Profile: Cymdai
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• • Honestly whats the point of playing Order?

  • I know my guild deliberately rolled Order because we wanted to step away from the zerg that has become the Chaos side. We figured it would pin us up against tougher competition, as a lot of notorious guilds have gone to the Chaos faction.

    I love my class on the order side; it's probably one of the only reasons I keep playing Order. Archmage is just that enjoyable to me. However, I 100% agree on the cosmetic differences being downright outlandish. You can't even look remotely interested as an Elf Priest. The customization options for the Elves were so limited and bland, it's almost as if Order was an afterthought. I mean seriously, it's bad enough having to wear a frilly man-dress, but couldn't there at least be some cool accessories for my character?

    However, it seems to me that the Order side is usually out-manned. I'm on the Badlands, and while we definitely hold our own, even the battles we win aren't usually evenly matched...

  • Posted: 9/22/08 8:27 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • As I expected. WAR is boring.

  • I personally feel as though PQ's are the best feature of this game, in my lowly level 10 character's experience.

    It gives players without guilds, massive chunks of time, and a distaste for organized raids a chance to get competitive equipment.

    I, personally, hate raiding, and the concept of sinking hour upon hour into one for some gear is both tedious and irritating. So I think it's fantastic that I can walk into a zone, follow a few simple directions, and with a little luck and some skill at my class, I can pull in some respectable gear.

    However, I will say that the UI feels a bit cluttered... and I don't particularly like that grinding is completely ineffective (at least not as an Archmage at my level).

    I'll probaby write my own comprehensive review when I get to 40.

  • Posted: 9/21/08 7:23 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • AOC: Indictment against the game reviewing industry?

  • Originally posted by gestalt11
    

    Originally posted by Cymdai
    

    I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue.

    I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176

    Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either.

    The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed.

    What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time.

    Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game.

    In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild.

    On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole.

    I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.

     

    That might be true if they only gave you a level 50.

     

    But if you had created your account on the first day with 1 level 1, 1 level 20, 1 level 40, 1 level 60, and 1 level 80.  And then played each for 2 days.

     

    Then you would have had a much better idea of what the game was like in a much much shorter time.  No one is claiming you can have an intimate knowledge of a game in 5 minutes or without a decent play through.  But at the very least the content issues at level 60 could have been fleshed out in a days worth of playing.

     

    The only major issue there is there may be no one around at level 80 when you are there.  And in that case for AoC you still could not have done the sieges.

     

    But so what?  Funcom could have created a fake guild of pre-mades to show off their seiging.  But they didn't to that.  Nor wouldthey because thier seiging was broken.

     

    As journalists you should assume the worst.  And then prove that its the best.  Not assume its ok and see what happens.  Until these guys prove that what they have is good you should act like it is probably crap but you don't have enough information to say so.

     

    Seiging was and still has many barriers for the normal player.  And that is fine.  Funcom is under no obligation to change that and in fact it would be a bad idea.  But you as a reviewer have a responsibility to NOT take them at their word that it actually works and if you want to give a verdict on say sieging then you need to have done it. 

     

    You do not need to have worked through all the crap and barries they put in to give a verdict on the seiging itself.  You would need to do so tell us what its like to run a guild that wants to siege.

     

    BUT you do not need to do this to tell us how buggy and laggy the first seiges were.  That can be ascertained in less than one day's worth of play time.

     

    Yes it is true that certain things, mainly social and community based things, will always take time.  But there are a host of other things that can be ascertained and AND WERE NOT that can be done very quickly if the developers actually wished to do so.

     

    You and Enigma wrote very good and comprehensive reviews.  It took both of you about a month.  That is fine.  But 80% of the stuff you wrote could have been figured out in the first week if various barriers had been lifted.

     

    Yes it would be impossible to write your actual review without that month of gameplay with a real guild.  But that is not really the issue.  We do not need 100% comprehensive review.  What we need is a good survey of the entire game.  Which we are not getting anywhere close to and which is feasible.

     

    Again these are excuses or at least partial excuses.  There may be some valid points to be made about what can't be done quickly or easily.  But there are TONS things that can be done and are not.  And in the case of AoC it shows just how badly not doing those things is mesleading people.  And causing scores to be WILDLY inaccurate.

     

    Most us who are fairly reasonable do not expect a reviewer to be able to give us a good picture of what a community will be like or how guild interact or other extended social things.  Most people know that the seiging and whether it worked well was a real "wait and see" tyoe deal. 

     

    But come on, there is no excuse for not having some idea about performance and bugginess.  Any objective party could have figured that out very quickly and reported on it.  But that didn't happen and does not happen.  Well that is just plain negligent.

     

    But if they can't tell us the content dries up half way through the game?  Seriously wtf?

     

    You told us that.  It took you a month and as a normal player and a non-official reviewer kudos to you, man.  But a professional reviewer with the weight of the press behind them and the driving desire of the companies for good reviews.  All they needed was to a get a survey of what was avaialbe at each tier and then do the normal play through to have some idea of what was in store.

     

    Again that is not the full picture but there are a whole list of things you do not know from playing 1-25 in AoC and if a person as a professional reviewer is not aware of those things then they are incompetent.  And as a professional they should try to shore those things up.  And if they can get the developers to give them a shortcut to at least have some idea what that is like then they should.  And if there are strings attached on that shortcut they should think long and hard about whether they even use that data.

     

     

    No one expects every little bit to be fleshed out in a review.  But the stratling lack of any real information about things that are simply trivial to find out like the amount of content at level 60. 

     

    That is why AoC reviews are such an obvious epic failure.  The only reason that anyone can give for the lack of such an easy to obtain bit of information is MMO's take time.  Oh really?  Come on I can do to MMODB and tell you exactly how many quest sare in LOTRO at level 50.

     

    Obviously that resource won't be avialable on release day but the point is you really do not need to play an MMO for months to find out the sort of important information that was lacking in so many reviews.

     

    Basically Tortage took long enough that it messed with deadlines and the reviewers cut corners and got played.  Its that simple.

     

    If all the reviewers had a level 60 as well and tried to quest for a day.  And they all had a level 80 in a premade sieging guild what would have happened?

     

    They would at least have known content was much different and probably been appaled when they tried a siege.

     

    yeah they could not have given an informed opinion about what it would be like to run that actual guild.  But they certainly would have had more information and had it in a reasonable time.  And that information is pretty darn important.

     

    But no.  They just take what is shoveled at them and ignore the rest.  Anyone familiar with politics and how to lie well knows that what you DO NOT SAY is as important or more important than what you DO SAY.

     

    The reviewers are not truly guilty of lying.  They are however being unintentionally misleading through laziness and venality  (I use venal in the sense of refusing to be virtuous rather than being for sale, ie. passivity and weakness).

     

    The sad thing is they cannot really admit to the parts they don't ahve good enough information on because they are so broad that the worthlessness of their review would be made evident.

     

    If we sat down and ticked off each of the key features in AoC that most of the early reviews failed to examine or garner meaningful information about, how many people would take them seriously?  Not many people.

     

    Now if 80% of those features could have been examined in a reasonable amount time would that change?  Yes it would.  The key factor is the devs would have to give you access for it to be a reasonable amount of time.  Because as we all know MMO are fraught with time sinks.

     

    Alright, I'd like to continue my original post here.

    There are a few things in particular that you're neglecting here about the industry as well.

    Unlike MMORPG.com, which specializes solely in MMO reviews, most major gaming sites have multiple game genres on multiple platforms which they have to review at a time. It's very, very easy to attack said websites as a result because 1) reviews tend to see MUCH less time per game, and 2) as has already been said, they generate most of their revenue off of ads and hits. Essentially, as sad as it may seem, the site/magazine that releases the first review about a new, hyped game will generate a LOT of attention, whether it's accurate or not.

    I feel like you have somewhat of a chip on your shoulder regarding journalists in general. We're taught from the get-go never to assume anything; it gets you in trouble in the field. You can't decide to assume everything works, nor that everything doesn't. While I doubt I'd ever get in trouble for libel in this field from a gaming company, when you practice outside of just video game reviews, you have to go only on what you can prove, or what you have experienced. I have not and will not ever start off playing a game with the thought of "...this is going to be one huge, heaping pile of garbage", because if I'm going into the game with that mindset, I'm not going to enjoy myself at all.

    Another particular issue that is present with reviewing games like Age of Conan in a timely manner is the fact you mentioned regarding performance issues. In light of this game, I don't think it's really possible for us to have known that 10 people, all of whom have the same exact specs, could have run the game on the same settings with entirely different results. Age of Conan, from a technical perspective, is an anomaly. Some people were running this game lag-free, 40 fps, on the highest settings possible; others couldn't even get above 10 fps without turning their sound off, and running it on medium settings, because the "low" video settings actually damper performance. It's not possible for one reviewer to know that this would happen, professional reviewer or not.

    I also personally believe that you're giving the developers entirely too much credit. It's hard to write a timely review when the NDA isn't even removed until the day of release. On top of that, I don't believe in writing a forced, half-assed review immediately post-release. Look at how many people pre-ordered AoC in the first month; some 400,000 if I'm not mistaken, no? That means that before I could have posted any sort of competent review, 400,000 people had already bought the game anyway. My opinion wasn't going to sway that chunk of the consumer base, regardless. So I did what I felt was most beneficial; I took the time to dissect the game for the people who were, in fact, waiting for the comprehensive reviews.

    Lastly, I can not think of a single developer who would willingly give you a quick peak to all levels of their game post-release for the sake of writing a review. The free level 20,40,60,80 idea sounds good on paper, but in a practical sense it's a bit idealistic. By that same standard, they should also give game reviewers 1, 10, and 100 gold so that we can test out mounts, mounted combat, crafting, and all the other elements of the game. However, this is where the line is drawn between BETA and release. However, Funcom was particularly devious, and as mentioned before, would not break their NDA until the game was released.

     

    This industry is a dirty business. It's not unusual to see genuine, sincere reviews edited for being too harsh/honest on a major gaming website. While I haven't had it happen here, on other websites (which I will not cite nor reference) I have submitted reviews and been told outright that my wording was "a little too harsh", and then shown a re-write that they would have been willing to run. In other cases, you'll submit a review to see whole chunks of what was originally produced MIA in the posted review, often times done so without your approval. You have to work around all the PR, spin, and hype amongst major game developers as well (for example, Vanguard in the MMO community, and say... Fable among the console community).

    Compliment these already troublesome hurdles with the rampant wars between obvious "fanboys" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a positive light) and "haters" (the ones who blatantly misrepresent facts about the game in a negative light) and it gets even more difficult to discern which writers are credible, and which ones generally have a hidden agenda. I personally follow a person who is consistent, and try to dodge the polar-style writers (extreme highs and lows).

    A final thought regarding this industry though. If you follow the trend of major MMO releases in the past year or so, they tend to have a similar issue. They release prematurely, while hyping their game up to epic proportions. They fail to include all of their promised content and lack functionality. The developers pretend there isn't a problem for anywhere from 1-3 months. The game begins to nose-dive in terms of subscriptions as more and more comprehensive reviews begin to surface. The game developers come out and apologize, and admit their game has more problems than initially reported. The game fails.

    I think the trend above shows what a lack of scruples there are by a lot of the companies we reviewers deal with these days. A lot of the time, what we're privileged enough to see isn't what we needed to see to make an accurate review. So we're left with the choice; quit the industry, and walk away from the business (because we're not indispensible), or give it our best effort to see through all the fog, and give it our best shot at presenting a review to the public using what we have available.

     

    These are my thoughts on the matter...

    ...and I'm still here

  • Posted: 9/05/08 6:42 AM
    Age of Conan
• • AOC: Indictment against the game reviewing industry?

  • I have SEVERAL thoughts regarding this particular issue.

    I'd like to start off by posting my original review here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/186176

    Now, I wrote that within a month of purchasing and playing Age of Conan, and it is what I felt to be a hard-hitting review. I touched on numerous points that I felt were specific to those playing at the time, as well as general concerns to the population of the game. I would not consider myself a biased person at all, either.

    The problem with reviewing MMO's is that, as the reviewer, you have to generally make an educated guess at the future of the game, while still highlighting the pros and cons of the present state of the game. At the time that was written, I felt the game was lacking in many areas, HOWEVER, Funcom is a company with a large customer base, experience in the MMO field, and some deep pockets. I felt that, given those variables, all the problems I mentioned in my initial review would be quickly remedied over the next few months. Hence, why I warned people against buying the game until I felt an appropriate amount of time had passed.

    What a reviewer can not do is account for the general incompetence/unwillingness of the game's company. I would never have guessed Funcom to hire volunteer fanboy-GM's on their boards, such as Lufkin. I didn't think Funcom would allow rampant exploiting and duping to go unpunished for such a long period of time. I expected patches would be tested before hitting the live server, and tested thoroughly. All of my personal mistakes in assessing this game were based on basic observations and calculations that led me to believe the game would dramatically improve over time.

    Sometimes, you're right, and you're praised as a king. Other times, you're wrong, and you're flamed like a troll. As the reviewer, as a GOOD reviewer, it's your job to put personal feelings aside, to look at the facts, to highlight relevant information that the consumers would like to know about, and to do the best you can to give a balanced view of the game.

    In my opinion, you can't do that easily unless you can dedicate LOADS of time to the game. I disagree with the remark about the whole "Just give me a level 50 and let me see the game" remark. By doing so, all you'd have done is seen the worst part of the game (especially at the time of release; Field of the Dead was a total nightmare). Jon's review got a lot of criticism, but there was no way to know that 1-25 were nearly flawless at the time. It's just like how, when I hit 80 and prepared to raid and siege and everything else that is AoC end-game, there was no way for me to know Yahkmar's Cave was 100% exploitable, or that Sieges improperly ejected people from one team to balance out the number of competitors in the zone. We couldn't have guessed that cities weren't providing bonuses, or that raid gear was wholly pitiful, or that Kylikki's Krypt has an epic zoning problem. However, I wouldn't have been able to see this if I hadn't gotten there on my own, with my guild.

    On the other hand, I can't help but agree in many senses regarding the industry as a whole.

    I'll add more to this post a little later. I want to make sure my thoughts are organized for part 2 of this post.

  • Posted: 9/04/08 11:45 AM
    Age of Conan
• • Desparation is setting in.Leipzig Interview with Erling Ellingsen, Part One

  • The problem I have with this particular issue is not that Ellingsen is telling the truth, it's the fact that it took him several months before deciding that honesty was the proper course of action.

    This glaring oversight is only magnified by the endless levels of general PR deceit that we've all witnessed over the course of time as well.

    I have to question the sincerity of the honesty here, because I genuinely just don't believe Funcom cares, at all, about it's customers (which they've demonstrated through their actions for over 90 days), and I can't help but wonder if this is nothing more than a desparate tactic to try and save face amongst some of their customer base.

    However. I do believe this is step 1 in the RIGHT direction for Ellingsen and Funcom. Want to know what would really send a stronger message than a delicate admittance of wrong-doing? Here's my list.

    1) Restore forum privileges to all customers who have been banned.

    Funcom censored so many people. I have no doubt that many of the banned offenders deserved their punishment, as this game generated a lot of hate. However, many users were banned simply for stating that they were dissatisfied with a product, now inferior and incomplete by admittance of Ellingsen himself, which I don't believe is fair. Or, if Ellingsen would like to test out how absurd the forum moderation is, have him create a few alternate forum names, and post slightly negative things about the game. Maybe if he was banned from his own boards for civilly citing the flaws that lie within it, he'd understand his community's distrust of the company better.

    2) Offer a "Return to Hyboria" campaign later this year. Don't you DARE do this without fixing the game first, either. In other words, provide all previously paying customers a full, free month to anyone who had a subscription between May and the present. If the game is truly fixed, people may trickle back in slowly. Do NOT half-ass this, and try to rush it in to compete against Warhammer.

    3) Start fixing performance issues. Hell, dedicate a whole month to nothing but performance patches.

    4) Shut the PR Hype-and-Lie machines down entirely. Want to know how to undermine the sincerity of any true gesture admitting wrong-doing? Put out an article or a statement that is deliberately misleading the next day. We don't care about how many boxes you sold, nor do we want to hear about the "mature rating", or anything else. We want the game to be fixed, and fun. Rubbing our faces in the dirt is not an intelligible way to keep us excited about the future of Hyboria.

    5) Dismiss the idea of an expansion pack for now. Want to hammer a nail in the coffin? Keep talking about the expansion pack when the elements that were supposed to be in your core game aren't even there. I *hope* I speak for everyone when I say that it is preposterous to charge people for things that you failed to deliver in your first game due to technical incompetence. I will personally never even consider re-subbing to this game if an expansion pack is released before this game is repaired.

  • Posted: 9/04/08 11:25 AM
    Age of Conan