All Posts by Admin

Originally posted by AlloughN

Did anyone else notice that while the numbers may be SLIGHTLY different, there is no change in the actual ratings? This didn't change the top 5, or the fact that one MMO is higher than the other.

Its not the numbers that matter, it can be a 6.5 or a 6.7 for all I care, its still the same game, and the rating is still in the same EXACT place when compared with its standings before the curve.

This is a visual change only, not a fundemental one.

So the rating is spread out more visually, it hasn't changed a single thing. Sorry, the MMO you hate the most

 

EXACTLY   The order of the games is the same before and after.  The curve just stretches the list like an accordian, with the games at the top getting pulled more than the games at the bottom.  It is just to create better scale...nothing more.

Originally posted by Theutus

Originally posted by Admin

Originally posted by Hashbrick

Just instead of 4-6 you get all 8s >.> whoopie

 

Not actually true.  Assume you had these scores:

3.5
4.0
4.5
5.5
6.0
6.5

After the curve you would have:

4.41
5.04
5.67
6.93
7.56
8.25

Sure if 10 games were all 6.5 before they will all be 8.25 now, but when you look at all 100+ games in development you see a big spreading taking place.

Let's face it - anger outweighs joy when it comes to this community.  Using a positive-only curve helps bring these scores back into reality.  Setting hype aside, if we did not have the curve on the released games no game would have a score higher than about 6.2 - which I don't think that is very accurate that no MMORPG has earned better than a "C" grade.

 

 

This is what bothers me... YOU don't think it's accurate so YOU decided to alter it to make it more "fun"... if not inaccurate as far as your communities opinion on the game's rating. Perhaps there are no MMORPGs that deserve above a "C" grade at this point in time? I know I'm not playing any of them regularly due to the mediocrity and average/ sameness in the genre. This inspires me to change all my ratings to 1...

Keep in mind that the curve happens in real time - so we have not permanently changed any of the actual scoring.  The moment a game earns a real "10" score the curve dies.  Even if a game naturally has a 9 the curve does almost nothing to any of the games.  What it does do is better scale all the games against whatever game is current the higher score.  I don't expect everyone to like it - but WAY back when we started this on the game rankings in 2002 the community helped us come up with the idea and the majority of them liked it.

Originally posted by Zorvan

Just like to add, since I neglected to do so earlier, a big "Thank you" to Craig ( Admin ) for coming into my little thread here. I figured the highest up I'd get would be Jon but instead I got the head honcho himself.

No problemo...just luck really, I happened to see it on the home page "recent posts" section and was intrigued.  Admittedly I don't have time to hang out on the forums much these days, so I probably miss a lot of topics like this (that may be a good thing, lol).

I am always happy to help people understand the workings of MMORPG.com.

Athens would be a long stretch for us just to see one developer - but perhaps we could "deputize" an EU local as a correspondent and send them instead

Originally posted by darwa

Originally posted by Admin

 

I am unsure what you mean about our change in direciton.  How did we change our direction as a website?

Contrary to what all the people post - this site is 100% impartial, unless my employees have some hidden agendas that I am unaware of - as the person who sells 100% of the ad space here I assure you that no favors are ever given for purchasing advertising...not that it is not tried by advertisers (normally small ones not large companies) - I would never allow this on MMORPG.com - ever.

 

You changed the direction when you started flooding this site with advertisements and user-created content. This is irrelevant to the thread subject, so let's not discuss this hear. If you'd like to hear my views on this, then I'm more than willing to share, so please contact me via pm.

We have always stuck to the basic three ads per page - with the exception of the new home page and game list "skins" we do now this is still the same.  We have to make profits or we will shut the site down.  We have 6 full time employees to pay, massive hosting costs, equipment, travelling costs, and the list goes on and on.

User content is what the people want - and we need to compete.  This is a business, make no mistake - but an honest one.  We will always take the site in the direction we feel the community wants - and blogs guild systems and galleries are all things we need to do to compete in our market.

Originally posted by darwa

Originally posted by Admin

 

I have abosultely zero to do with site content and it has been that way for over 3 years.  All I do here is setup advertising and arrange for contests or key giveaway events and manage the day to day business tasks.

Darwa - I am not sure where you are pulling your "facts" from but Jon's role in the site is unchanged.  To be honest other than a few emails each week him and I rarely converse.

As for Darkfall - I too think it would be great if Jon gets a hands-on feature for MMORPG.com - I think it would be a big traffic draw and satisfy the curiosities of the community here.  I will ping Jon to see if he has approached the developer on this one.

 

Thanks for responding. It's good  to know you're still around even though I dislike the direction you're taking this site. /slap /burn /whack

I'll thank you to notice that I drew upon no facts at all (perceived or otherwise), but merely stated my opinion. The change in Jons approach is obvious (I feel) and geared towards what the public wish to hear, and I hope you'll forgive me in assuming that it was upon your influence.

I am unsure what you mean about our change in direciton.  How did we change our direction as a website?

Contrary to what all the people post - this site is 100% impartial, unless my employees have some hidden agendas that I am unaware of - as the person who sells 100% of the ad space here I assure you that no favors are ever given for purchasing advertising...not that it is not tried by advertisers (normally small ones not large companies) - I would never allow this on MMORPG.com - ever.

Originally posted by darwa

If anyone other than Richard 'Konou' Cox did the interview, I'd conder it worthless.

Sorry Jon, but I think you're a bit much under Craigs wing nowadays, and this site is no longer known for its impartiality.

I have abosultely zero to do with site content and it has been that way for over 3 years.  All I do here is setup advertising and arrange for contests or key giveaway events and manage the day to day business tasks.

Darwa - I am not sure where you are pulling your "facts" from but Jon's role in the site is unchanged.  To be honest other than a few emails each week him and I rarely converse.

As for Darkfall - I too think it would be great if Jon gets a hands-on feature for MMORPG.com - I think it would be a big traffic draw and satisfy the curiosities of the community here.  I will ping Jon to see if he has approached the developer on this one.

Originally posted by spinach8puff

The question is why have ratings if it is advised to ignore them? They are too easily affected by emotion, aren't even close to being accurate, and just end up causing more of a headache for various reasons. Discussion on ratings normally end up in a flame or cry-fest and seem to be posted somewhat often.

I don't think anyone from our staff ever said to ignore them.  But as with any "score" on the Internet - especially ones from a sites community - take these scores with a grain of salt.  They are subject to the unavoidable things like people starting campaigns to get a game scored high or low or whatever.  We do what we can to counter these things, but it is impossible to make it perfect.

I don't think the correct solution is to not have user scores at all.  I personally still find the scores interesting and the closest thing we have to the "pulse" of the MMORPG community and their opinions about the games featured here.

Last year we just tried changing the default list on the home page from "most hyped" to the "most viewed" and the community revolted so hard we went back to the original way.  I assure you people would flip out big time if we did away with user rankings or user rankings on the home page.

Originally posted by Mitara

 

That guy is not the only one... Admin puts it into cement that this site is unreliable and even goes on to make sure everybody understands how unreliable it is.

The next step is fixing up the reviews or tampering with the numbers, due to payment from advertisers wanted to amp up their sales.

Interesting!!

The site is reliable.  I would just not put a ton of weight into the ratings from the community.  We don't edit or alter these scores other than stretching them out with the curve.  I don't know what we could possibly do to make this any better - how are we to know if someone is honestly reviewing a game or just bashing it because they don't want to see it rise?

Originally posted by spinach8puff

Originally posted by Admin

Also take note that the two scoring types Rating (released  games) and Hype (unreleased) use totally different voting options.  Hype is just 1-10 how excited are you about this title? Ratings is a multi-part score based on seperate scores for gfx,sound, role play, etc. 

These things are geniunely different scores about genuinely different things (ie games you can play and games you can't play yet).

The reason you saw the unreleased appear with similar scores to the released games is we just started curving hype scores.  We have always curved ratings for released games, well at least every since a few months of opening our doors so to speak.

/poke 

Still wondering about my question from page one.

I just re-read your post and could not find a question in there:

"I have seen it said several times that people shouldn't pay attention to ratings because it's not a good way to judge a game. You also said anger outweighs joy when it comes to this community therefore the ratings tend to be lower. I agree with both, but why have them if it's encouraged to not view them.

The Most Popular tab on the front page would be good to keep since nothing can effect it, but I'd suggest on doing away with anything that require votes. Like I said before ratings aren't that accurate anyways since people who are enjoying their game won't waste their time on voting for it unless they are fanbois.

Not that I believe it bothers the administrators much, but it would do away with the majority of accusations for being "corrupt" as well."
 

Did I miss something?

Honestly I don't think anything could ever do away with accusations of being "corrupt" - of course there is not and never has been one actual shred of evidence that this website has *ever* taken money for ratings, reviews, scores or anything other than banner ads - but that is the beauty of making unfounded claims like this - people gobble it up even without any facts.  And as I have stated before there is not evidence to prove something did *not* happen - it is the heart of all conspiracy theories.

And yes, it bothers me greatly to be accused of being a liar, and dishonest person...especially when there is no grounds for such accusations.  But time has taught me to just let it roll off and forget about it.  You cannot satisfy everyone, and there will always be crazed people who think things without having facts.  There are people who think the earth is flat and that bigfoot is real - what can I say.

Also take note that the two scoring types Rating (released  games) and Hype (unreleased) use totally different voting options.  Hype is just 1-10 how excited are you about this title? Ratings is a multi-part score based on seperate scores for gfx,sound, role play, etc. 

These things are geniunely different scores about genuinely different things (ie games you can play and games you can't play yet).

The reason you saw the unreleased appear with similar scores to the released games is we just started curving hype scores.  We have always curved ratings for released games, well at least every since a few months of opening our doors so to speak.

Originally posted by Inzra

 

Through the years I've watched that list I can't ever remember any unreleased game being at top ten, and now theres suddenly 9 of them??

So nope I don't think Aion deserves it at all. At least not this way.

The point is btw that it's not just Aion, but 40 other games as well.

Again, you cannot compare hype scores to ratings for released games.  Yes, we let you sort the list that way but think about it - these games are not released yet so obviously no one has played them yet so the score is not setting the quality of the product but rather the level of excitement about the game that they *hope* it will be.

If you like to look at the entire game list as a top ranking list I recommend you do it with the "Released Games" list and then the "Games in Development" list using the left menu selectors.  Only then will you be comparing apples and apples so to speak.  Example Below:

Ranking for released games: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/show/released/sCol/finalRank/sOrder/desc

Ranking for games under development: http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/show/development/sCol/hype/sOrder/desc

- The max score any game can get is still 10.  Again, the very top game is what sets the curve multiplier.  If a game has a score of 10 then the curve is 1.0 (no change).  If a game out there has a 9.5 the curve multiplier is 1.0263 (and things will change very slightly).  The point in this curve is that it does not make sense for NO game out of all 230+ titles to be higher than a 6/10.

- The curve cannot change the order of things.  The order of the games will remain identical before and after the curve.

- We would never do anything to change the scores ourselves.  Most games don't have a lot of hype votes,  and all the top games are within .01 of each other - so reall all it takes is a cool video feature about a game and the community gives it a dozen high votes and everything changes in the rankings.