Note: I am trying to change things up. When participating in this thread, if you so desire, you must act in a logically-mannered way, provide proof and evidence to your assertions and claims, and act cordially and in a civil manner.

Ad-hominem argumentative devices are not acceptable within this medium as they detriment the health of the over-all discussion.

Irrational zealotry is not acceptable either.

kthx

The purpose of this post is to assess the accuracy and value of two discrepant views so that its beneficiaries are armed with knowledge.

Two conflicting assessments of SW:TOR:

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic

The Metacritic user score was 6.1

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1214622p2.html

IGN's score was 9.0

Now this discrepancy, we can speculate, arises from a number of things, including a conflict of interests stemming from the fact that IGN and other "official review sites," such as Gamespot are speculated to have received sums of money from game developers in exchange for IGN/Gamespot granting them a positive review. Now, of course, this is just speculation, but it must be remembered that specific speculation arises from carefully ordained circumstances.

IGN went as far as voting it as the "Game of the Year." That would be fine, but the year only began 7 days ago, so that is truly baffling. It only reinforces speculation pertaining to their original motives when reviewing this SW:TOR.

IGN didn't even review the end-game of SW:TOR in its review. That's where most of SW:TOR problems arise from, and they also failed to devote an entire section to PvP and instead largely neglected it.

Due to this, it can only be said that the inherent conflict of interests pollutes the over-all review. Actual game play is not being assessed; but rather everything is embellished to fulfill the latter side of the contract.

The Metacritic user score is FAR more accurate because it is a sample of actual players who experienced the game, and it presents and over-all image of their collective view of it. A group of thousands of players can cover every precipice and corner of a game, but a single reviewer at IGN can not. Therefore the user score is far more accurate.

Just thought I'd shed some light on this since a lot of the forums were cluttered with debate regarding this. Hope this helped. g'night

TL;DR: Metacritic's user score is far more accurate in presenting an over-all image of SW:TOR, and should be trusted to a far greater extent than any other review.

The people know best.

P.S. IGN also rated Dragon Age II at an 8.9, and that game is universally (except for undoubtedly some posters in this thread who will disagree for the sake of it) agreed to be sub-par, lackluster, and a disappointment in general. Every user-score on the web gave that game a score under 6.0.

Since IGN rated an obviously BAD game VERY WELL, why should we trust them now? What will they tell us next time?

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dragon-age-ii

Metacritic's user score of Dragon Age 2.

So all 23 publications on metacritic are misleading and the users who are making multiple accoutns and giving the game a 0 thus the average being only a few points higher than Duke Nukem Forever one of the worst games ever made is trustworthy?

You my friend are incredibly delusional.

And of course Portal 2 deserved the 4.0 rating it had before metacritic cleaned up the troll ratings. And MW3 deserves a 3.0 rating. Battlefield 3 deserves a 6.0

If you like to believe all the hipster anti-big game douchebags because it's cool to hate on popular games go for it. You won't find much to play/

Two conflicting assessments of SW:TOR:

 

 

Since IGN rated an obviously BAD game VERY WELL, why should we trust them now? What will they tell us next time?

So true, also the review of them is blabla, even bad things they make it sound alright.

So all 23 publications on metacritic are misleading and the users who are making multiple accoutns and giving the game a 0 thus the average being only a few points higher than Duke Nukem Forever one of the worst games ever made is trustworthy?

 

You my friend are incredibly delusional.

 

And of course Portal 2 deserved the 4.0 rating it had before metacritic cleaned up the troll ratings. And MW3 deserves a 3.0 rating. Battlefield 3 deserves a 6.0

 

If you like to believe all the hipster anti-big game douchebags because it's cool to hate on popular games go for it. You won't find much to play/

You're telling me 11882 reviews were from a single person with multiple accounts? Or even a few? Nope. Metacritic would detect such an unusual number of accounts from a single IP and would action the accounts.

99% of the reviews can be inferred to be from individuals who have only 1 account due to this.

Metascore is 8.6 btw

Why saying usescore?

Still ign is kinda bad giving reviews.

Allow me to direct you to this article (ironically written on ign):

http://au.games.ign.com/articles/121/1212865p1.html

Kudos on your satire.

Sadly, I'm not being satirical.

Ah Xugos, you try so hard it would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Btw, user ratings over at metacritic gave your precious WoW Cataclysm a 5.1, so by your own words here, that is the most accurate score (which btw, is worse than SW:TOR's user score).

Keep trying.

Two conflicting assessments of SW:TOR:

 

http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic

 

The Metacritic user score was 6.1

 

http://pc.ign.com/articles/121/1214622p2.html

 

IGN's score was 9.0

 

 

Now this discrepancy, we can speculate, arises from a number of things, including a conflict of interests stemming from the fact that IGN and other "official review sites," such as Gamespot are speculated to have received sums of money from game developers in exchange for IGN/Gamespot granting them a positive review. Now, of course, this is just speculation, but it must be remembered that specific speculation arises from carefully ordained circumstances.

 

Due to this, it can only be said that the inherent conflict of interests pollutes the over-all review. Actual game play is not being assessed; but rather everything is embellished to fulfill the latter side of the contract.

 

The Metacritic user score is FAR more accurate because it is a sample of actual players who experienced the game, and it presents and over-all image of their collective view of it. A group of thousands of players can cover every precipice and corner of a game, but a single reviewer at IGN can not. Therefore the user score is far more accurate.

 

 

 

 

 

Just thought I'd shed some light on this since a lot of the forums were cluttered with debate regarding this. Hope this helped. g'night

 

 

 

 

 

 

TL;DR: Metacritic's user score is far more accurate in presenting an over-all image of SW:TOR, and should be trusted to a far greater extent than any other review.

 

The people know best.

 

 

 

 

P.S. IGN also rated Dragon Age II at an 8.9, and that game is universally (except for undoubtedly some posters in this thread who will disagree for the sake of it) agreed to be sub-par, lackluster, and a disappointment in general. Every user-score on the web gave that game a score under 6.0.

 

 

Since IGN rated an obviously BAD game VERY WELL, why should we trust them now? What will they tell us next time?

IGN and Gamespot have lost all credibility over the last few years and have become the laughing stock of the gaming world.

Also both sites do not write there own reviews, they take them from other sites or 3rd partys.

 

If you like to believe all the hipster anti-big game douchebags because it's cool to hate on popular games go for it. You won't find much to play/

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare

COD 4 got an 8.6. Perhaps because it was a good and original game, unlike the rest. Reviewers from official sources do not incorporate demographical mentality in their reviews.

Your assertion that Metacritic user scores always down-rate "big games" is baseless because of COD4 and many other games, including Halo and WoW.

What exactly are they reviewing anyways? If they didn't reach level 50 and experience how horrid end-game is then those reviews are worthless

If they game is horrid why are you one the forums and playing the game lol, You do know other games are out there.

I will never understand people like this, surly no ones life is this empty, I hate Football but you wouldn't catch me playing it just so I can cry to the other players.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/call-of-duty-4-modern-warfare

 

COD 4 got an 8.6. Perhaps because it was a good and original game, unlike the rest. Reviewers from official sources do not incorporate demographical mentality in their reviews.

 

 

Your assertion that Metacritic user scores always down-rate "big games" is baseless because of COD4 and many other games, including Halo and WoW.

COD 4 is an original game lol, you must be new to the gaming world.

What exactly are they reviewing anyways? If they didn't reach level 50 and experience how horrid end-game is then those reviews are worthless

Exactly, they didn't review end-game. The users, generally, did.

When it comes to mmo's i would never believe meta,

Simple fact, its usually a bunch of raging WoW nerds not getting things exactly how they want when they want so they give it a bad score.

And who cares what reviewers/kids think anyway? isn't it about weather you enjoy it or not?

I would give it an 8/10 (world pvp is a let down thus far) but i know 3-4 people who hate it because the space combat isn't Eve online standards.

Reviews are for unintelligent sheep that just play follow the leader like a lemming

IGN and Gamespot have lost all credibility over the last few years and have become the laughing stock of the gaming world.

 

Also both sites do not write there own reviews, they take them from other sites or 3rd partys.

I agree. The only reviewers I trust now are those over at Gametrailers and then community-centered reviews such as user-scores. Gametrailers is waiting until they finish testing end-game until they release their review.

Who the **** would rate this game at 9 anyway? Not to mention someone who knows crap about MMOs.

This makes no sense.

I agree. The only reviewers I trust now are those over at Gametrailers and then community-centered reviews such as user-scores. Gametrailers is waiting until they finish testing end-game until they release their review.

You are correct and the only person so far in this thread to use logic and real resources.

COD 4 is an original game lol, you must be new to the gaming world.

Right, it's so original it has a 4 at the end of it.

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Anyways I have the philosophy at times like this, that it's good to remember for every one person who gets a whiny ***** fest and low rates a score on a user review base, there's 5 to ten people who are perfectly content with there product and probably have no incentive to rate said product.

Of course I professionally deal with the 1 out of ten on a daily basis. so maybe I'm just good at tuning out the noise.

The Metacritic user score is FAR more accurate because it is a sample of actual players who experienced the game, and it presents and over-all image of their collective view of it. A group of thousands of players can cover every precipice and corner of a game, but a single reviewer at IGN can not. Therefore the user score is far more accurate.

...Except both Gamespot and IGN also have user ratings...

Which happen to be 8.8/10 (GameSpot) and 9.1 (IGN, although with yet too few voters) so far.

My guess is all whiners who were trolling this game here rushed to the first site that put up a review to express their "rage". But even on metacritic if you check the number of positive reviews, it outnumbers negative ones. Simply put, nerdragers rated it '0', while more sensible people did not rate it '10' just to counter that tendency.

I mostly agree, one pretty large hole to add in your plan though.

(aside from A) troll posters making new accounts B) it being "in" to hate on new games - both of which were already raised)

What about the fact that those thousands and thousands of players checking every nook in cranny, are in fact NOT seeing every corner of the game because the vast majority of the playerbase isn't 50 yet?

I'm 50, have a pretty crazy amount of days played, and STILL I wouldn't consider myself qualified to do a review, I've never even seen an operation for example.....