Narrow minded editors and reviewers

[ghostryder]

Just got done reading the new issue of Computer Gaming- here this months focus was on multiplayer gaming.

The whole issue was so biased against games such as Everquest and SWG that anything concrete and useful was hardly found.

Even the editor opened the issue with a rant against such games with, "people don't play online games, they suffer through them."

Then go on about the forthcoming doom of such games.

Yes, I agree those of us who were back in beta and continued with EQ have put up with a lot- and yes SWG is an incomplete broken piece of crap- but he's missing the point.

First off, how much crap are people putting up with in single player games? Bugs, weak AI, copycat designs has all the titles blending into one another- one RTS is simply the exact same play as the last with different graphics and the same poor path finding.

Real gems are counted on one hand - and there's very few titles worth purchasing.

We as players realise this is no longer the 1990s. We realise the bug ridden incompatabilities of the past has mostly been conguered by Windows GDS and with careful programing with the use of compilers there is no longer a viable reason a game should have so many bugs aside from piss poor programming.

We as consumers are to blame if we accept an unfinished product- and we are making ourselves heard.

SWG, as reported by the company, is losing tons of money and if the next expansion doesn't bring 150,000 onboard it'll be closed down- EQ itself by recent estimates has went from 550,000 subscribers to 400,000 during the horrible release of DX9 into EQ, and the Company is, at least on paper, taking steps to correct their ways.

With so many upcoming titles to compete with our gaming dollar the days of; "suffering through online games" are behind us.

I've bitch just as loadly about EQ bugs, support, and the like along with everyone else, but I am not so narrow minded nor petty that I can't see real effort from Sony -

That effort has to last, of course, but I think the overall opinion of these XBOX players when they try to tackle the online gendor with some believable depth is laughable at best-

[BloodCelt]

I have often found gaming editors to be lacking in a lot of ways.  Many have been corrupted by consoles, or they judge games based on advertising with their magizine/website, or, in the case of one incident I know of..  how much party money is allouted to a PCGamers staff member who's been flown in to get a sneak peek at a game.  (in this case, it was NOT a CENT).

The best review you can get on any game is either word of mouth, or a hands on Demo/Beta.  that goes for both Single Player and Online RPG's.

Some editorial staff from game rags are given buffed up and loaded toons on most online RPG's anyhow, and still suck at the game AND the social side of it.

I rarely waste my money on these sites/games because finding one capable of being nuetral, or unbiased in their reviews is damned near impossible.

BC

[Eatbugs]

*shrug*

Computer Gaming and magazines like it are a well-known joke as far as game reporting goes.  Their objectivity is so compromised by advertising dollars (much of it provided by console manufacturers) you may as well just read the press package from whichever company is spending the most in the magazine this month - you'll get the same views.  MMORPGs in general don't comprise a huge proportion of gaming magazine advertising dollars, (certainly not like first person shooters, whether single or multiplayer) so they're relatively safe targets for reporting that attempts to make it look like game magazine editors can afford to express real opinions.

Plus, reporting things that happened six months ago is par for the course in any magazine.  :P

[ghostryder]

Plus, reporting things that happened six months ago is par for the course in any magazine.

Boy, isn't that true. The same goes for hardware reviews. I had a friend who came over taunting how great the new Nvidea cards were and that ATI has yet released them.

I had to inform him the ATI X800 had been on shelves 3 weeks, had pretty much already smoked this 'new' card in every aspect one could look at and printed out an indepth 12 page line-up and review from a online hardware review site to shut him up when he stuburnly refused to accept that his great magazine was 8 weeks behind the curve and that if he really wanted to keep up to date he better start browsing the net.

The best info I've seen as far as information and fair reporting in terms of online games is a site called the 'company' which I found at wargamer.com from one of their reviwers doing a lineup of online games-

only here can one find accurrate subscription numbers to such games, and whether they are turning a profit or not-

In the case of SWG it is true Sony is losing money, but that's mostly because of the huge cut LucasArts takes for the licensing- and in order for Sony to make it profitable it must have a player base of at least 250,000.

The current number of subscribers is currently pretty large compared to a lot of other titles like arnachy Online- who survive on 60,000 subscribers, for instance-

When I get some time I'll do a search and try to find the link on wargamer for those interested in such things-

[Kreseth]

The days of suffering thorugh online games are over?  Really?  That sounds just like the talk we've heard EVERY single time a new game was released to compete with EQ & as soon as that new game fails to cause massive player loss from EQ sony goes back to not giving a rat's ass about player input.

Maybe things will be different with WoW, but for now lots of folks still end a day of EQ frustrated and wondering why they played.  Clearly the days of suffering aren't over yet.  The good moments in our game are really great, but the day to day grind can be pretty weak for a lot of folks.

--Kreseth

[ghostryder]

The day to day grind is part of the design and nature of the game and isn't really in the same ballpark as the problems in question - even if the game was flawless that grind would still be there-

If it bothers players then the game simply isn't for them-

But the technical nightmares and incompleteness and releasing broken patches should be behind us-

[Kinash]

*shrug*

Computer Gaming and magazines like it are a well-known joke as far as game reporting goes.  Their objectivity is so compromised by advertising dollars (much of it provided by console manufacturers) you may as well just read the press package from whichever company is spending the most in the magazine this month - you'll get the same views.  MMORPGs in general don't comprise a huge proportion of gaming magazine advertising dollars, (certainly not like first person shooters, whether single or multiplayer) so they're relatively safe targets for reporting that attempts to make it look like game magazine editors can afford to express real opinions.

Plus, reporting things that happened six months ago is par for the course in any magazine.  :P

I knew they were all a bunch of crap when they all raved about Diablo as if it were the greatest thing since sliced bread and complained about Daggerfall, which blows Diablo away. I finished Diablo in one sitting and said to myself "that's all? The demo had more playablity!". I felt I wasted my money on Diablo... but Daggerful was great... you could spend months playing the game without being forced to finish the story-line quests. Sure it was buggy (and they patched it a lot), but Diablo had a major DX flaw which made one level crash the game, you could only complete the game by running to a down staircase before any combat. Guess Bethesda didn't pay them off :)

[Oneiromancer]

Heh...I liked both Diablo and Daggerfall, for different reasons.  Sometimes you want a hack and slash fest, sometimes you want something with a little more depth.  I enjoyed Diablo 2, and I recently started re-playing Dungeon Siege...sometimes I like being able to pause when I'm grinding mindlessly...

Anyway, on the original topic...I used to have a subscription to PC Gamer...for a long time I only kept it for the demo CDs.  But once I finally got high speed internet access, it was gone...I could download demos and access much more information online.  When I didn't really know any better, I thought PC Gamer was pretty cool.  When I finally realized that pretty much all of the information had been available online for weeks...I knew that I didn't need to spend the money anymore.  Really the only thing the magazines had going for them in terms of the articles wer better writing...but nowadays that isn't as true.  I think Gamespot is pretty good at writing objective reviews...especially compared to IGN.

Game on,

[ghostryder]

I find the best reviews on wargamer.com. I know it sounds like they only review and focus on wargames but actually they review all games, especially ones from small developers your never see in a mag or most other online sites such as IGN.

Some notable mentions would be reviews of Titans of steel which has never made it to avault or ign, and the beta reviews of world of warcraft, where the reviewer has actually been playing from a level 1 character all through beta and has so far done 4 articles as the game progresses.

IGN will get a suped up toon and write one based on a few days worth of play-

I'll lok at both avault.com and IGN because I enjoy the wealth of other information but wargamer even does board games and book reviews- and covers even the most obscure conventions.

[Sigrah]

I find that Editorials from Computer Magazines rarely say anything that changes my mind about any given game.  I also find that few of them actually know enough to write about a given game.  The words of someone who never plays EQ and got a betabuffed style character with their own private tour knows very little about the game compared to the words of someone who's played on a daily basis for over a year or two.  Then there's the biased ones who generate an opinion with about as much knowledge on the subject as a 4 year old has about politics.  As it was said earlier, it's word of mouth that makes or breaks games, not some editor or critic who can't figure out right from left.

[Shille]

Just look at the numbers. Does ANY online game have as many subscribers as EQ?

Dis the game all they want, people keep playing.

[Raaski Razorclaws]

I don't seem to have the online subscribtion chart bookmarked here...but yes another online game has more subscribers than EQ now, that would be Final Fantasy XI last time I saw it reported.

[Kromjr]

"I had to inform him the ATI X800 had been on shelves 3 weeks, had pretty much already smoked this 'new' card in every aspect one could look at and printed out an indepth 12 page line-up and review from a online hardware review site to shut him up when he stuburnly refused to accept that his great magazine was 8 weeks behind the curve and that if he really wanted to keep up to date he better start browsing the net. "

Heh had to pull that little tibit out because it made coffee shoot through my nose! New ATI cards are bunk man heh.

[Hrann]

I don't seem to have the online subscribtion chart bookmarked here...but yes another online game has more subscribers than EQ now, that would be Final Fantasy XI last time I saw it reported.

I'd really like to see that link, as this is definitely news to me.  As far as I was aware, only Lineage had more subscribers than EQ, and most of them are in Korea.

[TerjynPovar]

http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.html

The only real reason why FFXI has more subscribers is because it is both PC and PS2 though, in my opinion.

However neither can hope to stand up to Lineage or Lineage 2...