February 25, 2009

When Can you Officially be Wrong

Seeing this post, while making me laugh, really got me thinking. I know it's not right to review a console game without finishing it, or playing it for an adequate amount of time. And I know it's annoying to hear people bash an MMO and call it failed after only playing for the first two weeks.

But where do you draw the line at what's a long enough time to have played an MMO? Does the amount of time that comes with the game purhase count as long enough? It's a game designed to be played for months on end so there's a good chance you won't have a max level character or seen all of the content. Does this make you unfit to review the MMO? Especially since the first month (when the most people will be trying out and reviewing it) is always the worst for an MMO. Speaking from experience, the WAR that I played in the first month wasn't the same WAR that I played for the past month.

The MMO bashers may be annoying, but are they wrong? When does your opinion about an MMO start to matter? I've been rethinking about how I view the naysayers on the internet when it comes to WAR. I used to think "they just played for a few days and now they feel like snarking it up in comment_threads," but now I'm starting to doubt. When do you start/stop having a valid opinion about an MMO? After every patch? After you've acquired the best gear? Only if you play an a populated server? It's not like they played an anti-WAR, meant to crush their souls until they quit. They played the finished product and it wasn't to their liking

We can't hide behind the ever-popular "it's a great game now, they fixed all those bugs and design issues," because that's not going to cut it. The MMO tourists have moved on and the loudest naysayers will, on principal, never resubsribe and continue to bash the game. It doesn't matter how good the game gets a year after release, it blew its chance by not being good enough at the start.

What I'm trying to say is don't hate the haters, hate the game that sucked when it mattered most.

4 comments:

  1. I see what you're saying, but I think I'm going to go ahead and keep on hating the haters anyway. They don't have anything better to do than visit unofficial forums and bash the game? A blog post or two detailing how the game did the person wrong is fine, but continued complaining after that is uncalled for.

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  2. Yeah, I think I'm with the still hate camp here. You don't like something fine, but what is the point in trying to ruin its reputation when it's no longer the same game?

    If you think something is bad and are trying to warn people away from wasting their money and time, well that's a noble goal perhaps, but when the product changes, especially if that impacts your complaints, it's STFU time.

    For most people I don't think the goal is even that benign. Some people just like to complain and ridicule on the interwebs and that isn't valuable to anyone except the complainer getting his jollies.

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  3. I think everyone should be allowed to voice their opinion but it should be stated as their opinion. When they post a statement that sounds as if they're speaking for the large majority then it becomes an issue.

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  4. I have to agree with these comments. I should maybe put up a disclaimer saying that this post doesn't apply to outright trolls, or if a game mechanic was changed so drastically that it is no longer a viable issue to complain about, such as how early on, the only thing people did was scenarios, but it is much more balanced now.

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