Why The Games Press Should Not Review MMOs

NowGamer: Funcom's Erling Ellingson, the product manager behind Age Of Conan and more recently, its expansion, Rise Of The Godslayer, concurred that the problems are many. “Reviewing something colossal like an MMO must be every reviewer's worst nightmare,” he told us “These are games specifically designed to last forever, and if you are to evaluate every single aspect of the game in detail it would take you months upon months if not a year or more. So naturally some corners must be cut, and I think it requires even more of the reviewer than what's usual.”

[Letros]

Good point, I think they should review them, but not give a number score, then again, that is how the industry works, and it is up to developers to ensure the product is polished enough for a release.

[Perjoss]

i think a nice way to tackle the problem would be to review an mmo in an episodic manner. So the reviewer might play the first 10 hours of the mmo and review that, but making it clear that it is not a review of the full experience. 1 week later he or she might review 10 more hours playing with the same character in that same mmo, and so on until the reviewer feels they have experienced some of the end game content.

[Darkfiber]

"The first 10 hours" means nothing to people. Most hardcore MMO gamers will play that in the first day they pick it up. I think that's the reason people don't like reviews. They want a review by someone who has played the game to max level and have done extensive raiding/pvp at end game. This is impossible if they want the review to come out in a timely manner, plus almost no reviewers actually play hardcore MMOs. Most of them now are still like "I finally hit level 50 in WoW and I've been playing for 5 years yay me!" and have no idea how MMO communities actually work because they don't play them like most normal MMO players do. That's why they shouldn't be reviewed. Reviewers who play MMOs have a completely different mindset than MMO gamers themselves.

[edhe]

Funcurves!

[ravinash]

Well if it takes you a year of playing to figure out if your going to enjoy playing it or not, that maybe its just not enjoyable.

A review is to give people an idea of if the game works.
I would never go solely on what a review says because there is opinion there. But if its saying the game is broken, I would want to know and you can usually figure that out within a few hours of playing.

[jimmins]

An instruction manual is to give people an idea of if a game works, the purpose of a review is to inform people whether it's any good or not.

But you're right, a review is just one person's opinion.

[Pink_Uni]

reviewers will never be able to get the full effect of a mmo, and thats another reason why reviews are full of shit

they're based on 3 or 2 days of playing, and anything that last longer then that is given a shit score because reviewers are not real gamers, they're there to create bias media and get paid off by companies who aren't confident in their products

if reviews were actually legit, mmos would be getting 10/10s and single player games would get mediocre scores because they lack the vastness of diversity and content

just look on youtube, the more videos a game has, the more people are into them. the more things that are rare and not achievable by every single person.

thats the real reviews, not these stupid writers who try to hype up every fucking game that being posted all over the web

[jimmins]

Of many, many years experience in the industry,
for one thing, the notion of reviewers beign paid off by games publishers is a load of bollocks. That never happens.

Secondly, games are not rated against each other across genres. Do you think someone plays Forza Motorsport 3 and then when it comes to writing the review thinks, 'Yeah, it's good, but how does it compare to Pokemon?'.

Games aren't rated on size, they're rated on how good they are compared to their genre peers. GT5 will be compared to Forza, Pokemon will be compared to Yu-Gi-Oh!, and MMOs will be compared to other MMOs.

[jimmins]

Have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You can't win an argument with an idiot, so I'm not going to even try.

All the best.

[kevnb]

especially for pc games.

[Darkfiber]

Reviews generally suck, I agree, but especially with games that you are required to put in a great deal of time in order to judge fairly. Most reviewers spend 5-10 hours on a game before they review it, including MMOs. The review is usually only about the first couple levels of one character/zone and that's it. They have no idea about anything, and base it off that. Reviewers are dumb. They want everything handed to them and want it to be easy enough to beat in a day, and if it isn't then it's criticized.