RE: Good article about AoC
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MMORPG reviews: tricky beasts to get right, eh? </h2> <div class="postdate"> August 31st, 2008 by Rob </div> <p class="postinfo"> Filed under:
MMORPG Related,
Opinion |
1 Comment » </p> <p>
Trembling Hand has a post up
relating to games reviewsand, more specifically, MMORPG reviews. It uses the Age of Conandebacle as a case study, of sorts, and while that will no doubt swingthe ensuing discussion into a rather lengthy exchange of, “Age of Conanis the worst MMO ever made…” and “No, Age of Conan is brilliant and hashidden depths that you just can’t see yet…” which will only end whenone of the parties involved decides to get a life, the premise of thearticle overall is something I’ve thought a lot about, myself.</p><p>MMORPGs are inherently dodgy beasts for reviewers. Faced with tightdeadlines, especially in the online realm, reviewers are generallyunable to play the game for any meaningful length of time before thosedeadlines require the reviewer to pass judgement upon it and, asTrembling Hand says, suggest whether people should buy it or not. Thisbecomes a real problem when, for example, a game has tarted up enoughof its noob levels to give the reviewer a very skewed view of thegame’s true face.</p><p>It’s my firm belief, for example, that most of the early Age ofConan reviews were written by people who didn’t get past the first 20levels and the “noob zone” of Tortage. In this zone they saw polishedquests, great voice acting and an interesting game world, full ofpromise. “This game is looking great! It’s loads of fun!” the reviewsgushed. And, yeah, based on Levels 1-20, that’s quite fair to say.</p><p>Of course, if they’d had the time to push past that area and getbeyond, say, Level 30 or 40, the reviews would have undoubtedly startedto take on a different tone. The voice acting dries up… the questsbreak… the game mechanics prove to be increasingly flawed… a wealth ofpromises from the box are wither broken or non-existent… the endgame iscrap… and, most alarmingly of all, THE GAME JUST ISN’T FUN. This issomething AoC reviewers should have been ALL OVER, but failed. Andtherein lies the danger of MMORPG reviews.</p><p>I’m sure some of these reviewers played on and, over the months thatfollowed, would have realised that their reviews were WAY too cheeryand optimistic. Hell, I would be quite embarassed to have written suchglowing reviews when, in the space of three months, the game wasrevealed to be such a collosally stinking piece of shit. But that’s me.I’m not really into the concept of suggesting people buy something whenit’s actually terrible. I guess I have a conscience.</p><p>So… who’d be an MMORPG reviewer, eh? On one side, the reviews needto be written fast for a ravenous audience and, on the other, games aresprinkling way too much fairy dust on the lower levels, so the chancesof being made to look like a fool within mere months of release arehigh. You know, free games or not, I don’t envy those guys, not onelittle bit. I think the best hope for “real” reviews comes from, asalways, playing these games ourselves, or having a friend in a betatest who is happy to break an NDA and tell you all about it. Relying onthe highly sanitised reality that reviewers are given to deal with willresult in rather inaccurate reviews, more often than not.</p>
From what I've read, Cryptic did something along the same lines with COH, and it almost put that game under too. I've been told they where working on AoC for 6 years. And they only have content for like 20 to 30 of 80 lvls? That's just wierd to me... You need to have a well pollished core of content from 1 to whatever the max lvl is, and then expand outwards from there. Meh, the MMO seems to still be a bit of an unknown as to how to make a "good one". Seems like devs are starting to learn what players want, like spending more of their time doing than traveling to do, among other things. But there are still many unknowns in the equation.