAR. According to subscription estimates a lot more people like WAR which doesn't surprise me.
WAR is a much better PvP game than AoC. In WAR you can start PvP from level one and the whole game is based around massive PvP.
In AoC you need to go through that painful process of single-player Tortage before you have any change of decent PvP. And even after that PvP is mainly random ganking because of low population and small instanced zones.
For PvP players I would definitely recommend to WAR over AoC.
Estimates are not solid proof. You keep speaking of "low population" yet you provide absolutely no proof on it. Until you provide sold, irrefutable proof on these "estimates" and "low population" then its not fact.
Now, I accept that people have different tastes than me (if we did not, then we would be all robots). However, posting "estimates" and "lower populations" and trying to pass them off as facts rather than your opinion is quite pathetic.
What is your favorite feature on MMORPG.com? 02/22/2007 7 9797 Open
Interviews - 9.2%
Forums - 22.1%
Weekly Columnists - 4.8%
Reviews - 46.5%
Developer Journals - 5.8%
Event Coverage (ComicCon, GDC, AGC, E3 etc.) - 9.6%
Podcast - 2.0%
clearly 50% of voters atleast ( not everyone votes who checks mmogrp.com ) disagree with those naysayers who says there shouldnt be reviews or rereviews..
If anything most other sites should review AoC and score it lower because they rated it before playing past Tortage.
Since this game has the content and population of or lower than many free to play games it seems that 6 is about right, to this day though.
EDIT: those playing the game were able to sit through nothingness for almost 9 months and somehow liked or loved this title....though this title is still ages from being a 7.5, which I deem average because of a myriad of reasons.....the devs are not even fully backing the game ATM, otherwise "free trials" would be released.
Funcom has reviewed all of its assets relevant for
impairment testing. This process has led to
recognition of an impairment loss of around
3,1 MUSD for Age of Conan due to a decrease in
numbers of subscribers for the game. Funcom Q4 10 report.
http://forums.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=2926123&postcount=7 500 mains/alts on Tyranny in past 30 days - instead of merge servers let's open a new PvP server, again! http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=106427
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
You stated your opinion and here's mine, as valid observation as yours.
I enjoyed WAR, it was definitely a superb game. It's not an amazing MMO, but it has great PvP and warband system. Not to mention, you don't really have to do PvE if you don't want to because char levels (rank) can be achieved from PvP kills and conquers.
I've been lurking here and official forums wanting to return to AoC, but nothing they've done and players feedback has made me want to return. The game seems to be just not good, no matter what they do with it. Now, I was truely vague with the reasons why the game is not good and it was intentional. When you've followed the forums long enough you can put aside the haters and fanboys and form your own "feeling" about a game. This one hasn't given any good wibes to me in any form, althought I would love to return to the cruel world of Conan.
i enjoyed WAR PvP too.
but thats exactly the Propblem with WAR, it doese not feel like an RPG at all, besides the good PvP system there is nothing to it, so depending on how long its gonna take you to be bored of watching the same people beating the crap out of each other every day, youre gonna quit eventually, the productive quality of both sounds and gfx are ok, just ok...
PvP is BUT one part among many parts making a good MMORPG especially when it comes to fantasy based worlds.
AoC is not WAR nor WoW and will never be, so if you are expoecting it to be either one of them you will be always disapointed, and giving vague and pointless reasons why you somhow dont like the game even if you cant think of anything wrong with it specifically... thats defined as TROLLING.
maybe AoC is just not your type of MMO anyways, if thats true then dont generalize.
Good to see that you won the official "trolling police chief" election
I don't know if my eyes could take another 1-20 review again.
Hey guys,
I just want to jump in here with a little bit about our policy. Generally speaking, we want to re-review a game every year. That being said, in some cases, we do it in 6 months if the game has showed some kind of significant change and if a qualified writer presents him / herself.
Age of Conan, I believe, has gone through significant enough changes that we'll want to check back in with it (again, I might add) after 6 months from the last one. That means we're coming up on the time.
As such, I've actually picked the game up again with the intention of writing, if not the review, then another look at the game via a gameplay diary.
That's just to let you all know what's up in terms of AoC.
*Edit: I'd also like to pop in to remind that we've actually done two reviews of AoC. The first, a level 1-20 review, was published shortly after launch. The full review wsn't published uintil October, a full five months after the game's release. Similarly, with Warhammer, we reviewed it early on (though policies had changed and we listed it as a preview not a review), and will be taking another look at it in the next week or two.
I guess what I would like to see is some kind of standardilization of the rating system. When I saw the review of Age of Conan, I was a bit shocked when I compared that to the ratings that other games have. A 6.0 put it nearly at the very bottam of the rankings for all games reviewed. Seriously, matrix online ranks higher! As did Vanguard's first review. The Conan review just really seemed like someone had played Conan and PvP made them sad, so they gave it a rating that was terrible.
Until some kind of system or criteria is built into the reviews they lack total credibility as far as I am concerned. Players post all of the time about how a game is a "5 star" or a "1 star", the difference is that it does not end up on a MMO news and review website on the front page. Until you guys make some kind of standard in your review system as opposed to pulling numbers out of a hat, these reviews will not have credibility.
Thank goodness you avoided WAR. It was, IMO, the most boring MMORPG I've ever played (and I've played a lot... since UO first began). Usually, for MMORPG's that I don't sub past the first month, it takes me 2 or so weeks before I get bored. This took me just one play period before the boringness set in. Everytime after that I quickly got to the point where I didn't even want to log in to the game. So sad considering I had quite a lot of fun with DAoC during it's days.
It's all about individual preference. Some people like AoC some people like WAR. According to subscription estimates a lot more people like WAR which doesn't surprise me.
WAR is a much better PvP game than AoC. In WAR you can start PvP from level one and the whole game is based around massive PvP.
In AoC you need to go through that painful process of single-player Tortage before you have any change of decent PvP. And even after that PvP is mainly random ganking because of low population and small instanced zones.
For PvP players I would definitely recommend to WAR over AoC.
Estimates are not solid proof. You keep speaking of "low population" yet you provide absolutely no proof on it. Until you provide sold, irrefutable proof on these "estimates" and "low population" then its not fact.
Now, I accept that people have different tastes than me (if we did not, then we would be all robots). However, posting "estimates" and "lower populations" and trying to pass them off as facts rather than your opinion is quite pathetic.
So since you refuse to accept any numbers or even a range of numbers I expect you to be here to correct everyone who plays the game and announces how much the population has increased since there is no "proof"
Or do your standards just apply to those "lower population" posts?
I hav ebeen more than generous with the commonly accepted numbers and even padded tghem in AOC's favor and yet you still cling to your hypocritical standards. One more time...boxes sold-active players. FC said 800k months ago so it should be over 1 million and Ill spot you 200k players which is higher than even fanboy estimates. We will all be waiting to see if you break out the calculator or if you just sit on your hypocritical high horse
i enjoyed WAR PvP too.
but thats exactly the Propblem with WAR, it doese not feel like an RPG at all, besides the good PvP system there is nothing to it, so depending on how long its gonna take you to be bored of watching the same people beating the crap out of each other every day, youre gonna quit eventually, the productive quality of both sounds and gfx are ok, just ok...
PvP is BUT one part among many parts making a good MMORPG especially when it comes to fantasy based worlds.
AoC is not WAR nor WoW and will never be, so if you are expoecting it to be either one of them you will be always disapointed, and giving vague and pointless reasons why you somhow dont like the game even if you cant think of anything wrong with it specifically... thats defined as TROLLING.
maybe AoC is just not your type of MMO anyways, if thats true then dont generalize.
Hmm, I'm not sure how academic reasons are required here to tell one isn't quite satisfied with certain game, but I don't think voicing ones opinion is defined as trolling.
What I wanted AoC to be was a realistic world with large scale sieges and battle mounts. And a world where I can be the noble hero or the evil henceman. As it seems to be, one can't be either.
To contribute something to OP: No, I don't think there is a time for a MMORPG-review.