Monday, November 2, 2009

When will people learn?

Seriously. If there is just one aspect of our lives that you would truly think people would learn from, it would be the MMO market. Considering how much time we all spend within it. Yet, every new MMO that comes down the pike is trumpeted to the tunes of the "WoW-killer" or the "best MMO evah!", or the like. Every. One. I would like to point the community to the dictionary and ask that you all look up the word "lemming". Then I would like to direct your attention to the axiom that a "fool and their money are soon parted".

Aion is apparently beginning to feel what other games have experienced in the recent past, if you believe what players are saying. Games such as WAR, LotRO, AOC, and Aion were marketed at a fanatical pace, and game sites and blogs galore spoke glowingly about each of them . Seldom was heard a disparaging word about any of these games in the months leading up to their release, and the people who frequent those game sites and blogs ate up the praise like it was mana from heaven.

Though the community at large bears a very healthy helping of responsibility for the mess that is now the MMO market, I think another healthy helping belongs to sites like Massively, MMORPG, Ten Ton Hammer, Eurogamer, and others. These sites quite often act as mouth pieces for the developers and hardly ever critique or offer critical analysis of a game during development or beta. True, many things often change during development, but the point is the community at large do not think critically and if you are going to take on the roll of a journalist, then you must also take on the responsibility of one as well. You have a responsibility to point out the downside while also pointing out the upside or else, in my view, you lose a level of credibility.

And that is something I strive very hard to maintain here at Iggeps Realm. Despite my love for the Star Wars franchise, I have been quite vocal about my concerns with the Old Republic. Likewise with Star Trek Online. And anyone can see my often scathing criticism of Blizzard for it's handling of various issues with WoW. I may not be as large, or command a following of loyal readers like many other blogs out there, but I can assure you that no level of notoriety will ever change my core beliefs. I will not sell glowing coverage of any game for a free beta pass or comp subscription.