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Anarchy Online: Shadowlands not all its cracked up to be?
by Jolex Del Pilar

Monday, November 17 2003

VGLN.com accused of rent seeking behavior, or "selling out", for all you non-Political Economies majors out there.

Coming from a veteran player with characters from nearly all professions and having reached level 200, you're review of Shadowlands was overly generous to say the least. I and many other gamers who are aware of what SL is truly like know you are most likely a reporter that played for a short amount of time and was possibly given a tour and fed a story by Funcom GM's.

9.1 just shows us that you've pandered to FC and did not do the research required to write an accurate review.

Ted Pochmara

Hello Ted,

While I will concede that I have not played the game as much as you have, and probably have less of a perception of what the game is in terms of nuances and long run play, you have to realize that on most occasions, we have a fairly tight schedule to work with in terms of reviewing a game. With Shadowlands, we spent at least 3 weeks playing with the game on and off for about an hour or so a day. Funcom only grants us 30 days of review time for free, then we, like you, must begin paying out of our own pocket. While some companies may allow us more than 30 days, or even "forever accounts" (thank you SOE), most do not.

As for the review, I explained why I liked the game. The mark of a good website is the ability of its staff and editors to stand on their reviews and scores. You will never see us pull a Gamespot and recant on a review because we thought we screwed up with our score. With AO: Shadowlands, we truly believe it deserved our editor's choice award based on our scoring system.

As for us pandering to Funcom, trust me, VGLN.com will never pander to any publisher or developer just because they may treat us well (Funcom's free bar and buffet was mighty nice though, the free t-shirts were great as well). In fact, Ubi Soft, who was pushing their Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon game very heavily got a lashing from us come review time, and Ubi Soft is bigger than Funcom by most reports. If we were going to get on our knees for anyone, it would've been Ubi Soft. In the end, we've seen players who absolutely love Shadowlands and thought our score was appropriate. Opinions are diverse as are gaming taste. Also, isn't the fact that you hung on until level 200 a sign that the game sucked you in? Huh, right, am I right??? Long live the proletariat, or something or other.

--- Jolex Del Pilar