(The Armageddon thread was starting to go off-topic, so I'm starting a new thread to blunt that.)

Some recent opinions on player reviews from people that dislike them:
"Why don't they bother letting every bitter, immature, 12 year old nimrod with internet access have an easy, free method to libel them?  Do you actually have to ask this?" - Threshold

Regarding rating reviews: "Or you could just ignore them given that they have no value as reviews."- the_logos

"Player reviews are almost never helpful and are generally either libelous or obsequious. Both types are worthless." - Threshold

Regarding follow-up content: "Unlike here where there ARE many posts, but they're largely noise. I mean, I learned more from one of Bartle's posts on Mind's Eye than I ever have here"- the_logos

"Player reviews are absolute garbage."- Threshold

I'm not sure what their experience is with reviews, but I've often found ours to be well-written and useful to someone who has not played our game before.  Part of this might be that Carrion Fields tends to draw an older and more mature playerbase than many places- it's a complex game run by a staff that probably has an average age of 30+, and our style draws a certain demographic.  But lots of games get these kinds of reviews, sprinkled in with the less useful ones.

Some examples from our own:






All of these give specific points about the game that they like.  In other words, why they play.  Some also identify negative points (e.g. it's a difficult game, can be too big to get a grip on, etc.).  All of this is useful.

Now, not all reviews are all that useful.  We have some reviews (positive and negative) that don't tell you much at all about the game:




I suppose we could ask to have the negative kind removed as per TMS policy, but I think any player who is going to appreciate our game will see these types of reviews for what they are, and keep moving.  We have close to 50 reviews anyway, and there are plenty of informative ones to balance out the less useful ones.

Why are these useful?

Positive reviews have utility as advertising.  People like our product and want to tell others.  That much is obvious.  But they also tell us why we're successful.  We keep track of what people cite as our best points, and use that when planning future developments.

Conversely, when a negative review comes in, it's usually more than "This mud suxxors!".  The reviewer generally has specific things they didn't like.  These aren't necessarily weak points of the game (like the guy who didn't like the mandatory RP... that's just a niche we've chosen, and we advertise it openly so people know before trying), but sometimes they are, and that also tells us where to focus our efforts.

Most importantly, none of this has to effect your game.   You can turn them off for your game, not read what people post about other games, and go back to making forum posts about how wonderful you are, or however else you as a TMS reader spend your spare time.  That's your decision, and a courtesy extended to you by the site ownership.  (One could argue a courtesy that is not necessarily expected, since the reviewer may not wish to be silent, and then it's a question of who has the authority.)  You can also allow reviews, and request the removal of anything libelous, per the site policies.

But it's not really your business whether or not we want reviews, so please stop campaigning to stop us from doing so.

Similarly, of course, it's not your business how we choose to promote ourselves, yet that's not stopped you from launching into personal attacks.
--matt

Similarly, of course, it's not your business how we choose to promote ourselves

Sure it is. We share promotional space.

If, for example, we use "free" to mean two different things, and if I think the common-sense definition of it ("You can't buy anything inside our game, period.") is being misused, I'm obligated to point out the misleading language used by others. You have your own definition, which you're welcome to put it out there, but its existence requires that we clarify what we mean by "free". Otherwise, the impact of our own promotional material is diluted by these claims.

Reviews aren't promotional material. We don't control their content, they can be good or bad, and it's just customer word-of-mouth. You can suppress that for your own game, but not ours.

Valg wrote:
Valg wrote:
Advertising = a form of promotion.

So which is it?

--matt

Semantics.

1) We don't write reviews.
2) Sometimes other people write positive ones, and that reflects well on us. This complements our advertising.
3) Sometimes other people write negative ones, and that doesn't reflect well on us. This helps us improve by identifying problem spots.

If you think everyone on this forum is a drooling idiot (I can start citing if you dispute this generalization of your previous statements), why stoop to converse with us?

Semantics? You made directly contradictory statements within two posts of each other regarding the nature of player reviews. I appreciate the clarification of your intent.

I'm sorry if you believe I think you're a drooling idiot, but that's really your problem to deal with, not mine.

--matt

Because they cause an ungodly amount of flame wars here. There are frequently times where more than 50% of the active topics are people arguing about whether a review is libelous, butt kissing, or wrong in some other way.

It isn't because I "don't like them" that I believe the site would be improved if the option was totally removed. It is because their existence pollutes the site with an enormous amount of unnecessary vitiriol and irreparably damages the discussion forum.

A few recent threads from a SINGLE forum (folks spread them all over the place, but I only felt like checking one forum) with flame wars about reviews:














This one was started by you, Valg.

I see nothing contradictory between his statements, when read within the context that they were posted.  Obviously once taken out of context (like you've done) they are not as clear as they could be, but that's hardly Valg's fault.

What he's saying is that, while mud reviews can act as a form of advertising (and thus be of use to muds), their content cannot be controlled, and so the results may be positive or negative.  This is obviously very different from official promotional material like the banners and full adverts posted by the mud adminstration.

He is also correct is pointing out that the way you choose to promote your mud is everyone else's business when it impacts on their own promotion (for example, if a mud were to start posting an advert on the promotions thread once per hour it would spam off a lot of other peoples posts).

I leave reviews on for several reasons. Yes, you have to glean out the "I was multiplaying and they caught me, so here's the multitude of reasons why they suck" review, but much in life comes with accompaying tribulation.

One: Sometimes they're fun to read.  We had one written as a Shakespearean soliloquy - others have been exercises in creativity that were a blast to read.  

Two: It's useful for me to see both what people love and what people hate.  People mention the facets of the game that they think are particularly wow-worthy, and I like to know what they are because I'd like to continue adding more.

Three: A lot of the times they provide great quotes that I can use in publicity.  Lines like "the China White of muds" or "My life revolves around this game in ways my therapist and I are only starting to understand." are better than anything I'd come up with.

Four: Any publicity is good publicity, and part of being a good MUD admin is (imo) finding ways to get buzz going about your mud.  I've shut up reviews on occasion when there's been problems with the same person posting the same review over and over, or using a review for us to tout their own mud, but for the most part, it stays on.

We do have an active and engaged player base and I apologize if that has added to the flame wars that do spring up on here.  Generally they're careful about identifying themselves as not affiliated with the staff, and personally I'd rather have an enthusiastic and sometimes overeager crowd than a bunch of jaded, hip, apathists.

I'm curious who these mud owners (plural, as you used it) are who are trying so hard to get all reviews banned from the site? I believe I've seen one mud owner (Threshold) advocate that. I, personally, don't care if reviews are there. They are useless and puerile as "reviews" but they do generate a bit of extra traffic for the site, and thus send more people to our muds.

The majority? This site gets about 65,000 uniques a month. Have you ascertained that 33,000 people would prefer reviews stay? Perhaps they might, perhaps not. In any case, a handful of forum posters represents an extremely small minority of opinion, no matter what issue you're talking about.


It should be their prerogative if Synozeer decides it is. There is no "should" besides his will as this site is lead by a single leader with an unchallenged fist of steel (alright, perhaps nothing that dramatic).


Yeah, I feel the same way about the sophomoric behavior of some people on this site.
--matt

Molly, there you go again.

I see you're out of the woodwork again to make personal attacks against me when yet again my "crime" is simply expressing my opinion.

The "business" of mine is that I am a reader of these forums and the constant flame wars caused by the player reviews is a major reason these forums are crap. Frequently, arguments about player reviews make up 50% or more of the total forum traffic. They drown out any possible hope of VALUABLE discussions.

If you actually read what I wrote instead of just jumping to your own conclusions, you'd know that was my point. Thus, as a reader of the forum it is just as much "my business" as it is the business of any other reader.

Again, I invite you to actually read what I wrote. I didn't say a single thing about whether it is good or bad when someone gets a bad review.

The problem I discussed was the fact that the worthless player reviews spill over into the forums and make the forums worthless as well.

Guess what. I do ignore the threads. So do tons of other people. Ignoring threads becomes contagious. Once you're in the habit of ignoring threads, you start ignoring the whole forum. What's the end result of that? A totally dead forum. Congratulations, I hope you're happy.

Try looking in the mirror Molly.

You're the one arguing that I shouldn't even be allowed to post my suggestion for what would make the site better.

If you understood anything about marketing, you'd know that what I am arguing for is not something that would benefit me.

Threshold is an advertiser and is always in the top 4. Thus, every person who pops over to TMS to either post a review or read a review sees Threshold mentioned at least once, and most likely more than once. That increases the odds that they'll try it out, even if they had no intention of trying a new mud.

To an advertiser and to muds in the top slots, traffic = potential sales.

The only reason I have raised the suggestion of getting rid of player reviews entirely is because I feel it would improve the quality of the forum. I suggest this despite the fact that the current status quo is actually better for me personally.

You'd do well to stop and think (and read) before you go attacking people. Perhaps your assumptions about their motives are completely off the mark.

The majority? This site gets about 65,000 uniques a month. Have you ascertained that 33,000 people would prefer reviews stay?

In other news, American political polls are valid, even though they do not get definitive opinions from more than half of the estimated 294,011,562 Americans. If you want, you can call Gallup and ask if they ascertained that 147,005,782 people agreed with the majority opinion given by their last poll.

Several hundred people have posted reviews. Threshold thinks their opinions "pollute" the site and need to be removed. You find the contributions of these several hundred people universally "useless and puerile". Everyone else who has voiced an opinion agrees they're a mixed bag, but that some have value, and that it's worth keeping. It's logical that the several hundred people who wrote reviews think that the site should have reviews, and that Synozeer thinks the site should have reviews, since he coded a resource to display and categorize them.

So if you don't like them, don't read them. Let the rest of the community have the "sophomoric" discussions that you loathe, and continue discussing the oh-so-important topics you want to discuss as well.

Valg, please do us all a favor and go study up on how a scientific poll is conducted.

Here's a hint: The respondents don't get to choose to be part of the poll.

Also, like Molly I highly suggest you read more carefully.

I said the pointless flamewars that result from the reviews pollute the forums. Big difference.

I don't think you understand.

2-3 years ago this forum was extremely vibrant with tons of substantive discussion about coding, game design, game management, and all sorts of other issues.

Now the site is 25% player promotions, 25% staff recruitment, and 50% complaining about player reviews.

People have already voted with their feet. The people left behind (whom you say don't mind the reviews) are all that is left in the carnage of a once good forum.

The exact advice you are giving has already been followed and the dead forum you see before you is the result. Thus, the need for some serious changes is in order if the forum is to be restored to any sort of value.

Question: How many posts are hitting the forum the_logos runs?

Answer: 7 this month, and 5 are from you and the_logos. One of the other two is a joke about lawyers. None of the 7 are longer than 6 lines. There's certainly nothing on there I didn't already know.

If you and he are the patron saints of "extremely vibrant" content, and you are being held back by the "polluters", how do you explain the failure of that site to generate anything worth reading over a period of two weeks?

Valg, what relevance does any other discussion forum have to the fact that this forum has decayed badly over the last 2-3 years?

Now you're just trolling and should be ashamed of yourself.

The relevance is that perhaps you and the_logos do not understand how to run a successful discussion forum about MUDs, and should perhaps avoid dictating to others how to do the same.

Lets look at the two things you are comparing:

One is a private forum, with 30 members, with a very specific purpose, and it has been operating for a few months.

The other is a public forum, with 2,175 members, and it has been operating for many years.

Are you even capable of posting without flaming Matt in one way or another? And why you'd group me in with your drive-by is mildly confusing. I'm just a user of The Mind's Eye, like yourself, not a moderator.

And you keep ignoring the simple fact that this USED TO BE an excellent discussion forum. Now a very significant portion of its total traffic is nothing more than people arguing about player reviews. Even if you disagree that there is a connection, surely you can at least see the POSSIBILITY of a connection.

One more thing: The forum I run for Threshold has 1,923 Threads and 30,933 Posts since last year. I think I know how to run a discussion forum.

But don't let facts get in the way of your constant, steady stream of personal attacks.

The reasons why the forums deteriorated has nothing to do with the reviews. As far as I know the reviews were present on the site in the old days when those 'vibrant' and substantive' discussions existed too.

I have my own theories about why, when and how the forums deteriorated, but I am not going to voice them here, because that would generate a flame war for sure.

And talking about arrogance, I am not the one who repeatedly and sweepingly insults other posters, (this time in particular the ones that ever posted a review), buy bunching them together, with words like 'worthless', 'useless', 'polluters', 'sophomoric' and 'puerile'.

It's not your posting a suggestion I react to, it's the arrogant way in which you voice that suggestion.

You have a desired goal, which you've clearly stated as the complete removal of reviews from this site. To attain this goal a rational thinker would want to hear the answers to four questions from you:

1) Does the connection you suggest actually exist? You provide a statement but no hard evidence: "There are frequently times where more than 50% of the active topics are people arguing about whether a review is libelous, butt kissing, or wrong in some other way."

You also provide a large number of examples but no context such as the percentage of total posts of which your sample consists.

2) Does the connection establish a causality? I don't see it proven that a given review flame war detracts from the quality of other topics. People do not have a fixed amount of time that they will spend on either reading/responding to a review rebuttal or responding to an intelligent topic.

3) Does the benefit incurred from the removal of reviews outweigh the benefit incurred from having them? Many people have spoken up to say how they like reviews and players obviously use them.

4) Have you considered a compromise that doesn't step on anyone's toes? Such as creating a forum for review comments and removing that forum's comments from the front page list.

I feel one should have a good reason to change, especially when this change removes a benefit that is currently in place. Without good evidence backing sound reason, I simply can't give my recommendation to your plight against reviews, and I don't know why anyone else would either.

EDIT: Fix a spelling error.

Man, if I had a buck for every time one of these threads turned into a bitch session about Threshold or the_logos I really wouldn't need to work anymore.

Whether you like the way the guy writes or not, his point is pretty valid. Reviews generate forum spam and pollute the forums. Just because you may not like him personally doesn't mean he's wrong.

I agree with Threshold, lose the reviews. They just get in the way.

Pris

Hahahah. Let's see here...Achaea's forum has gotten nearly 1500 members and over 15,000 posts since the end of June. That's 75% as many posters and posts as TMS has -ever- gotten according to its stats.

Imperian's forums have garnered about 500 members and nearly 10,000 posts since beginning of July.

Heck, Lusternia's forums already have more than 1200 posts and that mud isn't even open yet!

Of course, forum success is not, in my opinion, measured just in traffic, but you're the one who decided that forum traffic = forum success. By that (flawed) standard I'm an f-ing genius at running mud forums.

--matt

In "get a clue" news, American political polls are valid because they're conducted so as to sample a representative portion of the population. One of the biggest factors that makes a poll invalid is a poll in which the participants self-select. All the posters on these forums are self-selected and not representative.

--matt, who can't believe that even needed pointing out.

(nitpicking) I sincerely doubt that's a fact at all, much less a simple fact. Did we sleep through the discussion in middle school English class about the difference between facts and opinions? (/nitpicking)

That aside, I don't particularly agree with your opinion.

You've heard, I'm sure, of the idea of "golden age syndrome" with MUDs, wherein the old school players of the MUD believe that everything was awesome when they started playing, but that all successive changes to the game or playerbase have made it worse. Generally, players with this syndrome view the past of the game through very rosy colored classes. They forget or gloss over problems that were there, remembering only the good; conversely, when viewing the present, they find only fault and gloss over the improvements.

I respectfully suggest that you have TMS-GAS.

Quite obviously, when the majority of MUDs allow previews, it might give the impression that those who disallow it are afraid of the stuff they might get...


That being said, the issue isn't reviews per se. The issue is those folks who feel the urge to defend against player reviews on the boards. As if someone who read a negative review would then browse the forums to check whether there was a rebuttal somewhere.

About those player reviews, if you're the owner:
a) You know that most likely you'll get positive reviews from people who play at your place and negatives from people who just left. Why would you even want players who don't understand such a basic thing in the first place? Don't rebut.

b) The negative reviews get under your skin no matter how much you know the above. I suggest you turn previews off, period. Don't rebut.


Then again, there forums would be pretty silent without at least those silly flamewars...

It wasn't the review flames which did that, though. During the move from the old, blue design, the site got into a slump, and then there was the issue about the post count spammers who disrupted pretty much everything else. TMS' forum have been more or less in the same state ever since, whereas the review flames are a much more recent phenomenon.

Since you like "facts", don't hesitate to get them straight.

Quite obviously, when the majority of MUDs allow previews, it might give the impression that those who disallow it are afraid of the stuff they might get...

I'd agree with this opinion.   I think it says a lot about how much they trust their customers as well.

I read the reviews on other games from time to time, at least if I've heard of the game and think they're relatively similar to ours.  It's helpful from an admin stance to see what people like/dislike about the places they play/leave.  Not as helpful as being able to read our own reviews (e.g. if someone claims the global chat channel is intrusive or helpful, that does us no good, since we don't have one), but helpful.  We've always left reviews enabled for this kind of reason, and because we're confident that our product will do well in a grass-roots sort of way.

It's curious that you're even allowed to silence reviewers.  If I visit this site, and I want to talk about my experience on a game that silences, I'm effectively barred from doing so because that game's admin doesn't want me to.  I can talk about any other MUD topic I want (and even some non-MUD topics in the right forums), but I can't talk about their game.

Personally, I base my decision of which MUDs I might try on more than one factor. Reviews are one of those factors.

The behavior of the admins on these forums is another.

And people wonder why debates have went downhill and are meaningless, it's impossible to carry on an intelligent conversation (proven in the post right before this one). Sarcasm I don't believe has ever helped a debate, if you can' think of anything intelligent to say, then say nothing at all.

Now to benefit to the discussion. Reviews are just that and SHOULD NOT be brought up in forums, there isn't for it for a reason, you should not respond to a review, post a rebuttal or anyway try to justify yourself, learn from it, move on. Now, just because you don't like reviews, well don't allow them to posted, that said should have ended this topic but didn't. I don't agree with letting every american vote, do I think they are all qualified to chose a leader, NO, but they do have  a right to voice their opinion, they do it by voting, people here do it by reviews, only thing is, these are just games, you're not chosing the leader of the nation, truly what review is going to impact your personal life in such a major way as to actual cause a reaction to it, except possibly high blood pressure because your precious game got a review. And Logos, wow youre 700 characters, great, I've read so many post about how great your muds are, well if any one of us had the resources that Ironrealms entertainment or any other company had, yeah we could have 700 characters as well, its impossible to class your mud with ours or even attempt to compare it in anyway. So please, we all know you're in the top 10, heres a cookie, lay off the ego trip, you didn't always have 700 characters......

You know Enola here has been giving out such thoughtful commentary on reviews that I went to play his game. I got connected to his stock Dikumud and started killing the town guard mobs which were all renamed to various members of the Swedish royal family. But after a while his immortals traced my IP, hacked my computer and BLEW UP MY MONITOR. Ludicrous!

I just wanted to get the truth out. I hope Enola's immortals learn from my fair and just review and never do that again.

Of course my review was easy to pick out, that's because it was exaggerated for effect. Would it have been so easy if my tales weren't so tall? If a review contains some untruths, it is only just that they be righted. Misinformation should be corrected, lest our goal of an informed population be compromised.

Sometimes sarcasm is the only decent response to the constant backhanded jabs.

That's right, we once had no characters, like all muds. We started with the same resources anyone does: nothing. It was me working alone, with no prior experience except as a player and volunteer admin. There is nothing stopping you or anyone else from doing the same thing we did, so stop pretending you're somehow "disadvantaged." Our company's resources and expertise were garnered over years of day-in, day-out work to provide entertainment to players, just like every other big mud, from Aardwolf to Batmud to Gemstone IV. "All" it takes is the will to succeed and the ability to use that drive productively. And in fact, since the ability part can be learned, all you need is the will. (God knows I didn't know what the heck I was doing when I started 8 years ago.)

Hinting that large, popular muds are afraid of reviews is funny in its sour grapeness.

--matt

True it can be hard to tell an actual bad review from a flame. Especially if they were to swing both ways sort of speak, point out good and bad, even if the bad never existed. Is it right no, of course not, will affect the game, possibly. Should you have the chance to rebutt, in my opinion yes, where not here, not in the forums, but on an explanation of review, maybe the player misinterpreted something, there could be a thred on a review, contained within that games review page, that way the entire world doesn't get caught in a flame, BUT one could dig deeper. That will serve two purposes.

1) Bad reviews - legit reviews would be easily noticed, and the owner could respond with a fix, compromise or explanation.

2) False reviews- could be rebutted by the owner, and thats where it gets fun, the player would then defend himself, and the war is on, now from there how the owner acts would matter to me far more than the actual review itself. Don't you agree?

So how many are for an explanation thread?

Exactly Valg, I think that would benefit all the muds who allow reviews.

This thread seems to have split up into two different topics:
A. Were the discussions on the boards better in the past, and if so, why did the site deteriorate?
B. Are the player reviews useful/useless?

The first question is actually intriguing: How and why did a once great discussion site deteriorate to the present state, where it is all but dead. That subject should be worthy of a thread of its own

As for the reviews, here are my own thoughts about them, based on some indisputable facts:

1. Fact: The people that write the reviews usually belong to any of the following categories:
- Mud owners/Administrators/imms
- Ardent active players
- Disgruntled players (often ex-players).

Neither category is renowned for their impartiality. Consequently I think we can all agree that the majority of the ‘reviews’ are biased - either uncritically positive or equally one-sided negative.

2. Fact: Some muds get an inordinate number of reviews, while others hardly get any, even if they didn’t take the step of disabling them completely.

This doesn’t seem to be related to the size of the playerbase.
It is probably safe to assume that the ones that get a very large number have Administrators that actively encourage their players to write reviews, in about the same way that some muds actively encourage their players to vote. In some cases they may even create accounts on the site just to write some reviews themselves.

It is also likely, that the muds where the Admin encourage the players to write reviews get a larger percentage of positive reviews. Mostly because they would be written by active players who like their game, but also because it is in the human nature to hope for some kind of reward for butt-kissing, (regardless of whether you actually get it or not).

3. Most muds get both positive and negative ‘reviews’.

This is only natural, since there is no such thing as a flawless game, and also people have very different tastes. (A very simple example of this is the different preferences of Roleplayers and Hack’n’slashers. There are even players who actually PREFER stock muds, because they know their way around in those).

The single reviews seldom point out both sides of the coin however. Still, viewing all the reviews for a mud should usually give you some sort of idea about the pros and cons with it.

The majority of the reviews a mud gets will probably be positive, especially since you have the option to get obviously biased, inflammatory or untrue reviews removed by the List Admin.

4. Fact: Some muds get a larger amount of negative reviews than others.

There can be several explanations for this, here are a few:
- The mud is very new and in an early development stage, and consequently the world is small, the code unfinished, the playerbase limited. It may have a great concept for the future, but the main part of it hasn’t yet been implemented. (Many players like developing Muds however, and actively seek them out as playtesters).
- The game is ‘extreme’ in one direction or another, meaning that some players will love it, while others hate it. (Examples of the extremes are; stricly enforced Roleplay with no OOC allowed, brutal pkilling muds with permadeath).
- The game is unusually hard, and/or has a very steep learning curve, causing some players to feel frustrated, because they cannot cope with the complexity. (This would make it a good game for demanding players however).
- The game is in the process of some sort of major change, either regarding code or policy. (Large and frequent changes always upset the players, especially if they are coupled with a pwipe or an equip downgrade).
- The game admin have recently discovered massive and widespread cheating, and decided to deal with it by banning all the players they caught, regardless of mud status. (Longtime, powerful players finding themselves barred from their favourite mud are prone to be vindictive. Most people would however agree that the Admin took the right action here).
- The reviewer happened to log on to a mud of a type that he simply dislikes. For instance an enthusiastic Roleplayer stumbling into a chatty and noisy hack’n’slash mud – or the opposite. Or a player who likes to explore entering a PK mud, where new players are preyed on. (In these cases the sensible player would just recognise that he is in the wrong place and quietly leave, but some people choose to make a public fuss over it)
- The mud is very successful, and some immature competitors cannot handle this fact, so they post negative reviews in order to try and bring them down. (This is what some of the mudowners that disabled their reviews probably will claim. It may happen, but personally I doubt it is very frequent).
- The game has a extremely hard-handed admin, who use ban frequently as an instrument against ‘problem players’
- Free speech is severely suppressed within the mud, and the players have no chance to vent inside the mud, without getting punished. (This is more frequent than you’d think. There are muds where players get zapped for the slightest comment that can be interpreted as criticism, and where any negative posts are promptly deleted from the boards, if there even are any boards).
- The mud is in open conflict with some other mud, which might cause the rivals to post negative reviews about one another. (For instance if someone took off with the code and zones, or there was a major disagreement about the policy, causing some of the Staff to leave, to start their own, similar mud).
- The Game goes under false pretences. (For instance a mostly Stock mud claiming to be ’highly modified and original’, a commercial mud pretending to be ‘free’, alleged RP-intense muds where the roleplay is mostly non-existent).
- The Game actually IS a bad one. (For instance rude and/or uncaring Admin, cheating imms, unfriendly players, extremely buggy code, sloppy building with typos galore, severe lag… After all, we all know muds like that exist).

Like the list shows, there are several reason why a good mud could get negative reviews. The ones at the top are examples of that, while some of the ones at the bottom are examples where criticism would be justified.

In the latter cases there is a definite interest from the prospective players to get this sort of information – (and obviously also a definite interest from the Admin to suppress it). This is one reason why I think the option for
Mudowners to get a review removed by the list Admin, should be restricted to ‘false’ reviews cases, where the allegations are obviously and blatantly untrue. It shouldn’t be very hard for the Admin to provide proof about that. (On a side-note, so far I haven't seen any valid reason for a mud to block all reviews, and I never understood why this option should be available. Still, since it is there I guess it will stay).

A balanced, intelligent and mature mudowner should be able to handle a few negative reviews in a constructive way. Sure, criticism is always a bit hard to take. But, as Valg and Samvean already pointed out, even negative reviews can be useful in some ways. Flaws and bugs that you perhaps didn’t even know existed can be rectified, you get a grip of what features players generally like or dislike in your game, and can take action accordingly.

And you always have the option to respond to them. Which in my opinion should NOT be done in the Discussion boards, but in the Review section itself. Ideally there should be a possibility to COMMENT directly to each review, like the Mud Connector has. If Synozeer doesn’t want to add that option, there is always the possibility to add your own review, where you can refer to the content in the other one, point by point. Sure, it doesn’t give the same exposure as if you do it in the boards, but maybe you don’t really want that kind of general exposure when it comes to bad reviews.

5. Fact: Regardless of what has been claimed by a few people, Not ALL reviews are badly written.

Obviously there are different opinions about this, ranging from Threshold and the_logos, who refer to the  reviews as ‘worthless’, ‘useless’, ‘absolute garbage’, ‘no value as reviews’, to Samvean and Valg, who claim that there are several examples of well written reviews - and even provide some links and examples to back their statements up.

As for myself, I couldn’t make a statement about the average quality standard of the player reviews, simply because I don’t know – I hardly ever read them. (See, this is what bothers me about the people, who so loudly claim they all are utter crap. How do they know? Have they actually READ all the available reviews to form this cocksure opinion? I guess it wouldn’t be hard to find some bad examples, but how do you go from there to the conclusion that 99% of them, if not all, are crap, without actually checking ALL of them out?)

Anyhow, the QUALITY of a review has nothing to do with whether the content is positive or negative, although a balanced review that points out both good and bad aspects of the game is likely to be better written than the one-sided ones.

Better quality on the reviews would benefit everybody, especially the mudowners that allow them. If a larger part of the reviews where better written, more people would bother to read them, which in turn would mean more exposure for the mud in question.

Also a very badly written review reflects negatively on the mud, even if it contains nothing but praise, because the readers will assume that it has a playerbase full of twinks.
On the other hand a well written review reflects positively on the mud it deals with, even if it contains severe criticism. Simply because it shows that someone cared enough about the mud to take the trouble of writing down their thoughts in a mature, balanced and well worded fashion. Nobody would go through all that trouble over a crappy stock mud.

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So to sum this up; I think reviews should be kept. They have pros and cons, but to me the pros definitely outweigh the cons. To an extent that again makes me wonder why some mudowners feel this need to disable them.

I think the reviews add to the site, not just by giving it more hits, like the mindless clicking of a vote button, but by providing reading material that at least some visitors find interesting and/or entertaining.

Players in search of a new mud probably check out some reviews first. That’s what I’d do myself. And reasonably intelligent players can probably see through both the obviously biased attacks by embittered banned ex-players, and the blatant advertising written by Admin pretending to be players.

Valg and Samvean have already pointed out many ways in which the reviews can also be valuable for the mudowners, and I agree with all these. Positive reviews definitely provide good publicity for the mud, and even the negative ones can be turned into good publicity, dependant of how the Admin handle the matter. They also provide an extra option for a mud that cannot afford a banner to get its name exposed.

The review concept as it stands could be improved however.

A definite improvement would be the possibility for the Mud Admin to comment directly to each review. If Synozeer would take the trouble of adding this, it would benefit everybody on the list, because the review comments on the discussion boards that seem to trouble certain people so uncommonly much would then be eliminated.

I also think that a small measure like re-label them from ‘Reviews’ to something like ‘Player comments’ would have a good effect. False product declaration is never a good thing, because it leads to unrealistic expectations, followed by frustration when these are not fulfilled.

I would just like to personally thank Molly for her input, one of the most on topic replies written to any board I've read (including my own post). Keep up the good work and look forward to hearing more of your view points.