[Blay]

I hope this is the right section for this type of question. If not, feel free to move it.

I've noticed that the dates for the latest reviews for most of the games listed here are in 2006. If this a site-wide thing in terms of reviews being "turned off" on the site itself, or do the individual games do so?

I'd like to see some recent reviews of games and reviews that are 3 years old no longer hold much water, in most cases.


Thanks much!

[DurNominator]

It is a site wide thing. I think the system got hit by spam or something and was then turned off.

[prof1515]

It should simply be removed altogether. Player reviews are worthless because they're either fanbois or flamers and they're not done within a context of comparison. In other words, calling a MUD "the best game I've ever played" means nothing if you've only played a small handful of them (or in some cases only that game). Staff-written "reviews" are really just propaganda. Legitimate independent third-party reviews are, at this time, non-existant (though there are efforts underway to correct that). It's long overdue to give the reviews section here the heave into the trash bin.

Jason

[MudMann]

The MUDCONNECTOR is probably a good bet for recent reviews, and they generally use staff reviewers (for the official reviews) as well as player reviews.

[6Dragons]

I asked about reviews being fixed or removed quite a few months
ago and no one ever replied. I think it's on the ignore list of honey
do topics. Mudconnect and a few other sites do allow reviews
though.

I don't agree with Prof1515 though. Mud reviews shouldn't be removed they should be fixed and allowed for everyone. I have found the best results of new players come in from mud reviews.

[Orrin]

The pace of change here has always been rather slow (my MUD listing has been awaiting approval for 6 weeks now) so I wouldn't expect any lightening changes to the review system.

The staff reviews at TMC are pretty much non existent nowadays with only a couple having been done in the last few years. They do have player reviews though, as does MudGamers, although we don't get that many. I have thought about trying to do some sort of independent staff reviews at MudGamers but I don't know if it would be worth the time to organise it all.

[Ide]

It's been said before that reviewing a mud, where hours played for an average player usually is in the hundreds if not more, is a tough thing to do at all, let alone fairly. So mainly you get thinly veiled advertisements or not so thinly veiled insults. Nevertheless I usually find it's pretty easy to get a good impression of the mud from either advertisements or insults, so I don't think reviews should be tossed out.

[Markov_AU]

I'm sad to say one of the MUDs getting flooded w/ irrelevant reviews was Adventures unlimited, due t0 a disgruntled flamer.

[prof1515]

When RPMUD.net is fully-operational, we'll be doing critical, independent third-party reviews of games. However, we'll only be covering RP* MU*s with enforced RP (no hybrids or pure H&S or PvP). Probably won't begin reviews until the end of the year or the beginning of next though so it's not immediate.

Jason

[Delerak]

Critical, non-biased reviews are damn near impossible to come by because it's all relative to the user. It's like reviewing a MMORPG. What really can be said that is different between WoW and Warhammer Online? Not much in my opinion, since I've quit those types of games and pretty much detest WoW. But somewhere there is somebody who has played them all and can use their traits to write good reviews.

You should try to find journalists, or professional writers who have reviewed things for newspapers to do these types of reviews.

[Ide]

He didn't say non-biased, though. Just critical and independent.