If you're reading a review and expecting objectivity, you're looking in the wrong place.
Objective, impartial information is typically available on the store page's list of features (or back of the box for us older folks).
MOP's article is a review of the game one month after release of early access to see if Neowiz has held up to their promises to fix the game, and MOP is fairly lenient in its criticism in my opinion. They don't even bring up the issues of Lumena still being character-bound even though Neowiz said that wasn't intended. Additionally, they don't mention that premium subscriptions give additional dungeon allowances per day as well even though Neowiz stated that wouldn't be the case prior to release.
I gave Neowiz the benefit of the doubt with their speedy communication and acknowledgment of the game's problems. However, given that they don't even have the QA to ensure that the game's patches actually fix/balance things, I don't have much faith in them anymore. I wouldn't even say that the patches they've rolled out have fixed anything; rather, they just seem to have taken things from one extreme to the other. About the only thing they "fixed" in this past month was the dupe exploit.
If you're reading a review and expecting objectivity, you're looking in the wrong place.
Objective, impartial information is typically available on the store page's list of features (or back of the box for us older folks).
MOP's article is a review of the game one month after release of early access to see if Neowiz has held up to their promises to fix the game, and MOP is fairly lenient in its criticism in my opinion. They don't even bring up the issues of Lumena still being character-bound even though Neowiz said that wasn't intended. Additionally, they don't mention that premium subscriptions give additional dungeon allowances per day as well even though Neowiz stated that wouldn't be the case prior to release.
I gave Neowiz the benefit of the doubt with their speedy communication and acknowledgment of the game's problems. However, given that they don't even have the QA to ensure that the game's patches actually fix/balance things, I don't have much faith in them anymore. I wouldn't even say that the patches they've rolled out have fixed anything; rather, they just seem to have taken things from one extreme to the other. About the only thing they "fixed" in this past month was the dupe exploit.
serious if I ever will look on a game review to see if the game is good enough, I will check player review and never game site, most like we see a lot here is bought, so you can't trust, journalism is dead for a few year now too so you can never trust only one source, what is doom and gloom in one is the best thing ever in another. so when I check teh player reviews I look on the one who says its good then go for the one who is bashing the game, cross reference, and then see if I need another read or not
A review can and should strive to be objective. You're not giving your feelings about what you personally like and dislike. You're stating facts about the status of the game, what's going on with development, how certain content and features actually look in game, what's available and what's not, population, server issues, bugs, etc. Then you come to a final score based on those facts - not how you feel about any of that, what content you like and what content you don't, what bugs bother you or don't, your opinions about the game, etc. None of that is needed, nor is the drama.
The point of a review is to give us information we don't already have. It is by definition, a mere examination of something, nothing more, with the intention of coming to some sort of conclusion at that point as to what to do next - and with games, that conclusion is intended to guide it's readers to making their own decisions about whether or not to play.
You tell us the details about the state of the game before we've had a chance to play ourselves. Then we make our own decisions about whether we like what we are reading based on our own opinions about games. We read the facts given to us and the review of those facts to decide. I don't need a writer's opinion when I have my own - I just need them to tell me what I don't already know about the game.
A review can and should strive to be objective. You're not giving your feelings about what you personally like and dislike. You're stating facts about the status of the game, what's going on with development, how certain content and features actually look in game, what's available and what's not, population, server issues, bugs, etc. Then you come to a final score based on those facts - not how you feel about any of that, what content you like and what content you don't, what bugs bother you or don't, your opinions about the game, etc. None of that is needed, nor is the drama.
The point of a review is to give us information we don't already have. It is by definition, a mere examination of something, nothing more, with the intention of coming to some sort of conclusion at that point as to what to do next - and with games, that conclusion is intended to guide it's readers to making their own decisions about whether or not to play.
You tell us the details about the state of the game before we've had a chance to play ourselves. Then we make our own decisions about whether we like what we are reading based on our own opinions about games. We read the facts given to us and the review of those facts to decide. I don't need a writer's opinion when I have my own - I just need them to tell me what I don't already know about the game.
This article wasn't devoid of the facts you seek. It includes objective information about the state of the game. But, it's an opinion piece, not a review: It's literally a feature called "The Soapbox," people.
A review can and should strive to be objective. You're not giving your feelings about what you personally like and dislike. You're stating facts about the status of the game, what's going on with development, how certain content and features actually look in game, what's available and what's not, population, server issues, bugs, etc. Then you come to a final score based on those facts - not how you feel about any of that, what content you like and what content you don't, what bugs bother you or don't, your opinions about the game, etc. None of that is needed, nor is the drama.
The point of a review is to give us information we don't already have. It is by definition, a mere examination of something, nothing more, with the intention of coming to some sort of conclusion at that point as to what to do next - and with games, that conclusion is intended to guide it's readers to making their own decisions about whether or not to play.
You tell us the details about the state of the game before we've had a chance to play ourselves. Then we make our own decisions about whether we like what we are reading based on our own opinions about games. We read the facts given to us and the review of those facts to decide. I don't need a writer's opinion when I have my own - I just need them to tell me what I don't already know about the game.
This article wasn't devoid of the facts you seek. It includes objective information about the state of the game. But, it's an opinion piece, not a review: It's literally a feature called "The Soapbox," people.
I think it's important to also note, that if a "review" stated only facts with zero opinion, you wouldn't want to read it.
A fact based review is devoid of "fun" as fun is subjective. I can find sock puppets fun and you could hate them.
When you get down to the nitty gritty, you can only put so many facts in there until it reads like a gameplay technical manual. (Remember when they gave instruction manuals with boxed games for old consoles? Those were "fun")
Then you run the risk on PC games to have situational facts. Such as a game running poorly for you when it doesn't run poorly for someone else. So many factors play into poor performance, from software to hardware to network problems, while your problems may be factually true to you, it wouldn't factually be someone elses experience.
So saying that people WANT objective reviews is like people saying they want edible underpants. Under the absolute best conditions it might sound like a good, sexy idea, but in actuality, in real world conditions, you'd have to be a "special" kind of "person" to get any enjoyment out of it.
Well imagine how harsh i am since i consider every mmorpg outside of FFXI to have very average to crap character/class designs. First of all,has there EVER been any indication a Korean developer can deliver a solid mmorpg? Well of course the ONLY one /two that come to mind is the Lineage series but i did not find them to be all that good,very average in fact.
I can't even segreagate KR developers from NA devs because i have not seen a class /character design that feels all that amazing outside of what the EQ series already brought us then FFXi went that much further,everything else has been cheap knock offs. I would gladly love to give a new mmorpg accolades because i would be right there playing it,putting in a lot of hours but i will always be honest and state that nothing right now can steer me away from FFXI.
Now to be FAIR,i would not base my criticism on some Massively article because they are a business,for all i know they had some financial run in with the Bless team on advertising so decided to spin off on the game. One stereotype i have of KR devs is they just want to rush a game out with some alluring gimmick to start generating income.However ,guess who else does that...EVERYONE !!.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
A review can and should strive to be objective. You're not giving your feelings about what you personally like and dislike. You're stating facts about the status of the game, what's going on with development, how certain content and features actually look in game, what's available and what's not, population, server issues, bugs, etc. Then you come to a final score based on those facts - not how you feel about any of that, what content you like and what content you don't, what bugs bother you or don't, your opinions about the game, etc. None of that is needed, nor is the drama.
The point of a review is to give us information we don't already have. It is by definition, a mere examination of something, nothing more, with the intention of coming to some sort of conclusion at that point as to what to do next - and with games, that conclusion is intended to guide it's readers to making their own decisions about whether or not to play.
You tell us the details about the state of the game before we've had a chance to play ourselves. Then we make our own decisions about whether we like what we are reading based on our own opinions about games. We read the facts given to us and the review of those facts to decide. I don't need a writer's opinion when I have my own - I just need them to tell me what I don't already know about the game.
problem is fact will be followed by what the fact teller is feeling, the journalism idea was always be a bystander telling the tale without involvement, without his opnion, not what happen nowadays and most normal people will toss they feelings on it, hence why you should never trust one source and have to read another one, thing about the good, the bad and the ugly, find a review who fill each of these 3 traits then decide, if the bad and ugly don't make you give up because the good there is enough you will be sure you will make your money and time worth.
The MMORPG.com review had more professionalism. I assume the people who thought that review was not telling it as it is, will find this dramatized review more to their likening?
You do not have to be "brutal", call the game cursed or any other shouty man nonsense borrowed from video reviews on You Tube.
The review on this site mentioned every single issue we had talked about in the forums, you don't need to act like the Incredible Hulk to get that is.
I'm thinking you didn't actually read the MOP review eh?
Despite its attempt to be humorous title I found nothing "shouty" about it in any way.
It is thorough, well presented and if it comes across as a bit hard hitting, I have no issue with it, Bless deserves a good smackdown.
It started with "Bless Online feels like a curse" as part of the title. It also had:
"the fact is that Bless is poorly optimized, riddled with buggy shenanigans, and nowhere near finished, much less polished, enough to warrant Neowiz actually charging people money to play it."
"Do I think Bless is a fun game? No. Obviously. Could it, with enough effort from the developers, become a fun game? Maybe. But at the rate things have been going, it seems increasingly unlikely that it’s going to happen any time before the sun implodes, heralding the end of days. Or before the game starts hemorrhaging money and gets shut down, which hopefully will happen first."
Now to be fair it is not as bad as shouty men on You Tube, but it is borrowing the sort of drama and language that they use. My concern is that gamers now expect that sort of nonsense in written gaming articles.
To me the MMORPG.com review which gave it 5.5 was smack down enough. I know we are supposed to give anything we like a ten and anything we don't like a one, but the 5.5 was enough to tell me posters opinions had been confirmed, don't buy it.
I agree but it's not limited to just this article. They write that way in everything they do, and add in a lot of opinions not to just what they write, but how they write it. If they don't like a game they either won't write about it, or will add snark and negativity into even a simple news post about a patch. They lost objectivity and professionalism when their corporate overlords dumped them a few years ago and they went independent.
"objectivity and professionalism" - myth
There never was, never is never will be such thing as long as journalism exists.
People are inherently incapable of objectivity because we are story tellers and our own bias is inescapable.
Humans are story tellers, our brains have been tuned to look for and detect patterns of story telling, this is why data-driven hard facts alone are boring, but you put a narrative and a fun story around them and masses will eat it up.
video game journalism is more infotainment than hard hitting fact based journalism - the articles are written so they are fun to write and fun to read, that's the whole point.
Indeed, but journalists do realise that bias, the whole point is to try to be as impartial as you can in spite of it.
Call a spade a spade. Neowiz shouldn't have been taking money for such a shoddy effort. I encourage being blunt about it, because sugar-coating it does a disservice to gamers, who are the people MOP should be serving, not the game devs.
Trying to gloss over or handle Neowiz with kit gloves is a much larger disservice than a little bit of hyperbole.
EDIT- remember, the article is a second look at Bless a month after launch. If you read the article end to end, you would know that they were checking back in to see if Neowiz had made good faith efforts to fix some of the most glaring issues. The article found Neowiz wanting. The italicized parts are criticism based on that.
To me you should realise it is a shoddy effort from the review, and both reviews do that. MOP just felt the need to add drama. Indeed so much drama that one of our posters felt the need to do a thread about it here. I doubt MMORPG.com's review got talked about as much because it did not say the game was "cursed" and so on.
I hope that gaming sites and also any magazines do not get effected by the language on social media, which is becoming the way we communicate in every medium.
Just so you know, I speak "hyperbole" quite well and am fluent in sarcasm, caustic wit and more than a good bit of irony.
When necessary I can even do mock anger and a passable hysteria.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Great "journalism" there. Can't even get their facts straight.
Another important skill is learning "marketing speak," will help folks better interpret what really is happening behind the blah.
Aeria basically said give us a complete, playable and stable western version by "X" date. Neowiz couldn't so the deal was off.
Player characters with a higher intelligence quotient (and/or very advanced "experience" levels) will roll saving throws more often when facing corporate doublespeak.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Great "journalism" there. Can't even get their facts straight.
Another important skill is learning "marketing speak," will help folks better interpret what really is happening behind the blah.
Aeria basically said give us a complete, playable and stable western version by "X" date. Neowiz couldn't so the deal was off.
Player characters with a higher intelligence quotient (and/or very advanced "experience" levels) will roll saving throws more often when facing corporate doublespeak.
You must have rolled a 1 then. Anyone who knows anything about Aeria would know that they most likely tried to push Neowiz into releasing something not even remotely playable. Also if you didn't notice this press release is from gamigo group. So why the hell would they want to spin it as a mutual cessation of their contract when the smart thing would have been to blame Neowiz to make themselves look good. I don't think you know what marketing is. You think too highly of yourself, just another Dunning-Kruger affected individual that anyone with any intelligence can see through.
No one needs to do any kind of mental gymnastics in order to fit a certain narrative. The facts are there and massively got them wrong. Not sure why you would defend such bad reporting when it took me less than 30 seconds to find this. Clearly massively are not interested in facts but only clicks.
Great "journalism" there. Can't even get their facts straight.
Another important skill is learning "marketing speak," will help folks better interpret what really is happening behind the blah.
Aeria basically said give us a complete, playable and stable western version by "X" date. Neowiz couldn't so the deal was off.
Player characters with a higher intelligence quotient (and/or very advanced "experience" levels) will roll saving throws more often when facing corporate doublespeak.
You must have rolled a 1 then. Anyone who knows anything about Aeria would know that they most likely tried to push Neowiz into releasing something not even remotely playable. Also if you didn't notice this press release is from gamigo group. So why the hell would they want to spin it as a mutual cessation of their contract when the smart thing would have been to blame Neowiz to make themselves look good. I don't think you know what marketing is. You think too highly of yourself, just another Dunning-Kruger affected individual that anyone with any intelligence can see through.
No one needs to do any kind of mental gymnastics in order to fit a certain narrative. The facts are there and massively got them wrong. Not sure why you would defend such bad reporting when it took me less than 30 seconds to find this. Clearly massively are not interested in facts but only clicks.
What the fuck are you on about? They literally cited that it didn't meet quality standards, and the game released broken with terribad localization and optimization. It garnered a whopping 5.5 here, a 6/10 on Steam per user reviews. Its emissaries were disappointed enough to pull out and post videos warning gamers. MMOBomb gave it a 3.8/5 per user reviews, that's about the highest I've seen.
No, it's a shit game and that's consistent with the reasoning Aeria decided to pull out of publishing.
@MisterZebub Precisely, and why would Aeria act petty when they were pulling out of what they found was a sinking ship?
Businesses don't generally thrash partners (or former partners) because of how that would look to future potential partner. You don't want a track record of being assholes, because nobody wants to work with assholes.
EDIT- the most interesting part is that Aeria found there were technical difficulties that could not be overcome, yet Neowiz decided to act like they've got it under control and release the game anyways. If anything, that makes them assholes.
Comments
The point of a review is to give us information we don't already have. It is by definition, a mere examination of something, nothing more, with the intention of coming to some sort of conclusion at that point as to what to do next - and with games, that conclusion is intended to guide it's readers to making their own decisions about whether or not to play.
You tell us the details about the state of the game before we've had a chance to play ourselves. Then we make our own decisions about whether we like what we are reading based on our own opinions about games. We read the facts given to us and the review of those facts to decide. I don't need a writer's opinion when I have my own - I just need them to tell me what I don't already know about the game.
A fact based review is devoid of "fun" as fun is subjective. I can find sock puppets fun and you could hate them.
When you get down to the nitty gritty, you can only put so many facts in there until it reads like a gameplay technical manual. (Remember when they gave instruction manuals with boxed games for old consoles? Those were "fun")
Then you run the risk on PC games to have situational facts. Such as a game running poorly for you when it doesn't run poorly for someone else. So many factors play into poor performance, from software to hardware to network problems, while your problems may be factually true to you, it wouldn't factually be someone elses experience.
So saying that people WANT objective reviews is like people saying they want edible underpants. Under the absolute best conditions it might sound like a good, sexy idea, but in actuality, in real world conditions, you'd have to be a "special" kind of "person" to get any enjoyment out of it.
First of all,has there EVER been any indication a Korean developer can deliver a solid mmorpg?
Well of course the ONLY one /two that come to mind is the Lineage series but i did not find them to be all that good,very average in fact.
I can't even segreagate KR developers from NA devs because i have not seen a class /character design that feels all that amazing outside of what the EQ series already brought us then FFXi went that much further,everything else has been cheap knock offs.
I would gladly love to give a new mmorpg accolades because i would be right there playing it,putting in a lot of hours but i will always be honest and state that nothing right now can steer me away from FFXI.
Now to be FAIR,i would not base my criticism on some Massively article because they are a business,for all i know they had some financial run in with the Bless team on advertising so decided to spin off on the game.
One stereotype i have of KR devs is they just want to rush a game out with some alluring gimmick to start generating income.However ,guess who else does that...EVERYONE !!.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
When necessary I can even do mock anger and a passable hysteria.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"The collaboration between Korean games developer Neowiz Games and the gamigo Group has been terminated consensually.
In the request of Neowiz Games, both parties agreed to terminate the cooperation, as the title does not live up to the quality standards of neither Neowiz Games nor the gamigo group."
https://en.gamigo.com/corporate/uncategorized/gamigo-and-neowiz-games-bless-stop-negotiations-of-cooperation/
Great "journalism" there. Can't even get their facts straight.
Aeria basically said give us a complete, playable and stable western version by "X" date. Neowiz couldn't so the deal was off.
Player characters with a higher intelligence quotient (and/or very advanced "experience" levels) will roll saving throws more often when facing corporate doublespeak.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No one needs to do any kind of mental gymnastics in order to fit a certain narrative. The facts are there and massively got them wrong. Not sure why you would defend such bad reporting when it took me less than 30 seconds to find this. Clearly massively are not interested in facts but only clicks.
No, it's a shit game and that's consistent with the reasoning Aeria decided to pull out of publishing.
Businesses don't generally thrash partners (or former partners) because of how that would look to future potential partner. You don't want a track record of being assholes, because nobody wants to work with assholes.
EDIT- the most interesting part is that Aeria found there were technical difficulties that could not be overcome, yet Neowiz decided to act like they've got it under control and release the game anyways. If anything, that makes them assholes.