I found this today.

I thought WarGear did good for being such a young site Cheers to Tom & All

http://www.playriskonline.net/

"With over 120 maps, they may be some winners in gameplay but the design quality is very low on all of them.  Too many maps and not enough users means it hard to get a game started on a nonstandard map."

Ouch, that kinda hurts.

This is a great find!  I'm interested to know how many members here are members on other sites and vice versa...

And I'd also be interested in challenging the top players from other sites!  :) WE MUST PROTECT THIS HOUSE!

I'm not sure how much stock I place on these ratings. Maybe I'm biased because I enjoy playing on this site and have not played on any of the others listed.

Anyhow, for starters, he lists a Top 10, but there are 11 sites rated. He also states that WG has few options so there isn't much replay value. What options is he looking for? I can't really tell from reading any of the other ratings, unless you count the sites that allow you to play against AI players. I have no interest in playing against a computer.

I agree that the guy is not consistent in his ratings.  He comes up with categories and ratings but they do not seem to be connected to each other.  I would prefer, since there are 10 sites that he does a simple ranking each category 1-10 and then gives the overall rating that way.

I have played on ConquerClub and it gets a lot of points for popularity (age) more than anything else.

Warlight has it's strong suits but does not deserve it's rating .  It's maps alone should discount it.

His rating of this site is weird.  It seems he gives the site points for the number of maps but then gets upset by the number of maps per players.  I know for a fact that he does not like user based map sites and has said so in posts on this site's forums.

I will put Smurfs, Gauntlet, Risky Kong II and Force Unleashed up against any other map on any other site for original play, theme and overall playablility.

Hell, I don't even think I am one of the better map makers on this site, but I do take pride on the things I do well and I think this guy has got it all wrong.  He claims that variant theme maps won't get played much here, yet he hasn't looked at how many games spy v spy or 5 have gotten which nobody else has anything close to.  He also ranks WG lower than Warlight but says that they have NO map choice and we have too many.

I don't want to bite the hand that feeds us (he's not, he's just a guy with a good URL) but his rankings are strictly opinion based with no math.  I defended him in the past because pissing off the media isn't good and I still think that is true, but I think he also isn't much of a player.

If the dude who does the site reads this, please message me or invite me to a game of some map here you think is decent and I will:

A)  Win (and I suck at Online Risk)

B)  Tell you the pros and cons of the map

C)  Tell you what other maps on this site are better and why

D)  Tell you to (respectfully) SUCK MY TRUCK NUTS!

again, this is my 2 cents......keep the change

I'm just amazed he called the design quality on "all of them" very low.  That's completely ridiculous.  You guys have made some of the best looking original maps I've seen anywhere.  He also mentions that there's not enough options.  That's just crazy talk.

So, what isn't obvious from that site is when he wrote the review, and the answer is at least nine months ago (when I read the review).  Nine months ago I agreed with his review.. the player base was small, maps were limited and frankly quality (especially graphically) was a bit shaky.  Since then significant improvements have been made to the site, a lot of map content has been created, and I believe the general quality of maps has increased.  My advice is that you write him an email encouraging him to re-review the site based on those improvements.

BD

i was just going to say something to that affect too BD. this review smacked of something we've seen previously; word for word. so my guess is that he hasn't renewed it since last year. i do believe he said he'd be back, but i highly doubt he has.

I believe he has re-reviewed WG once (which may be why it has a rating of 5.2 and 5.1), but ultimately I question if he is truly unbiased.  From what I have read there is a strong chance that he has a hand in Major Command and/or receives some sort of perks from him.  I also want to say that his "base" is/was originally out of Conquer Club, hence the two high ratings there (especially MajorCommand).

I left a message on his About page in July of 2010 asking to re-reviewing, but never heard anything and don't believe anything ever came of it.  I do think he visits every now and then, based on a post or two and a game or two but unsure if he is a regular.

His site is a cool idea and I think WG gets players from it, I do just wish it was "better" (what Risky said mainly).

BD is right about the timing of the review.  If you look at the screenshots they are ancient.

Viper wrote:

I'm just amazed he called the design quality on "all of them" very low.  That's completely ridiculous.  You guys have made some of the best looking original maps I've seen anywhere. 

This is what I was going for and I was under the assumption that he was visiting this site often, based on the forum in June-ish (Yertle help) where we discussed this and I had read he had agreed to re-review.  I have viewed alternatives sites, but have never found a reason to even join somewhere else.

The last time we looked at this I swore I found a second site by him at a slightly different url that was more recently updated, but I can't find it now. Maybe I dreamed it.

Hey, if this guy isn't updating his site and feels that "Regularly" means every 6 months maybe we do know who this guy is.......

AdamN wrote:

The last time we looked at this I swore I found a second site by him at a slightly different url that was more recently updated, but I can't find it now. Maybe I dreamed it.

Original thread in regards to PlayRiskOnline, with DennisG as the player behind the site and the re-review: http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/135p1/WarGear_Review

Thread in which PlayOnlineRisk (not ran by DennisG, I believe) is discussed (post 104 and beyond): http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/573p4/Advertise With JessB (aka DennisG?) bringing up the validity of that site.

Risky, good one!

(Copy the links if they break, it's the forums that break them.)

Yertle wrote:

AdamN wrote:

The last time we looked at this I swore I found a second site by him at a slightly different url that was more recently updated, but I can't find it now. Maybe I dreamed it.

Original thread in regards to PlayRiskOnline, with DennisG as the player behind the site and the re-review: http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/135p1/WarGear_Review

Thread in which PlayOnlineRisk (not ran by DennisG, I believe) is discussed (post 104 and beyond): http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/573p4/Advertise With JessB (aka DennisG?) bringing up the validity of that site.

Risky, good one!

(Copy the links if they break, it's the forums that break them.)

That's it.... a great deal of graphics similarity between the two huh? Clearly playonlinerisk.com is a better run site. :-)

How do you manage to find these threads so quickly Yertle?

Unphotographic-photographic memory (I knew the Advertise one was multiple pages in the General Discussions) and Player List >> DennisG (remembered he ran the RiskOnline one) >> Profile >> Active Threads >> WarGear Review

There's Forum Search too, although that thing works like 50% of the time, seems to use the RNG as to if it is going to pull back what I want or not