asm wrote:

First of all (and I can't believe that I am the one saying this), you guys need to be more subtle. As Dennis smugly points out, he has chosen quite the handy domain name. So calling him names may not be our cleverest move.

That being said, I'm not sure that there's any way around the fact that in all probability it's a total waste of time to convince him of anything. If the accuracy of his ratings aren't important enough to give the same amount of time to each site on the list, there's jut nothing we can do about that.

Example: ConquerClub's tremendously poor interface is not a weakness for that site, because it is possible to download and run a ton of other shit, that somebody on that site somewhere told you to, that's hopefully not a virus, that almost brings it up to par. However, when a total beginner signs up on WarGear.net, it may take longer than 3 minutes to find a map to play on that suits that person's tastes. Win: CC

Now, I have never looked at this playriskonline.net, so this is no more than idle speculation, but ever since I heard of it I sort of suspected that it may at base be nothing more than a shill for whatever one "Risk" site Dennis originally hails from. Keep this in mind when evaluating his arguments. What better promotional tool for your site than a supposedly objective third-party rating site that consistently gives your site the best marks? Think about it.

I will admit that ConquerClub is the site I am most familiar with, land grab second, warlight third, so perhaps  my bias of experience is showing.  So perhaps I should consider the fact that new users has to put in alot of work on the CC interface to make it competant.  My reviews are quantitative and qualitative, if the numbers bug you, stick to the later.

As for the shilling, i don't give glowing reviews to anyone.  The top score is a 7.3 from a site with a "dated interface" and "slow updates and declining activity".  I have been playing Risk for decades and am a collector of the various series (except for the newest incarnations) as well as other board games.  I was quite enthused to have pick up playing Risk online as I felt it really took the game to new heights, with different maps, new game options etc.  But all of the sites I have played were seriously lacking in potential and opportunities.   I created the reviews to show new players where to get a good game, but also to show site owners that they likely shouldn't rest on their laurels, as a 7.3 is not really all that great of a score.  So I am still holding out that either another great site comes along, or an existing site doesn't stop innovating until it is great.

This was written in response to asm, not Dennis:

I'm just looking at the last statement: You don't think tom has done a surprisingly large amount of work on the site in a relatively short period of time? In fact you say that it is "Demonstrably false, empirically disproven". Wow, I think tom is doing a good job of updating things.

P.S. I'm glad you are using the "Word of the Day Toilet paper" I got you for X-Mas!!!
P.P.S. Nothing but love, my friend. Unless you are taking that statement as physical and then nothing at all.

Risky, you interpreted my comment backwards. Tom is the business. I'm expressing doubt that all the incredible work Tom does makes any difference in this context (because the 'updated' review has shown that it does not).

'The top score is a 7.3 from a site with a "dated interface" and "slow updates and declining activity"'

Then whatever you're doing is obviously working. Keep it up!

Such snarkiness all around.

Dude runs his own website, calling him a bitch because you don't like/agree with his ratings is not the smartest thing to do, regardless of whether you are right or not.

On the other hand, saying "If Tom prefers I can delist WarGear if it's such an issue." is passive aggressive as well. I'm not sure how you translate disagreement from a player base into 'site owner wants me to delist'. Just as we have no (direct) ultimate control over your site rankings, Tom has no (direct) ultimate control over our opinions.

Objectively now, wargear is listed as 5 on his site. First page. What's the problem? OK maybe you want a 40 for maps instead of a 32? Maybe a 50? Objectively speaking (which is tough as far as art is concerned) the maps he linked to looked really damn nice to me, a good bit more artistic than anything currently up here.

But that's all beside the point. Don't like it, ignore it. This community will continue to improve with or without his ranking site. As far as it goes, people are more likely to find Conquer Club before his website anyway.

The most generic search term I could think of for looking for risk online is um, 'risk online'. CC is #6. Landgrab is #41. Warfish is #53.

We'd do a lot better concentrating on SEO (search engine optimization) than bitching at 3rd party ranking sites.

Now that is a brilliant idea.

IRoll11s wrote:

Such snarkiness all around.

Dude runs his own website, calling him a bitch because you don't like/agree with his ratings is not the smartest thing to do, regardless of whether you are right or not.

On the other hand, saying "If Tom prefers I can delist WarGear if it's such an issue." is passive aggressive as well. I'm not sure how you translate disagreement from a player base into 'site owner wants me to delist'. Just as we have no (direct) ultimate control over your site rankings, Tom has no (direct) ultimate control over our opinions.

Objectively now, wargear is listed as 5 on his site. First page. What's the problem? OK maybe you want a 40 for maps instead of a 32? Maybe a 50? Objectively speaking (which is tough as far as art is concerned) the maps he linked to looked really damn nice to me, a good bit more artistic than anything currently up here.

But that's all beside the point. Don't like it, ignore it. This community will continue to improve with or without his ranking site. As far as it goes, people are more likely to find Conquer Club before his website anyway.

The most generic search term I could think of for looking for risk online is um, 'risk online'. CC is #6. Landgrab is #41. Warfish is #53.

We'd do a lot better concentrating on SEO (search engine optimization) than bitching at 3rd party ranking sites.

All good points.  In some ways, though, the site might be better off going "stealth" for a couple months.  As others have mentioned, Tom has put a lot of work in to make some great improvements, and there are still many more in the pipeline.  Why not wait a month or two for some more improvements to be implemented before making a push to advertise the site?  We already have critical mass: games get filled quickly, there's plenty of forum activity, and new maps seem to go live every day.

One thing Dennis has pointed out that in its current state, someone can get the wrong first impression of WarGear.  A few changes to make the site more friendly to new users could make a big difference to retaining people who find us via google or a third party site.

Before this topic slides into SEO and marketing strategy (which I think is great!), I want to make one final point after signing up for CC and browsing their maps. It is now my belief that the entire issue comes down, once again, to fill mode vs circle mode. Fill mode is not available at CC, and I was right that in the majority of cases these 'beautiful' maps look like hell when they're actually played.

I expect to be able to give bad reviews to a bad review. That's what makes the opinion-serving world go 'round. I also expect Dennis to be able to take the criticisms of one person or group of people who aren't official representatives of anyone except themselves and not level retribution against the site as a whole through poor review or suddenly de-rating the "community" section because we were mean enough to point out that his reviews are inconsistent at best, and while giving an air of objectivity are actually quite skewed.

Dennis came back and defended his biases, and stooped to my level by telling us all that his dad is stronger than my dad. That's cool. I dig it. I'm not cut out for 4chan level internet, but I have to be civil all day at work and home. Since Milwaukee doesn't currently have a Fight Club, I have to go online to vent frustrations. It's small of me. I'll admit it. But its fun.

Pandering to someone who gives reviews, though, is even smaller. If I ran a restaurant, I would always sit critics in the back and shit on their sandwiches (metaphorically). Not so much because I don't like what they do. They offer a fine service to the rest of us. More so its because they get fellated all day by belly crawling pussies who want to suck up to the opinion peddler.

I mentioned the first time around that he's not totally wrong about his opinions on Wargear. This site has a lot to add before I would consider it as fully featured as others, but it has the best parts of all the rest. My problem lies in how he treats each site relative to the others. He has given some drastic point differentials in varying categories that could very easily be inverted. It doesn't matter whether maps got 32 or 40, or if he gave them 4 and 5. It's all relative. What I called him out for is getting some obvious ones upside down. There are actually far worse attrocities in the collection than that one.

Now then, in my best big boy voice:

Dennis, I think your reviews need a lot of work. You are inconsistent in your opinions. Your site is very polished, and has an official and objective tone. Allowing your own personal biases to factor so strongly into the number scores you give to sites while presenting yourself in such a way is borderline deceitful. You treat some sites as if all players are hard-core lifetime members while you rate other sites based on first impressions. This is obvious. Thank you for your efforts in sorting out the wide variety of RISK gaming options on the internet. Your service, if done properly, would be invaluable to the world community of interested people.

PS, I have a blog with 0 posts that gets nearly 250 visits a day. Thank the robots.

Lack of sleep for Hugh is not a good time to post. Sorry I misconstrued the public games as the only games played. That would have been very convincing evidence of terrible reviewing IMO.

"The quality of the maps is quite low" is so at odds with my own experience that I am still very suspicious of how well formed these opinions are. That is where I will end my own ramblings on this topic so that more reasoned and calm voices may prevail here.

IRoll11s wrote:

We'd do a lot better concentrating on SEO (search engine optimization) than bitching at 3rd party ranking sites.

Great idea, I don't know how much effort been put into this. Although it's pretty hard to be in the the top 3 or even on the first page.

(I can't send priv messages, so I write some suggestions here for tom)

- keywords + intro + h(n) polishing
- register to search engines then add a sitemap
- WG can be suggested/added for online/browser gaming sites, advertised by players through the interwebs (digg, fb, twitter etc)
- adding more pictures to the homepage for attracting players etc.
- the list diverges to infinity

ps: I thought your avatar is something funny. 

asm wrote: Before this topic slides into SEO and marketing strategy (which I think is great!), I want to make one final point after signing up for CC and browsing their maps. It is now my belief that the entire issue comes down, once again, to fill mode vs circle mode. Fill mode is not available at CC, and I was right that in the majority of cases these 'beautiful' maps look like hell when they're actually played.

This is a great point... ironically the support for fill mode means the maps here look plain when previewed due to the wide areas of uniform fill.

When you play a CC map you'll notice your units and colors are crammed into litle circles much like old circle mode. Except it's worse than circle mode, you just get colored letters:

http://www.wargear.net/images/boards/319.png

One solution for this is supporting multiple layers per board as per Toaster's suggestion - I'm working on this atm.

DennisG wrote:

This is actually not the case with other sites.  On CC and others, each board which has bombardments, one way attacks, or other map specific rules are tied to a master rule set.  Players cannot change how the board works, connections, bonuses, etc.  I have only seen one site that allows you to adjust the bonuses on a map.  On CC and others, the map author does infact define the rules that can applied using an xml file.  The bottom line is that WG has some of the fewest game options available.  You can't parse your way out of it.       

Sorry, have to revisit this one as I think there may be a misunderstanding. I wasn't talking about continent bonuses, border connections and border types which are fixed by the designer on most sites, I was talking about game / board options.

In CC you set the player sets the game options each time they start the game.

In WarGear the designer sets the game options as part of the board ruleset:

http://www.wargear.net/help/display/Rules

Correct me if I'm wrong but there is nothing like this level of customisation of game options on CC?

Pardon me for answering a question not directed at me, but you are correct Tom.

CC lists their customisable game options here (all set by the person starting the game, not the designer):
http://www.conquerclub.com/public.php?mode=instructions3

The list of customisable options can be summed up as follows:
Different maps
Winning by eliminating the most players rather than taking over the board
Team games
Initial troop allocation (NOT territory selection): simultaneous blind-at-once or automatic
Simultaneous play available
Card scale options: Three choices available
Fortification options: Three choices
Fog of War: On or off
Private Games
Tournament Games
Speed Games



One other misunderstanding that might well be cleared up is that in his capsule summary of Wargear, Dennis states that there is an overall low level of map quality because users can freely upload their own 'unofficial' maps.

EDIT: which is clearly contradicted in the WG Help file on board submission, which can be found here.

asm wrote:

Pardon me for answering a question not directed at me, but you are correct Tom.

CC lists their customisable game options here (all set by the person starting the game, not the designer):
http://www.conquerclub.com/public.php?mode=instructions3

The list of customisable options can be summed up as follows:
Different maps
Winning by eliminating the most players rather than taking over the board
Team games
Initial troop allocation (NOT territory selection): simultaneous blind-at-once or automatic
Simultaneous play available
Card scale options: Three choices available
Fortification options: Three choices
Fog of War: On or off
Private Games
Tournament Games
Speed Games

Minor correction: there are actually three game types aside from team games to choose from on CC:

1) Standard: winner takes points from all losers

2) Terminator: standard rules, except you get additional points (10, I think) for eliminating players.  I think this ends up making the rankings non-zero sum, which leads to serious ranking inflation.

3) Assassin: each player has another player they're supposed to eliminate.  The first player to do so wins the game.

I think WG could really benefit from the ability of map designers to specify which rules beyond fog can be changed by the game creator.  I agree that for some maps, changing fortify rules or number of attacks per turn could be totally unbalancing, but many other maps could support a wider set of options and still be fairly balanced.  The standard Risk boards, for example, probably wouldn't be any less balanced if the card scale were capped at 10 units per turn-in or players were allowed 2 fortifies instead of 1.

I think that's a good idea - previously the only one requested to be able to be changed is the neutral player count but potentially this could be opened up to much more of the available rule options.

I updated the review upon further review. 4.9 to 5.1, I think the maps, while are low in quality, show signs of improvement. Keeping in mind that WG is pretty new and both CC and LG`s maps were just as bad or worse in their infantcy.

I have also adujusted WarLights map score lower.

One question tho, where are all these game options you are talking about. All I see is teams, speed, and fog.

http://www.playriskonline.net/

DennisG wrote: I updated the review upon further review. 4.9 to 5.1, I think the maps, while are low in quality, show signs of improvement. Keeping in mind that WG is pretty new and both CC and LG`s maps were just as bad or worse in their infantcy.

I have also adujusted WarLights map score lower.

One question tho, where are all these game options you are talking about. All I see is teams, speed, and fog.

http://www.playriskonline.net/

Very cool, although I hope you don't feel "bullied" into reviewing your scores.  This should show how great the community is though, and how strongly the community feels about WarGear :).

All those options are available to the Map Designers, they aren't necessarily available to the game hosts.  Again, some IMO, should be available to the Host, but since WarGear is highly driven by the designs of the community, it does make sense to put the game options into the hands of those designers.  Changing some options really can break a map, and having only a certain set of options for Public games also creates a more balanced Rankings tracking system.

The other options are available to the board author through the board designer. By the time the board is released publicly, these options are locked and are not immediately apparent to someone just starting up a game on that board.

You can find many of the various options (e.g. capitals, sim-territory selection, custom card scales, etc.) employed in various publicly released boards, however.

Blast, beaten to the punch!

Could you perhaps expand on what makes your previous map list high quality?
Do you prefer fill mode over circle mode, or circle mode with texture territories around them?