The following was suggested by one of our members and I felt the idea had merit. Basically, we shall have a post that contains gamers' reviews of the various mods out there. Here are the basic guidelines for your submission if you choose to send one.

1) Submit all reviews to my PM. If a non-member wishes to send one, send it to ds_skane4 at yahoo dot co dot uk.

2) Reviews must have a minimum of 50 words and must not exceed 200 words for credibility and brevity sake.

3) Reviews will be subjected to grammar correction. Reviews that are too horribly mangled beyond recognition, will be immediately discarded.

4) Each review must have a % score at the end of it. Lowest/worst being 0%, highest/best being 100%.

5) You may review more than one mod, with one review per mod.

6) Your review must not be a counter review to an existing review. Base it on your own opinions and experience. Do not be biase. Be fair.

7) Review mods that you have actually played. If I find out you reviewed a mod that you have not completed yet, it will be immediately deleted and future submissions from the culprit will be treated with caution.

8) I must receive at least 2 reviews for a mod before I insert that mod into the list.

9) The mod must be a full fledged one and not an incomplete work.

10) Follow the above rules.

[ 08-25-2003, 12:43 AM: Message edited by: Dundee Slaytern ]

Whoa. 200 words? I strongly recommend you bulk that requirement up a bit. I write reviews for a living and it's so unrewardingly difficult to do complete justice to almost anything in that kind of space. It's not like the paper is expensive. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I sent him a PM regarding that...my two paragraphs already had about 300 words, and I wasn't even close to finishing. Eheheheh...

200 words is space aplenty already. ;) Understand that I am aiming for review-bites, not full-fledged in-depth reviews. These reviews are for inexperienced gamers who wish to get a quick opinion on what mods are good for him/her. The average attention span of a netizen is atrocious, and this fact is played out everyday by newcomers who ask questions already answered in the FAQ.

1000-words reviews are nice and all... but seriously, it is going to turn off the average gamer( sad but lamentably true), and defeats the purpose of writing one in the first place.

I already got a few reviews that stay within the word limit, and their coverage is very good. So I see no issue on the constraints of 200-words only.

In that case, can I make one of the outline-reviews? Having various points such as difficulty (if applicable), entertainment value, etc. as headers and opinions under them [img]smile.gif[/img]

Feel free to make a draft and let me see it first. Worse comes to worst, I can always help you convert it to another layout.

Well... after an initial flood, there has been a dearth of new entries. Looks like the idea ain't getting off the ground. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

That's too bad...considering the intense interests in mods, you'd think more people would submit. I could only really do one review, as Item Upgrade is the only one I've really played with. Too bad. :(

I did Tactics :( It wasn't too good, but I tried... [img]graemlins/crying.gif[/img]

ADD- But we don't have to follow that rule :D

[ 08-25-2003, 09:54 AM: Message edited by: Pyrenk ]

I'm doing my own review of Tactics, but it's much, MUCH longer than the specified 200 words--it was originally intended as a simple Email to Weimer, but since Yahoo will only let me attach 3 images, it became a webpage, in which I voice opinions, ideas, and suggestions for each component.

Once that's done, I'll do the short-review thing. I like Pyrenk's idea of having different rating categories; I'll add to the list and make it
Difficulty (suggested party level)
Power (Solaufein would be high, Rogue Rebalancing would be low)
Roleplaying (backstory, neat dialogue that the MODders didn't have to put it but did anyway)
"Realism" (does the MOD neatly mesh with the rest of the game/AD&D world, by not doing things like offering duplicates of supposedly unique items)
Replayability
Remedial Quality (how well it fixes gaps or errors in the game--BaldurDash gets full marks here)
Original Quality (quality of 100% original content, such as Kelsey)