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Another MO review
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A followup arcticle on the review:
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Mortal-Online-Review-Fallout-From-Fanboys-23833.html
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Just wondering...
What are the ethics of writing an article about the response to your own review, describing it as if it is newsworthy and not noting that you are the center of the story?
I'm sorry that I did not fully flesh out my objection to the review. I'm well aware that MMO websites support themselves through ad revenue. The difference is that they compete for a larger share of a focused interest group (people interested in MMOs). Because of this, one of the main criteria they compete on is the quality of the information and insight (and entertainment value) that they provide. This gives them a high value to advertisers that want to reach the audience with an active interest in MMOs (notice all the ads here are for MMOs). In contrast, Brighthub hosts that review alongside a wide disparity of other subjects. (Making Home made egg shell mold candles: A Parent child acitvity,Wooden Clothespin Photo holder for Spring, Poetry Analysis: Robert Frost's "out out-", Book Review: The sugar Addict's Total Recovery Program, The Benefits of Ozone Therapy, The Life Cycle of Seahorses and Other Interesting Facts, SaffronRouge: Organic Beauty, How Close to the TV should I Sit?, The Top 5 Fishfinder GPS Combo Devices, Beginner's Guide to Building Your Own Airplane, Spanish Sayings on Love: For Mother's Day or any other Occasion, Difference between Hindi and Urdu). The ads follow the same pattern. Some of the ads are targeted to the audience that would be reading the article, but a large portion is just filler (I think i previously mentioned the links to the St Louis Auto Parts store). If I really want to find medical advice, how to build an airplane or an in depth analysis of Robert Frost I would not go to Brighthub. However, I might stumble across the article when I do a google search. More articles means more hits in a search. Certainly some of the articles on the website are of good quality, but what gets rewarded is not quality, but volume.
Oh did I mention.....21 game reviews(4 of them MMORPGs), 7 walkthroughs, 2 overviews and 2 beginners guides over the last month...... I'm sure he did an in depth analysis.
*Edited to make the article names not hyperlink*
Thanks for the link,...
I win!!! LOL@U
Youre now resorting to copy/pasting yourself from MO?Anyway... Since you have issues with the reviewer, why dont you continue it with HIM in the MO post? http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/40115-mortal-online-review-brighthub-com.html
Please stay on topic, which is the REVIEW!!!
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The reviewer being a "carebear" doesnt make MO any better or his point any less valid. Even the old school "hardcore" types think MO is garbage.
I win!!! LOL@U
I think this review was spot on. This game is just downright unplayable and completely unenjoyable.
It's probably a fairly accurate description of the reviewer's open beta experience. I also think the final score reflects the opinion of most people who try the game now not knowing what to expect. As a review, it is terrible, though. At least give the developers the benefit of doubt and wait until the game has been released before publishing beta impressions as a review. Sure, there is a good chance that the game will still have a lot of the same issues on launch date, but it's still dishonest to call it a review at this point.
Anyway, I could go on about how the review is poorly written and has quite a few factual errors, but I don't want to come off as a fanboy defending Mortal Online. I don't like the game, and probably won't even after most of the bugs have been squashed since I disagree with some of the core design decisions. I do believe it deserves a fair review despite my personal issues with it, though.
My post got remove because i apparently attacked a member of the forum with my post. I dont know whats the problem, but i ddint attack anyone. All i said is the reviewer was a carebear. Well, il repost what i posted il try to censore myself and in the future too. I apoligy to anyone who felt offended.
Why should i even bother on reading the review after i read this?
Here's a few reasons of why you might enjoy Mortal Online, but you might be an anti-gamer if you think this is what you find to be enjoyable: Starting a game with pretty much no help on what to do or no direction on where to go or how to get anything done. Being robbed anytime you come across something useful while another player is around. Losing everything in your inventory everytime you die. Traveling for hours on end just to reach a town. Constant PvP being active even inside towns. No clear enemies to attack other than animals and other players.
The opinion of a reviwer who disliked MO because he got killed in game, because there is no safe zone, because he lose all his loots after he died, because he got stealed by thieves in town, because there is no quest lines or torturial to guide him... doesn't count to me. This is the same type of reviewer that give darkfall online a 2/10 simply because he did not understand what darkfall was meant to be. A sandbox mmorpg with hardcore rules.
For the other issue during the review, desync lag, bug and lack of stuff... An mmorpg with developers making an mmorpg for a niche audience dont deserve to be reviewed before release or even a week after release by a pro anyway. With only around 20 devs, even after release, the game will still be in beta. I mean, it will still feel like a beta. Just like darkfall, it might need a year after release to feel complete.
Maybe my comment on the revewer picture was offensive too. So let me change that a bit. So the reviwer posted some picture. The only npc we see him kill, a pig. Thats mean, you done nothing in game. He didnt even had the time to ride an horse. He also got the 2 starter weapons only. The gathering axe and the starter sword. Those weapons dont even raise your weapon skills so revewing the game with those weapons, no doubt that the game feel not smooth at all and slow. We I also came to the faq that the reviewer did not try to talk to anyone in town because if he try to socialize instead of rushing his review, a player would had probably give him some few basic weapons and gears.
My conclusion is simple. Pro theme park mmorpg and pro sandbox mmorpg should be difference players and different mindset. I know, MO is not perfect, but if i dont like RTS game for example, i wont even try to review Starcraft 2. Thats all im saying.
I also want to point that over all he said, When he said that players who enjoy MO are anti gamers, it kind of attacked the whole MO communoty. How can you be a pro reviwer and say such a thing. This kind of review might be a bait reviwer. No one should take this seriously.
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There, you are totally wrong. You dont know how much anti hardcore players got flamed in the DF and MO board. Maybe other games too. You dont know how much asked for a pve server. You dont know how much ppl left those type of game simply because they found out that they can lose something when they die plus the faq that there is no safe zome. Being a person who dont like to lose his stuff, who dont want to be involve in a fight when he mind his own bizness do make his point being invalid automatically. He also start too rude in the review and he never talk about the good part of MO simply because he didnt last long enough to see the good part of MO.
If you dont believe me, go check the Edzitron darkfall online review at Eurogamer.com. After that, go check the DF community respond on that on youtube or on the darkfall board by using the search.
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The threads are on the same subject, so it seems natural that I might have the same thing to say in both venues. If you are offended by my lack of creativity, I'll make an effort to paraphrase myself from here on out. Also I'm not sure how a question about Mr. Usher's second article is off-topic when someone else just posted it here (and you made a post thanking them for bringing it to everyone's attention.
Anyway, I'm not sure about the ethics of it, but have found a name for it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incestuous_linking
Also, Mr. Usher has responded to the question of how he could write so many reviews in a month.
Originally Posted by William_Usher
Those articles were all re-published to make the "suits" happy with better SEO, etc. It's a company thing.
I certainly did not review 21 games in a single month. I may review five at the max with the rest being guides. If I'm lucky I might get close to 10 reviews in if they all happen to be FPS games.
This would be a practice known as article spinning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_spinning
Both of these are commonly found in link farms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_farm
P.S. If you're checking the Mortal online forum, you'll notice I'm not really posting anything here that i'm not posting there. If he refutes any points I make I will happily repost them here, since him responding here could be considered a violation of the code of conduct. (i.e. discussing a post he made elsewhere for which he gets paid)
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The review had many good points, I agree with it.
I don't understand how people can honestly review and unreleased product. Shouldn't it be more of a preview than a review? I agree with some of these other posters. It seems like the guy started the game thinking it would be lame and then decided it was because the game didn't have quests/a storyline and hold his hand. It seems like it just wasn't his type of game. The review was very biased, not objective like a good review should be. I guess it's hard to take your own preference out of the equation though. A lot of the things he didn't like (i.e. the dark night time) are things that fans and followers of the game are very excited about. I'll grant him a few good points, such as the current thieving problem, but things like that should die down after release when people actually make a character to play without worrying that all their hard work is going to be wiped. Right now there's no point in spending so much time building a character only to have it wiped, so why not steal?
I think this sums up the "its Beta shield". http://www.mortalonline.com/forums/40274-ignore-all-trolls-here-facts.html#post825741
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Sure, a game usually doesn't change much between open beta and release. The absolute minimum you can expect from someone reviewing an MMO based on beta impressions is that they try the game after release to confirm that the review is still accurate, though. Minor changes may have a huge impact (both positive and negative) on the gameplay. I'm thinking of stuff like changing a formula to make something significantly faster or slower, replacing some 3rd party software, upgrading hardware or introducing a cash shop (yeah right). The product as it is on launch day, and the experience from that date and one month onwards is what you pay for, so this is also what should be reviewed.
I'm not saying people shouldn't post their opinion before the game has launched. Hell, even warning people to avoid it is fine, though it would be more productive to suggest they try it for themselves while it's free. A review that doesn't review the actual product you are considering spending money on is worthless, though. How much difference there will actually be between the experience now and the experience after launch is irrelevant as there is no way the reviewer can know.
I tend to agree and have been trying that same thing. http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/272617/page/1
I win!!! LOL@U
This explains alot of what is wrong with this game:
"Now the model files for the characters aren’t bad, but I didn’t really understand why there was a need to add fully detailed genitalia. Was an anus really necessary? Seriously? "
Now it may sound harmless but when you think about how many things are lacking in this game they still somehow found time to add an anus to the character models.
That explains alot as it tells me that the devs have their priorities all mixed up and are actually more intrested in making a point than trying to actually create a fun and playable game.
It is more important for them to make a point that we shouldnt be ashamed of nudity bla bla bla bla than to actually try and create cool looking models. I for one would like my characters sword to look alot more impressive than they do in this game than my character having genitalia.
Likewise it seems more important for them to make the point that their game is a sandbox game in an industry full of themepark games rather than actually putting an effort to make a fun and interesting sandbox game.
And so and so forth... however you see it this game is just extremely underwhelming just like this review states.
My gaming blog
I doubt it take the devs weeks to moddle ding dong and a anus, it takes a day dops so i don't really see your point.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
I take it youre an expert?
Hell, they had to get an intern to do the emotes. I think its painfully obvious SV doesnt do anything fast or the game wouldnt be on its 3+ delay. They didn't have "time" to build a patcher, but had time to add "junk".
Good Call!!!
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Hence why MMOs often get re-reviewed every 6-12 months. Unless I'm much mistaken, this review was posted before SV announced the delay and therefore the reviewer was under the impression that this was what was going to be released.
Despite the latest delay, I still think it says something that SV had announced MO as "feature complete" and ready for release while it was in such poor condition. Even taking the lag and desync issues out of the equation, most of what the review says is still spot on.
With regards to the ding dong and anus thing, don't forget that different team members have different responsibilities and skills. The guys modelling and animating the sphincter, or scripting the emotes probably don't have the skills or experience necessary to help the programmers work on the crashes and desync issues. Therefore they will continue churning out art content while the programmers scratch their heads and try to work out what the hell they're doing.
Would that have made ANY difference? If MO release today all the issues stated would still be their. SV has stopped patching entirely at this point anyway.
Here's a review that mentions it being in beta! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GZAb0NuVXg
Wow....Same sentiment.
I win!!! LOL@U
Kind of depends how things go with the visit to Epic studios. The number one issue (desync) may get alot better.
The review isn't the best I've seen and I don't agree with certain points, but still...
Mortal Online is really one of the worst MMO's I've ever played. And I'm a veteran MMO player and am usually in favor of such thing as no ingame map, long travel distance, no instant travel, no assisted questing system etc, that's also why I liked EQ1.
Nevertheless, MO tries to justify by its playstyle the aweful and total lack of any content.
The game claims to be "sandbox" and that its the player's role to really build the content, which is in fact a pathetic excuse.
The game is truely empty. The world of nave, 1 unique continent with no originality, is a big square block that seems to have been generated by and amateur on a shareware 3D software. take a big square of land, add a big lake in the center, make a few rivers run from there to the "sea" put loads of mountains to make it look better, take a few uglu textures, tile those textures with a unique patern over miles and call it "steppe". 1 snow texture, 1 grass texture, 1 jungle texture, 1 dirt texture, there you've got it.
The only decent looking places in the game are cities, the rest between is just an excuse to make a player travel, the trees are horrid, the foliage is ugly and barely makes any sense, the shadows are buggy and the sky is a painted one with painted clouds to which devs added dynamic clouds which also are totally messed up and are parralel and perpendicular lines.
Also because the Unreal engine wasn't designed to work with one seamless world, the way the game handles texture makes your game crash as soon as there is too many things on the screen (yes it sometimes happens usually in cities) resulting in client crashes, so you have to lower everything to the minimum details unless u have a 1GB+ ram on your video card with a 64 bit OS and 6 Gigs of RAM.
Server is down every day, sometimes for hours. Game is swamped by bugs of all kind, combat is a nightmare and feels like slushing through mud, and bugs make it even worse.
MO's bestiary is also quite empty and doesn't make much sense either. apart from a orcs, giant spiders and undead, most of what you'll ever be killing will be pigs, gazelles and wisents.
And if you were thinking : "cool an orc with a blade and an armor, perhaps I can get rusty weapon and noob armor off it" well you're mistaking, and all you"ll get is like bones, leather, "pig iron"...materials which can only be used by a "refiner" and then by a "weaponsmith or armorsmith" to make something out of it.
So if you can't get hold of those players, you"re screwed and can just carryon hanging around naked with your noob axe.
Overall, the game is boring as hell and very repetitive : if you"re a figher, you will endlessly be killing pigs and wisents, sometimes slightly tougher mobs like razorback or terrorbirds, try making money selling the loot to NPC vendor or players, buy armor and weapons, and kill other players, get a guild, kill other players with your guild with the same combat moves.
if you are a crafter, well just collect material from refiners, read all the books for your skills, and craft, craft craft, until you get bored which happens fast, then perhaps craft but for your guild.
There are indeed no quests, no boats, few professions or careers, few options in each, few things to interact with, and very few things to explore in the world.
If you dare try to speak any truth and say the game is not good, you will endup being swarmed by rabbid fanboys, being sent "reputation" comments allowing them to flame you anonymously, and since this system has been removed, they will report every single post of yours where you criticize their holy grail, resulting quickly in a ban from trolling.
This very much reminds me of the DarkFall online Community, but much worse, as DFO actually was working alright in comparison, and had a real large map with 5 continents, loads of mobs, loads of loot, and loads of content and stuff you could actually interact with including quests, boats, etc...
Overall, this game is the perfect example of how sandbox doesn't necessarily mean more freedom and more options and that no dev should ignore the fundings of what made the success of EverQuest, DAOC, even WoW to a certain extent, all just for the sake of making something different, and "sandbox"...
Lies? I think you didn't read fully. You get banned when you complain that the game is bad. you get banned to tell the truth, which is that the game is bad. MO's fanboys don't want to hear it that's all.
Game crashes all the time, and guess what, regardless of the crash, their support only tells you it's your hardware's fault.
Actually there is inexistant support ingame and its actually the players who provide support to other players through the forums.
That's just how sad it gets. And when you complain too much that your game crashes and that Devs are more busy fixing small things rather then fixing client crashes, then you end up banned for excessive trolling.
And why do you think baned people end up here? because this place is free for everyone to talk.
What can I say? Here you can tell other people when a game sucks without risking a ban. Unlike what you say, most are not beta leakers or cheaters, but perhaps simply people who payed 50 € for a crappy game that doesn't work and feel like they got screwed.
I guess that's quite a logical explaination.