[Jazuela]

I only read the first post. Infringement on your consumer rights huh? What rights exactly would this website be infringing upon?

I really hope you're kidding. I mean really. You have no "consumer rights" here.

Sorry, I can't add anything else, because I just couldn't get past that.

[newbie]

I assume the game-mechanic you are making a reffrence too is playerbonus.
Timed, player issused roleplay bonus's and a pittance of XP offered on introduction.

Given that each bonus is less than a 1/10 of the requirement for each level, They don't provide a nessceary alternative to borging. A fact that your playerbase has raised time and time again and you've been unable to address.

Now it isn't an easy issue to address, However You can't then claim that forcing charcters to borg through 10 levels of play before they achieve a real goal which will induct them into real roleplay and also put them in a posistion to actually aqquire those for-mentioned bonus's is a means of deteriant and a barrier of entry.

Because your guilded merely end up consisting of borgers and those roleplay fanatics who exsist soley of bonuses
are still ideling in there guilds of entrance in order to aqquire there time based bonus.

Because players don't bonus people, If they can't get a bonus back. Perhaps not how the systems designed or intended to be used. But its seen and heard to be the case. Immigrants don't get Booned.

Moreso, Bonus's are so few and far between with players only giving them to there friends and inner-circle for 'humorous' roleplay. That immigrants and Serfs rarely see them.

So, I did play the game plenty, I did roleplay just fine and more so, because of this. I know Borging is the quickest way to get yourself into a posistion in which you're taking seriously and not looked upon as just another newbie-twink who needs his hand-holding.

Charcter-forming in the sense of peer recgonition only takes place after guildhooding.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by newbie I assume the game-mechanic you are making a reffrence too is playerbonus. Timed, player issused roleplay bonus's and a pittance of XP offered on introduction....<snipped>

No, I wasn't refering to that, and no I disagree with your assessment of roleplay on NW and almost everything you post here. Moreover I wonder at the motivation behind it and more so after reading the following:

Originally Posted by newbie This is a very serious project and whilst we're intrested in all those that wish to help. We will only consider sensible applicants.

Considering, you were advertising for builders and creators on your own mud a year ago, I find it strange that you would be posting a rant against NW in this fashion. Not that I mind. I welcome your opinion, and if I thought it true and actionable, perhaps something would be done to correct your grievances. But alas, I find it shallow, transparent and off topic as this topic is reviews. But please, continue to posts if you wish, I will only correct you as needed.

There will always be those that attack other or competing muds in this fashion, which I find sad.

[newbie]

Originally Posted by Newworlds No, I wasn't refering to that, and no I disagree with your assessment of roleplay on NW and almost everything you post here. Moreover I wonder at the motivation behind it and more so after reading the following: Considering, you were advertising for builders and creators on your own mud a year ago, I find it strange that you would be posting a rant against NW in this fashion. Not that I mind. I welcome your opinion, and if I thought it true and actionable, perhaps something would be done to correct your grievances. But alas, I find it shallow, transparent and off topic as this topic is reviews. But please, continue to posts if you wish, I will only correct you as needed. There will always be those that attack other or competing muds in this fashion, which I find sad.

Your disagreement dosen't really concern me. More so, I was forced to chuckle at the fact that because I'm a peer in the sense that I'm involved in the development and construction of muds. My opinons held in less-regard than a player.

Alas... My post wasn't a rant but an analytical breakdown and explination of why, Borging+time != Roleplay.

[DurNominator]

Originally Posted by Newworlds No, I wasn't refering to that, and no I disagree with your assessment of roleplay on NW and almost everything you post here.

Having read his opinion and some of the reviews in TMS, it seems to me that RP cliques are probably one of the worst problems in your MUD. This makes good sense, knowing how a socializer-heavy game can be vulnerable to such cliques. What I'd like to hear is how does your game adress the problem of cliques?

To stay on topic, I think that commentable reviews are a good thing. Personally, I think that this discussion about New Worlds that has taken place in this thread is a good example of how such commentable review should work. From the discussion, people can get some idea what the game is about and whether it is good game for them to try. If they have open questions, they can post them in the review thread for the game admin or players to answer. Personally, I think that the games getting this kind of attention would certainly benefit from it as their target group of players could find the game based on it.

[Newworlds]

Originally Posted by DurNominator Having read his opinion and some of the reviews in TMS, it seems to me that RP cliques are probably one of the worst problems in your MUD. This makes good sense, knowing how a socializer-heavy game can be vulnerable to such cliques. What I'd like to hear is how does your game adress the problem of cliques?

Clique forming normally happens with a game that has clans/guilds/religions/politics. This won't go away. The discussion on how NW deals with this could be a five page response, but in short, the only way is really up to the players: You can't administrate effectively who a player roleplays with or adventures with. That is the fun of a game, deciding for yourself.

I will say, however, that the ability to join any group or become anything is very wide road and open even to the lowest level, non-guilded player. I've seen immigrants wield more social power than guild masters, when roleplayed properly and effectively.

Originally Posted by DurNominator To stay on topic, I think that commentable reviews are a good thing. Personally, I think that this discussion about New Worlds that has taken place in this thread is a good example of how such commentable review should work. From the discussion, people can get some idea what the game is about and whether it is good game for them to try. If they have open questions, they can post them in the review thread for the game admin or players to answer. Personally, I think that the games getting this kind of attention would certainly benefit from it as their target group of players could find the game based on it.

Any advertisment is good advertisement as long as you spell the name right.

Still, the trouble with the fellow that complained about having to kill for coins is that it seems old and out of touch. I'd venture to say this person hasn't been on NW in a year or more and likely isn't an rp buff as stated by the "I'll go borg, this is the way to do it" attitude. One forgets that anyone can press for levels or advancement and make it to a high power player only to find out that they forgot to roleplay along the way and gain support and now sit at the top alone without an ounce of social or political strength.

[Valg]

Originally Posted by newbie I assume the game-mechanic you are making a reffrence too is playerbonus. Timed, player issused roleplay bonus's and a pittance of XP offered on introduction...

Given that this is a thread about TMS's review feature on the "Bugs and Suggestions" board, you're getting pretty far off-topic. The fine details of NW's mechanics aren't terribly relevant to that discussion. Please take it to PMs.

[DurNominator]

I've thought about this a little bit and came up with following idea:

Make two forum sections for reviews. One for reviews themselves, which would allow anonymous posting of non-registered users but would be also moderated in a sense that the posts don't show before a moderator has reviewed and approved all of them. This would allow reviews compactly in one place and without clutter, and from players since they don't have to register to post a review. This subsection would not allow discussing or commenting the reviews. One thread per MUD, would pile the reviews nicely in one place.

The other forum section would be for discussion about reviews, where admins and players who have registered to the forums can discuss the reviews and ask questions that arise from them. This subsection wouldn't have reviews themselves, but rather, the commentary and discussion based on the reviews on the review board. You could also discuss features of a certain MUD, mostly in light of reviews.

[Lasher]

Originally Posted by DurNominator I've thought about this a little bit and came up with following idea: Make two forum sections for reviews. One for reviews themselves, which would allow anonymous posting of non-registered users but would be also moderated in a sense that the posts don't show before a moderator has reviewed and approved all of them. This would allow reviews compactly in one place and without clutter, and from players since they don't have to register to post a review. This subsection would not allow discussing or commenting the reviews. One thread per MUD, would pile the reviews nicely in one place. The other forum section would be for discussion about reviews, where admins and players who have registered to the forums can discuss the reviews and ask questions that arise from them. This subsection wouldn't have reviews themselves, but rather, the commentary and discussion based on the reviews on the review board. You could also discuss features of a certain MUD, mostly in light of reviews.

Not a bad idea, but I think if there's any point allowing comments and discussion of reviews at all, they need to be right there with the review itself.

The reviews get linked to much more than forum posts. I've even seen quite a few links to TMC and TMS reviews as "external references" on Wikipedia listings for MUDs. There could be a link under each review saying "Click here to read comments on this review", but if we're going to do that then again, they might as well just be there.

[Davairus]

I think the only problem with the reviews at this site is that they don't get pre-screened, people just post whatever, and that's bad.

[Delerak]

So what's happening with player reviews? It's kinda wasted space if we aren't using them.

[Davairus]

Well I guess I didn't post any suggestions here did I.

First of all they might as well be called "comments" not reviews. They need to be linked from the mud's listing i.e. "read comments about this mud", in threaded forum post style layout so easy to just read through the author's comments and only read followups if that comment was a juicy one.

I'm thinking of the way pages are displayed over at php.net, with comments that give you more information about the game. We have vote buttons for rating muds...right.. we dont really need reviews too for that. If you want to find the most popular rp/pk muds, you can just do a search. * But commentary would still be handy for both players and staff.

Speaking of voting, a new review/comment should not bump the mud name onto the front page without moderation -that leads to people posting them for the sake of it. I'm serious, go look at them. "AWESOME MUD!!!!!" etc. It should only be there if its worth reading for someone looking for a mud. Oh, I guess I already said that.

* search should display the highest voted muds first if it doesnt, in order for me to have a valid point

[MudMann]

Originally Posted by Jazuela I only read the first post. Infringement on your consumer rights huh? What rights exactly would this website be infringing upon? I really hope you're kidding. I mean really. You have no "consumer rights" here. Sorry, I can't add anything else, because I just couldn't get past that.

Wow.. ummm.. when catching up with this thread I seem to have offended a senior poster

I refer you to the evil comment they didnt like

Good, Bad, Indifferent, when I come to a MUD site, I should be able to find a review of a game.. to me no review accepted means something to hide, and quite possibly an infingment of my consumer rights :-D

Just going to point out the end of that sentence

consumer rights :-D

and just in case you still aint seen it

:-D

Glad we got that sorted, the comment was not serious, but I didnt want to insult everyone by actually pointing it out hence the smiley. Ah well.

All said and done, if someone want to review a MUD, the can always add it as a new computer game to CIAO or DOOYOO the consumer review sites. Just would be nice to see them here at the site which actually points us to them.

[KaVir]

Originally Posted by Davairus First of all they might as well be called "comments" not reviews.

What about having both? For example (and this is more of a random thought than a serious proposal):

When you choose to write a review, it opens up a special page which contains several text boxes - for example it might include sections such as "introduction", "atmosphere", "gameplay", "good points", "bad points", "summary", etc. You'd have to fill in every section, and then submit it under a registered username. Perhaps these reviews could even be moderated to a certain extent (either by the mud owner, TMS moderators, or by regular TMS members via an Amazon style "Do you find this review useful Y/N" - depending on what the reviews are supposed to represent).

In particular, I think the separate text boxes would provide a good way of forcing reviewers to format their reviews in a consistent way and cover the different aspects of the mud, while requiring people to cover both good points and bad points should encourage them to write more balanced reviews than most of the current ones.

You could also a "Reviews: #" which is displayed under "Posts: #", with the option to view all reviews by a particular poster. It might also be nice to tie this in with a reputation system (probably not the current one, or mud critics would soon end up with really bad reputations), and factor it into the reviews; once again I'm thinking of something along the lines of Amazon's "Top 100 reviewers".

In addition you could just choose to write a comment, which would work much like the current reviews, except in a forum style so that other people could respond.

[Davairus]

Well if it absolutely has to be reviews too then..

5 fields-
longevity (rate from 1-5)
gameplay 1-5
appeal 1-5
community 1-5
overall 1-5
final field for comments

Then just bung their average category ratings over the top of their comments, and individual comments. Like ratemyprofessor.com that's a great peer review site.

[Jazuela]

Yes in a perfect world where love-cakes grow on trees and the rain only falls just after you've left the grove and the fairies give you magic dust that doesn't cause a deviated septum when you snort it...

mud reviews will be fair and worth reading and actually contributory to a website such as this one.

Unfortunately, there are these really pesky little creatures called trolls and gnats and griefers, who for vile and evil intent (I love how vile and evil are comprised of the same four letters as live, don't you?) will post reviews that aren't reviews in the reviews section.

I can't tell you how many times I've taken a gander to the reviews section and seen something like this:

This game is teh awesomesauce on lollerskatez! It has 20 clans!!!!!!11111 and 400 races!!!!!!!!1111 You need to play it it's freeeeeeeeeeee!!!!111111oneoneoneleven!!!1

and this:

This game is teh sux0rz teh imms ban j00 4 ne reason or no reason play my mud instead its teh awesomesauce!!!1111

and this:

I did not ban u 4 ne reason or no reason i ban j00 4 u are teh sux0rz and j00 ch33t and hack mah server!!!111

oh and I especially like these:

Hey I just found this place, glad to be here! You might find -this- site interesting too: viagra.biggerisbetter.com

It's because of any and all of the above that some folks prefer to just not allow reviews on their games, because there is no way to prevent players (and even game admins) from posting ads for the game instead of a review (apparently the vast majority of people who write these things don't know the difference between an ad and a review), or griefers posting JUST to tell everyone about how they were completely innocent, doing nothing wrong, and admin pwiped their account, or spammers on a rampage with viagra ads.

The reviews section on this website reads more like the back pages of a fashion magazine (special offer, free trial just circle #13 on your mail-in card now and SEND!) than actual reviews. I don't blame any admin for not wanting -their- game to be represented in such a way. If Lasher ever decides to do something about that, maybe something like how Mudconnector does it, perhaps there will no longer be a need to reject reviews. But without any moderation or approval system of reviews then the mud admins need to retain the option of simply not allowing THEIR muds to be dragged through the OTHER kind of mud.

[Molly]

Originally Posted by Jazuela I can't tell you how many times I've taken a gander to the reviews section and seen something like this:

Are you serious, Jazuela?
If so, could you please provide us with some links, so we can have some more laughs?

Your 'review' examples are certainly entertaining, but do they really exist?
I can't recall ever seeing anything nearly as sub-par as those. And as far as I've heard, spam adverts get nuked pretty quickly too. In fact, I cannot even recall ever coming across a player who talked like that, but maybe I just play the wrong games?

Sure, the reviews here are usually no literary high-points, and sure, many of them are just fan-boy praise or disgruntled-player flames, but is it really necessary to paint things out as worse than they are?