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Are some people paid to post here ?
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The real question here is: Was the OP paid to post this post? WILL WE EVER KNOW? lawl.
On a serious side note, I don't think it matters, I love reading forum posts about a game I'm excited about. It doesn't matter if someone was paid to post or not.
EQN and Camelot Unchained are successors to two of the best (IMO) games of all time (EQ the best PvE mmo and DAOC the best PvP mmo) of course you are going to have large numbers of people getting excited about their release.
That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if people were paid to post here, but probably by MMORPG.com to drum up site traffic.
I believe astroturfing is real. However, it also strikes me as a fad that is bound to wear out in time. I'm really not too worried about it, seems like it would be pretty obvious to spot (as others have said, a new user with 1 or 2 posts is more likely to be an astroturfer). If I were a marketing director, I would be more likely to throw marketing cash at a well-established blogger to make an up-front, paid endorsement than to pay for some type of stealth/guerilla marketing campaign by unknown forum users. (It might be great if that happens on its own, but not as a paid endorsement). If someone were to offer me cash to write X about game Y without mentioning the sponsor, I would probably give them the finger and move on.
I think there is a third option that you are missing; that is this site is a genuine community, and represents a variety of opinions and perspectives that sometimes create new lines of thought through discussion and the proverbial "meeting of the minds". Call me optimistic, but it's certainly the reason I continue to post here.
"The simple is the seal of the true and beauty is the splendor of truth" -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar
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this
The company I work for currently has arounf 16 people who spend their days watching things like Twitter, facebook, Flickr etc...Their job is basically to generate interest in something they are trying to romote by having convesations between their accounts, to make positive comments when others get involved in a conversation about what they are promoting and to make it seem like there is a lot of interest in a subject when in reality there is not.
People are being paid to make things they are promoting hit that golden stage where things start going viral. Why?
Simply put the vast majority of people in this world are mindless sheep who just want to follow the crowd and look cool. And companies are now realising you can get people to do ANYTHING you want them to do simply by making them feel like other people are also doing it.
Think Big Brother here (tv series not tyranical social system). You get enough people to think being big, fat, ugly and stupid is cool and they will throw money just to be linked to it. Not only that but they will try and emmulate it.
I have absolutely no doubt the same thing is done with the gaming industry. A big company with thousands on employees could hire a couple of people, get them to create 20 or 30 mail accounts each, log into to a load of social media sites and start spamming their 'paid' opinions and the general population will eat it up, hype goes through the roof and hey presto, you have just generated enough interest in your product tha it is going to meet required sales estimates no matter how good the product is.
"SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY" ring any bells?
The word is Shill and I am quite certain there are more than a few.
It's not to say everyone is one. Many people post in a twitter like fashion and just drop links and topics in a pattern that doesn't really suit forum style cross over. It's an old style of communication, a cross between blog, chat room, email and a bit of a throw back to the days of Homestead and MSN website days.
The point being, it's difficult to narrow out a Shill and easier to just go case by case. I pay close attention to the community status here. Number of threads, join date and other user stats. A shill will often flip many accounts.
Would also add that along with the 'paid' comments/reviews/votes some games essentially bribe thier playerbase with free junk/beta access rather than outright pay people. Not sure it's the case with egn though, as some people are quite happy to try and overhype a game without any encouragement(cu anyone?).
I have literally seen one game run a competition of who could write the best "why their game is so great" on mmorpg.com forums and they'd reward cash shop items to the best "review".
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This. I find it funny and sad that sooooooo may of you buy into shameful conspiracy theories to easily. Look, EQNext is the next big thing so of course it is going to attract more attention. Camelot Unchained is the next "great white hope" for the sandbox crowd so that is why your are seeing the interest by that group. Do we have so short a memory that we forget what the forums looked like here when SWTOR was coming out? GW2?
But lets indulge your flights of fancy: Let's say some nefarious group was paying people to post negative/positive things about a game. How much of an effect would that have since only a small percentage of gamers frequent sites like this? Add to that, since for any game you can find a ton of both positive and negative posts, wouldn't they sort of cancel each other out?
Look, I've been around this site for quite awhile. It has always been like this, will always be like this and it has nothing to do with some shadowy conspiracy but more with the fickleness and short term memory of us gamers. The only chnages I've seen to this site is stricter, more anal moderation but that's another story....
Oh, and the obligatory tin foil hat pic....
A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true...
%% %% %%
This has been my experience as well. And since I said that banhammer incoming but its the truth. The thing is though this flame war od game vs bad game is a good thing for all.
$$$$ $$$$$ $$$$$
The pro f2p crowd is definitely a paid bunch. They want us to buy into f2p like f2p is the new norm. F2p is bad for consumers. The writing is on the wall.
. (Protest against f2p continues as the f2p authorities bust down Battlerocks door, he narrowly escapes completely naked and seemingly mad but perfectly sane in speaking the truth, he yells out one last time before dissapearing into the shadows, "F2p is the destruction of quality games!!!)
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Hey, I can be bought too for the right price..... keep me in mind devs.
Sure would like to give up this darn day job and just shill for video games all day long.
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Yes.
Its common practice called "viral marketing"
Its been done for years now.
Company I was working at was one of early adopters. We basically made it big trough fake "hype". And we had one guy on payroll especially for that.
Some actually are. Microsoft actually has hired a few firms that do this kind of thing in the wake of the Xbox One fiasco and have been outed for doing so. Its not an uncommon practice by any means though. Sony, EA, even Funcom as well as others have done the same and will continue to do so.
Hate to tell you this sport but the mods on this very site has confirmed it as well. I'll gladly dig up a quote if you like
If the OP suspects a poster being a shill then report it.
As for this thread, it will most likely get locked the same way other threads on the subject has been. It's not a popular discussion apparently
It tends to create discussion-killing paranoia when you're constantly wondering if the person disagreeing with you is doing it because they genuinely disagree or because they have a completely disingenuous motive to create/ruin discussion on certain topics.
Is there an application for this job? I think I can do this.
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It's possible that some are.
Some people here Evangelize their choice of game(s) whilst demonizing everything else and so it's easy to imagine them being paid shills.If most of us named names we'd likely all come up with the same ones.
However I believe it just people being Myopic and extremist in their passions whilst behind the anonymity of the internet and nothing sinister.You see this kind of One eyed,intolerant attitude on all subjects on the net especially political ones.
http://voices.yahoo.com/top-three-paid-forum-posting-companies-1804217.html
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1111/1111.4297v1.pdf
{8} says.........
Likely
There are definitely some people that are paid to post here:
Bill Murphy
Suzie Ford
Garrett Fuller
Michael Bitton
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