A rant about D20 Magazine Rack

[JacktheRabbit]

I like to go into the review section on ocassion and just tool around. I use it often tohelp determine my purchases. I also go by suggestions from friends or from reading the book myself when I get it.

Well what a surprise.

D20 Magazine Rack has flooded the reviews again. What a surprise 21 reviews by D20 MR and what is the range? 19 of them got 4's and two of them got 3's.

This got me curious and I did some quick checking.

D20 MR has done 185 reviews so far.

117 of them have been 4's.

33 of them have been 3's

32 of them have been 5's

3 of them were 2's


What does this tell me? Absolutely nothing. The reviews give equal ratings to products that I have found (and my friends have found) to be nowhere close to the rating that D20 MR has given out.

To make things worse D20 MR is not one person but several people who all post reviews under the same name. So now I cannot quickly check reviews and base them on what I know about the reviewer.

Can someone PLEASE create unique logins for each D20 MR reviewer so we do not get blasted by huge swaths of reviews that tell very little and rank almost every product they touch (149 out of 185) as being good or better.

My apologies for this rant.

 

[blackshirt5]

I've gotta second this one, Doc.

They give good reviews to a lot of things that are, frankly...sugar-blasted cat crap.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

I've gotta second this one, Doc.

They give good reviews to a lot of things that are, frankly...sugar-blasted cat crap.

It is also obvious that different editors play favorites in their reviews.

 

[blackshirt5]

Playing Favorites? Yeah, Just a Skosh.

What do we like? Answer: Anything remotely D20.

Do you think that maybe they had that one reasonable guy, who used to say "but it's a garbage book!" and they just ignored him and shooed him away and belittled him until they drove him insane, and now he carries around a Rifts PHB, stroking it, petting it, muttering, "my precious, yessss"?

 

[Iron_Chef]

that site is a total scam!!!

I went to the site looking for reviews but all I found were quickie press releases that told me absolutely nothing about the alleged quality of a given product that the publisher didn't want me to know.

d20 Magazine Rack is worse than biased... it's useless!

Down with the duplicitous corporate complicity of d20 Magazine Rack!

Up with ENWorld!

 

[DanMcS]

And to make it worse, they're just using it as an excuse to spam for their website. I despise that.

 

[JeffB]

The thing that really turned me off was when one of the D20MR reviewers complained of the Kingdoms of Kalamar Atlas being too specific about Kalamar...HUH?

I just totally ignore D20 MR reviews now.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

The thing that really turned me off was when one of the D20MR reviewers complained of the Kingdoms of Kalamar Atlas being too specific about Kalamar...HUH?

I just totally ignore D20 MR reviews now.

I thought you were joking so I checked. Sadly you are not joking.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Let me start off by saying that I'm biased, since I write reviews for d20 Magazine Rack. (And I'm respondind to a potential troll, but I'm wearing my nomex undies.)

As I and others have posted on this board many times before, the d20 Magazine Rack has a different rating system for reviews than EN World. Instead of a 5-star score, we use a set of five scores plus an overall grade. That rating system does not translate well to EN World's system. Most reviews will translate as "4" scores. If you want to get the full details you have to read the review.

Incidentally, if you want to know exactly how d20 Magazine Rack does it's reviews, you can go here, where the exact review requirements are spelled out. Those are the procedures d20MR reviewers are expected to follow -- and I'm not aware of any other gaming review site that has so clearly -- and publicly -- posted their standards.

For the poster that mentioned that all they see are press releases, try *clicking* on the title, so you can get to the page with the full review, including the numeric score. You can search for old reviews/products with the search function at the upper right, or use the "Critic's Corner", "Fast Tracks", and Gamer's Corner" links for long products, short products, and non-d20 games respectively.

I can't overstate enough that if all you're doing is judging a product or review by its score (whether d20MR score or EN World star rating), you are doing neither the reviewer or the product justice. Read the entire review.

I can't speak for all of the (8-10) staff reviewers at d20 MR, but if you have issue with any of my reviews, or think my reviews show a bias, then I encourage you to post comments to the review at d20MR's site, or on d20 MR's boards.

 

[blackshirt5]

Olgar Shiverstone said-
As I and others have posted on this board many times before, the d20 Magazine Rack has a different rating system for reviews than EN World. Instead of a 5-star score, we use a set of five scores plus an overall grade. That rating system does not translate well to EN World's system. Most reviews will translate as "4" scores. If you want to get the full details you have to read the review.

Me-
Then, why do you insist on bringing them over to ENWorld, if you've already got them on another site, and you yourself say that the ratings system doesn't translate well to the ENWorld one?