Revenge of the Metacritics: Diablo III Getting Review-Bombed

[blackdwarf]

and i played Diablo III, am i annoyed with the connection issue? ofcourse, but i knew that it would happen. when you see the negative reviews it are people who are just mad because of the connection or they are straight lying with statements as: "i've finished the game already".

But people really beat it already:

http://www.geekologie.com/2012/05/congratulations-fan-beats-diablo-3-in-12.php

Shortest i heard was 4 hours for some korean streamers to beat normal.

http://www.justin.my/2012/05/diablo-3-dead-in-6-hours-of-launching-in-korea/

that is true, did forget about that. .... dammit, now i don't have a counter-argument.

ok, the statement i saw yesterday on critic was that some people said was that they already finished it under 3 hours. that was not true, but ok, weak argument.

 

[jmesch04]

The problem is here is that Diablo III delivered on all it's promises. They have been up front about everything. The skills might be the wrong way. In fact I am going to say I do not like the new system yet, but if blizzard is known for anything it's about patching until something is nailed down and set.

I am going to say it again I enjoy the DRM... I live in China and play with my friends in the US. I have not had an issue yet. I am happy that finally the game will have good in game economy. Blizz should get a cut of that money. I don't plan on buying or selling anything in the real-money market so it doesn't affect me. But seeing these Chinese farmers here I am happy they finally get some money back after how many copies of war3 were pirated.

 

[5ilver]

I haven't bought D3 because I kinda saw this from a mile away. However, if I had, I would be pissed as well. I mean, buying a car and not having it working? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't rate the car 8 or 9/10.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Question: does this finally prove that gaming culture has a certain measure of entitlement issues, or is it merely the righteous indignation of customers and fans scorned?

The only thing it really proves is that angry people like to be vindictive on review sites (which we knew already). The same thing happens a lot with books and films.

User reviews of anything remotely popular have a tendency to get really wonky really fast because the only people who care enough to write them are either:
a) gushing fanboys, out to defend their favourite title, or
b) people who are enraged by something to do with the product/franchise/company/country-the-company-is-based-in and are out for revenge

It's the reason you rarely find a neutral user review of something like Twilight.

 

[getoffmycloud]

I think it is a sign of entitlement because everyone knew it has always on DRM and blizzard did say there would be launch issues so people had time to cancel preorders of they wanted to this would be like EA announciong day one DLC 6 months before launch of a game and then people complaining about it at launch.

 

[Exocet]

"Blizzard screwed up big time"
I lol'd.

You know what I had to deal with yesterday? I waited for a friend to get his copy, at 5pm CET, ie: European prime time. I could not connect to the game until 10-10h30 pm
I was annoyed, but I did not go on the forums to demand a refund for the game not coming out on the precise hour they wanted, due to server congestion, nor did I call out Blizzard for ties with the Mafia ( genuine Blizzard forums dumbassery).
I waited, and what I saw was amazing. A community manager based in the US posted updates about server-side problems every 10 minutes, answered personal twitter questions about the launch, and other community managers sifted through hundreds and hundreds of pages of stupid crap to answer to real questions.

So yes, the D3 launch sucked, and Blizzard could have handled it better, but to say that they suck cock for it, and that D3 is a bad game for it is asinine.

 

[illas]

It's deserved. Whether it's that people hate the dumbed-down WoW-clone gameplay or simply aren't able to log in and play it, well, they are entitled to give it a low score. That's the whole point of consumer reviews as opposed to professional reviews.

 

[Amarok]

I'd be more surprised if it wasn't getting review bombed. Seriously, what popular game these days isn't? Pretty sure it's just a right of passage at this point: Congrats, your game is popular and mainstream enough it's been review bombed!

Minecraft
Half-Life 2
BioShock
Portal
Portal 2
Skyrim
Oblivion
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Company of Heroes
Starcraft 2
Call Of Duty 4:MW
Team Fortress 2
Fallout 3
Fallout New Vegas
Dragon Age: Origins
Total War: Shogun 2
Left 4 Dead
Left 4 Dead 2
The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings

Basically any game that comes even close to delivering on expectations without tripping all over itself.

Portal 2 was review-bombed for the store you could buy things for your co-op robots, actually it was bombed for the first few weeks with a slew of reviews filled with rage but little actual substance (besides a few false claims that the game is shorter than the original portal etc.)

Other than that, list seems okay to me

 

[FrostyCoolSlug]

It's deserved. Whether it's that people hate the dumbed-down WoW-clone gameplay or simply aren't able to log in and play it, well, they are entitled to give it a low score. That's the whole point of consumer reviews as opposed to professional reviews.

The problem as I see it with the review bomb though, is that most people aren't reviewing the game, they're reviewing Blizzards network infrastructure. Blizzard did their best to warn people prior to the games release and on the login screens and at least went through the problems of acknowledging the problems there.

Did Blizzard fuck up? A little bit, yeah, I'm not going to sit here and defend the fact that they were not ready, this problem occurs for pretty much all title releases they do, and I can only assume they keep repeatedly underestimating the number of players which were going to jump in.

Having said that though, the servers are (apparently) fixed, after the maintenance last night capacity was seemingly increased and I've not seen any problems at all today, and if it is the case that it's been fixed, people who are still giving negative reviews for connectivity problems probably don't even own the game, and all reviews about not being able to connect currently are officially moot.

The rating is a permanent review of the quality of the game, and yes, the game had day 1 problems, but in 3 months time, even if the servers have 100% uptime, those reviews of "I CAN'T CONNECT TO THE SERVERS" will still be sat there. It's the general short-sightedness of people and this "review bomb" that makes the whole thing just frankly silly.

 

[Aprilgold]

Diablo... Not... Offline... Must contain... Want to point and laugh... BAHAHAHA!! Oh god thats a good one.

*looks at Diablo 3*...

Yeah, it seems you are not able to read. Diablo 3 is fucking obvious not an offline game. It was known months before any kind of release or preorder could've been made. So what is your point?

That the notion that Diablo in some form can't be played offline is like saying Tetris is the single greatest multiplayer achievement in all of mankind.

 

[Dirzzit]

Metacritic lost its accountability long ago, I don't know why people still pay attention to it.