Dan Stahl, executive producer for Star Trek Online, in an interview with the A List, said the following:
Dan Stahl: In my opinion, the whole game rating business doesn't necessarily do a great justice to MMOs. MMOs are designed to grow over time and get better with every major release. It might be better if sites like Metacritic could find a way to rate MMO’s by releases instead of just the initial day one. There are plenty of MMOs that have made huge strides since days one and some that have even gotten worse. Until then, we will continue to offer the game for free and ask for people to try it out and decide for themselves.
Lagspike.tv happens to agree with this assessment by the producer of Star Trek Online. Most MMO Reviewers, including many of those familiar to folks through such outlets as Twitch.tv, only spend the first few weeks of a game's opening playing the MMO. Then, when the next big game comes along, they abandon the game and never return to it to see how much it has changed, improved, gone downhill, or whatever.
Take for instance Star Wars: The Old Republic. All the reviews as the beginning of the launch were stellar, talking about how innovative and fun the game was to play. However, those game review scores have not changed since the 9 months the game has been out and the flaws in the game exposed to view. Lack of end game content, the repetiveness of missions, the fact you are playing 8 solo games instead of a real multiplayer experience, and lack of roleplaying options should have lowered the Metacritic score of the game.
In contrast, two games now Free to Play: Age of Conan and Star Trek Online, are saddled with lower Metacritic scores forever, despite constant improvements in both games which make both much more fun to play than they did at initial launch. Other games, like Dungeons and Dragons Online, Lord of the Rings Online, and others have shown marked improvements while some have not kept up and now lack features common to many games. Yet, the Metacritic scores are forever unchanging it seems after the first month of publication.
Lagspike.tv hopes to have our supporters review games over time, not just at release. Release hype can hide many problems with a game, so a MMO needs to be reevaluated at a regular interval in our opinion as the game moves forward into post-launch development.
For more information, please check out http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/exclusive-star-trek-online-interview-hits-warp-2/ for Dan Stahl's full interview.