A topic that has been playing on my mind recently, with the impending release of Guild Wars 2, is how it will actually review when it is officially launched. It is fair to say that both Sardu and I are heavily invested in the game and if we didn’t consider it an exceptional product, it’s highly unlikely we would be playing it or even running Guild Wars 2 Hub. With that in mind, Metacritic now plays a huge part in publisher perception of what is or isn’t a great product.
Funcom recently bemoaned the lack of sales of The Secret World as an attributing factor to its share price plummeting, blaming Metacritic and its aggregated scores of their product as the cause. What really interests me is where Guild Wars 2 will find itself on Metacritic after all the reviews are in and counted.
There has been an explosion of MMOG’s in the aftermath of World of Warcraft and although most have launched with a fanfare, it would be safe to say that all have failed to live up to expectations both critically and financially, in the form of physical subscribers. Though developers and publishers are often reluctant to reveal subscription numbers (which in itself doesn’t bode well) there have been dozens of reports relating to the rapid decline in active users for all the big hitters. Even Eve Online, for all it does right hasn’t been immune to an exodus or two as a result of several PR blunders.
What I find interesting is when you compare the big seven on Metacritic and even after all this time, not a single MMOG has equalled or matched World of Warcraft and for those that are critically close (Warhammer Online being the closest) even they have terrible subscription numbers.
World of Warcraft very much remains unique in its ability to retain subscribers as it launched at a time when paying to play was the staple of the genres model. In spite of the rapidly changing landscape where free-to-play and micro transactions are becoming the norm, World of Warcraft players are so heavily invested in their characters it’s a little hard for those users to walk away and pull the plug. Star Wars: The Old Republic is an example of a game that were it to have launched six months to a year after WoW, it would have undoubtedly scored higher and have retained huge swathes of subscribers even to this day (including myself). Yet here it finds itself, less than 12 months old, already forced to switch to a free-to-play model after hemorrhaging half a million users.
It would be wrong and short sighted to suggest that Metacritic is the cause of any games woes and while its aggregation of scores is far from perfect (the flaws are well documented) in many respects it does reflect a consensus of a product. In simple terms and in the case of The Secret World, the product simply wasn’t good enough to warrant high scores (despite its originality) and certainly didn’t warrant a subscription model and in game store.
If we list the last big seven MMOGs that have launched since World of Warcraft it is quite an interesting list:
- WoW 90%
- Warhammer Online 86%
- SWTOR 85%
- Rift 84%
- Tera 77%
- Aion 76%
- The Secret World 72%
Only RIFT stands out to me as one that has generally lived up to player expectations, no matter how low they originally were, while still maintaining a profitable and healthy player base. It also has a score that I feel reflects the product reasonably accurately. In contrast Warhammer Online leads the pack and yet many would agree with me that is as guilty as SWTOR for copying the WoW formulae while still inheriting all its flaws and adding plenty more in the process (too many to list here) and yet it scored 86%, 1% more than SWTOR; a game which had almost treble its budget.
The question that remains for me is whether Guild Wars 2 deserves 90% (or more) and would anything less actually suffice? If it scored 89% that would place it only 3% above Warhammer Online a product so vastly inferior I’m not even sure the two are comparable and while in the grand schemes of things a 3% difference means very little, it is the principal of a score which matters.
From an entirely personal perspective and one which doesn’t necessarily reflect the consensus of the Ten Ton Hammer network, I would place Guild Wars 2 above World of Warcraft, as much as I love that game. The first reason is that anything less than 90% I feel would be an injustice to what ArenaNet have attempted to undertake, especially when comparisons are drawn against the 6 others listed above. Secondly, everything that they’ve accomplished, from the polish, content, scale and art direction to the attempts they’ve made in being original and trying to create something truly special, deserves its own merit. Lastly, it’s the first MMOG since WoW that has actually shipped in a state that lives up to an AAA billing, rather than AA titles from the likes of EA or Funcom.
In World of Warcrafts defense, it isn’t an entirely fair comparison with years having passed between the products and I’m sure many people take Metacritic with a pinch of salt (70%+ is a respectable score in reality) however, I’m beginning to feel a little apprehensive as to how Guild Wars 2 will be received by critics. If I'm apprehensive, how must ArenaNet and more importantly NCSoft be feeling?
With that in mind, what would you rate Guild Wars 2 out of 100 and what do you think it will aggregate on Metacritic? Would less than 90% really be a disaster?
Comments
Good article. I'm not worried though and I don't think Anet or NCSoft are either. From what I've seen, GW2 is insanely popular and rightly so. We have already seen games being released that have used GW2's innovations and I'm sure there will be more to come. But the thing that puts GW2 above all its mimics and copycats is its shear quality. Its gameplay is the most fun I've had in a long looong time, its art direction is a masterpiece and the amount of content it has is truly staggering.
Do I care how Metacritic scores GW2? No, not even a tiny teeny little bit. The game will be a massive success regardless of its score on Metacritic or any other critic site. And it will continue to be successful and get better and better. People who hate the game (due to fanboyism in another game or whatever) will hate the game, no matter how well it does. And the millions of fans that love the game will still buy and play it, and stay with it, even if it scores a pitifully low score.
At the end of the day, it will be how well it sells that decides its success, not some arbitrary score. I'm not saying that Metacritic is not effective, but it is not the deciding factor. Whether a game it great or rubbish, the word will spread with or without the help of critics.
In answer to you questions:
What would you rate Guild Wars 2 out of 100 and what do you think it will aggregate on Metacritic?
I'd rate it 100 (of course :)) and I would be surprised if it doesn't score above Warhammer Online.
Would less than 90% really be a disaster?
Not in my opinion.
Order of the Ono & Semper Dius
I would most certainly give GW2 at least a 93%.
I have been with WoW since vanilla's beta in '04. Blizzard promised a lot back then, and they actually shipped WoW while it wasn't ready, but they really wanted those holiday's sales, and the game was close enough to finish, I guess they figured they could patch in the rest while everyone leveled up to 60. Destrucable buildings, hero classes, pvp objective zones were all supposed to be out on release, but they never made it. In fact two of those three things took over four years after the game's release to actually make it into the game. The other received half-baked iterations for years before finally being implemented correctly with WG. Not to mention that WoW has been filled with placeholder graphics, models and mechanics for some classes for so long that most people forgot that they were even placeholders and just took them as part of the game. Blizzard has had serious issues actually delivering what they promise every time they sell WoW and its iterations.
Anet and GW2 on the other hand has done exactly what it said it would do with the game. Everything they've promised apart from group queue's for pvp is there. To top it all off, the game is the most polished game out of anything I've seen in a long time, almost over a decade. Anet didn't use their community as a free QA workforce guinea pig testers like other developers have come to do, they have their own dedicated QA team that has obviously been doing its job, and doing it well. All of the BWE's and stress tests have been stress testing and trying to squash odd bugs that only show up with awkward hardware configurations so that way launch day goes smoothly for everyone.
Anet has been fairly transparent on their actions and mindful of the community's voice. The game shows this as well. If the game score's lower than 90% I'll lose what little faith I have left on game review sites, because those reviews are plainly bad reviews. If something like D3, which has yet to come out of a beta build in all honesty can score above 90, GW2 deserves far better than a 90.
What are you willing to sacrifice?
Agree with Rin. GW2's launch is textbook viral marketing. They'll make case studies about it, but ultimately it does something that no other recent MMO has - it delivers, completely, thoroughly, across the board, and the brilliance of the pre-purchase beta was that it allowed ANet to demonstrate exactly that.
Also, GW2 really only has to do as well or better than GW1 to be profitable and successful, and it looks like it's well on track for that. It doesn't need to dethrone WoW and steal all their subscribers, or hit 95% on Metacritic. Doing all that would be gravy, of course, but not necessary for the success and longetivity of the game or ANet, as GW1 has demonstrated.
Having said that, I expect GW2 will score 90 or above. This game just makes people happy when they play it. Even the most jaded critic will get that if they play it for more than ten minutes.
Some good thinking there,
When I first heard about Guild Wars 2 they promised us they were about to release a game with at least equal combat mechanics and character "feeling" as in WoW. After having played the in the beta events I think arenanet did exactly what they promised.
The public opinion will depend a lot on how smooth the release will be going, because after all first impressions do count. They did a lot of stress testing so I give them a fair chance of hitting that 90% barrier
Ajanil - Semper Dius
IMO - 95% for gw2 look at all the bugs WOW launched with all though years ago to get a 90%, and yes a great game that i put over 6 years into, it has had its time.
I give GW2 a 95% only for the lack of direct trading, think of all the options all the graphics and new stuff this game has to offer, if trading is my only gripe at this time then its starting out better then most. i have played all the games you listed above and found them all to be fun in there own way but i agree with there rating.
When life gives you lemons, shoot them back at life at high velocity.
I doubt WoW can be beat. When it came out mmo was still a thing of wonder. Sure there were mmos before it, but the very notion of an open world with thousands of players was still something 'futuristic', at least for many players. That's not an edge gw2 can get.
Anet has stated on Forbes that they couldn't care less about Metacritic.
They might not but what bout NCSoft? What if it got 70%? They absolutely would care, in fact I'm sure theyd be devestated.
I agree with bargamer and Anet I don't care about metacritic.
First a disclaimer - I wasn't in Beta, so I really can't "know" for sure. But I started playing MMOGs with Ultima Online, then EQ and in no particular order Asheron's Call, Warhammer, Conan, AutoAssault, City of Heroes, D&D Online, LOTRO, Vanguard, Rift, Star Trek, Eve, and I'm sure others that I can't think of at the moment.
GW2 seems like it breaks the mold of all the others for many reasons, especially the dynamic events, combat mechanic, and player stories. Oh, and the quest/dynamic events scaling based on how many players are involved, and on the level of the player so you can revisit and benefit from areas that you may really like, and that you can group without being "grouped". And that you're not forced to go into the 'elite' dungeons to get uber equipment if you just prefer to solo.
I hope and believe that by breaking the mold GW2 will leap ahead in the rankings and end up reknowned as one of the best of all time; from my 'newbie' perspective it earns a solid 95. Just hoping and praying that the launch goes smoothly so that doesn't taint the initial reviews and rankings. I really want to be enjoying this universe for years to come.
I actually largely disagree with any sort of vague emphasis on Metacritic scores. I highly doubt even Funcom believes the low Metacritic scores are really to blame. They simply needed a scapegoat and one was there.
If I am honest, most MMO scoring sites (MMORPG.com and IGN.com particularly) have very poor rating systems for MMOs. It's very hard to fully and accurately judge an MMO in a matter of days. While SWTOR was great for many in the initial days, it's failure was it's sole reliance on a story. It scored highly on nearly every site, (and some question the validity of these scores, payoffs are always possible), and almost all after-the-fact blame it on their lack of foresight.
Its been a very popular topic in the community, how do you fairly judge an MMO? Most would argue subscriber numbers, but than with Guild Wars 2, there is no clear way to measure it. ArenaNet argues that it should be the amount of fun you are having. And of course, we will measure it by how many copies have been purchased by launch, or possibly by it's first quarter.
Everyone has their own method of success. And by each measurement, the ranking system of the past MMOs varies considerably. In my opinion, NCsoft and ArenaNet won't give a damn about Metacritic if they sell 3-5 million copies by launch. To each, his own.
As for me, my measurement will be ArenaNet's, am I having fun. I don't really care if it can't be quantitatively measured or shown as a nice, neat number. I'm a blogger, for me, words are more useful than a nice shiny number ever could be.
I definitely agree with Entombed on this topic, and would just like to emphasize the point that the number of box sales will be the determining factor in measuring success of the game for ArenaNet and NCSoft... NOT the MetaCritic score...
Never heard of Metacritic so it scores a 0% from me
Top two MMO's are easy for me:
Guild Wars 2 = 95%
Rift = 90% (they are adding more to do than raiding and the launch was spotless, AND it is a beautiful game that runs better on my PC than Guild Wars 2).
I guess Eq2 and EQ1 rate somewhere right at about the same level as Rift, then DAoC, then WoW somewhere below that.
Developers that have shown poor implementation in the genre IMO, and I refuse to play anything they make anymore:
Fun(not)com (seriously don't get me started on Age of Conan).
Turbine (not near as bad as Dumbcom, but they could have done a much better job with D&D and LoTRO)
You mentioned that WoW players are strongly invested in their toons.
True, but I don't see much discussion about what's going to happen when Blizz's REAL player retention numbers are revealed. As I recall, the 1-year-get-D3-free deal started in Sept/Oct?
This would suggest to me that those players may give MoP a swing, but the real truth of their 'brand loyalty' will be when/if they pony up the $$ for the NEXT MONTH after their 1-year deal runs out.
Interesting article, but I don't think GW2 is as beholden to Metacritic as other subscription model MMOs are. People are more likely to shell out for the game since its so competitively priced. You basically get a lifetime sub for the price of a normal game.
I decided on getting onboard the GW2 train when I realised how dirt cheap it was; buying it online meant that for Australian standards I got it for less than half price than your standard retail full price title.
I wasn't even looking for another MMO, and I wasn't that impressed by the thought of yet another fantasy MMO. But the pricing made it a cheap gamble for me, and the more I've seen, read and played, the happier I've become with my decision.
Really, I've hardly ever heard of metacritic, and never anything positive. I don't really care what scores they give as long as they aren't my problem.
Besides, so far I've had hard time finding anything not entirely positive that hasn't been due to misunderstanding something, like trying to grind renown events. Even if metacritic uses their random number generator and manages to give gw2 bad scores, could it really turn away that many people with everyone else loving the game?
Maybe, I really have no idea how many people use that site, but I wouldn't worry about it.
Are you a guardian? Let me introduce you to my Flesh Golem, he's getting a bit hungry.
I think GW2 will probably get 85-90%. It deserves far more of course.
More worrisome is what this article shows to be the state of the MMO industry however. I would hate to see it grow so bloated with trash, clones, and horrifically fickle consumers to go the way of adventure games or space combat sims. At least GW2 won't have subscriber retention issues: buy-to-play means they get what they need out of it without relying on long-term retention, and new releases should contribute to a relatively consistent hype-train.
Just as a tip, the original Guild Wars game received a Metascore of 89, if GW2 receives any less than that, it just won't be fair, so yeah, I believe GW2 will go higher than 90!
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/guild-wars
@ Chaosgyro,
The adventure game genre has not totally died. Some are coming back - a game magazine I get shows off at least a couple new ones in most issues, some of which are from developers that made the genre what it was back in the day..they are way down, but not gone.
What Guild Wars 2 does that breaks the mold is that it takes away the emphasis of the gear treadmill model that has plagued MMO's for a decade now. Yes you can get on the treadmill and grind for gear in Guild Wars 2, but you don't have to in order to enjoy all the content in the game. This has been my biggest complaint about MMO's in the past 10 years. You get to the endgame content for PvE and all you have left is grinding the same dungeon over and over for gear so that you can access the next level dungeon. There is grind in Guild Wars 2, but it's optional.
In the end it is what players decide to do in Guild Wars 2 that will determine whether they stick around or not. Personally I enjoy the PvE, sPvP, WvW, and the crafting..so yeah, I have years worth of gaming goodness ahead of me.
I just noticed metacritic review! Pleased to see a 94 :)
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/guild-wars-2
In PvP, we work side by side
In PvE we gathered, our missions all to conquer
In Roleplaying, we RP'd with pride
Guild Wars 2 actually beats World of Warcraft on Metacritic by 1 point.
Is it worth that? I've yet to answer that question. I can answer that Warhammer Online was fun but could've been better, that it hardly deserves it's high score and that RIFT lived up to my expectations and deserves to be placed higher than WAR (but not necessarily a higher score - WAR's just needs to be much lower).
I don't honestly believe World of Warcraft deserves a score of 90+ but that's just me. I'm extremely harsh on games, especially ones made today, and whilst I will never give a game a 10/10 in a serious review (I'm one of those pendatic people who doesn't believe in "perfect" scores) there's only a few games I've played over the years I'd consider giving a 9/10 (much of them my favourite titles).
World of Warcraft was extremely fun and both the classic and Burning Crusade expansions probably deserve their ratings. It gets a bit iffy when you get to Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. I'd give Wrath a good score but not the best score, and Cataclysm I just wasn't really interested in.
But as the topic said and I agree with, I generally take Metacritic scores with a grain of salt. Diablo III, for example, has nearly 3,000 negative player written "reviews", and even some of the commercial reviews give scathing remarks about the game when I thought the game wasn't that bad and fully expected the issues that the release day had (which is what over half of the complaints by much of those negative comments are about).
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