I would hope we won't see critics' reviews for at least a week.  I would hope that they'll take the time to really play a game that offers some depth.  But typically TBS games get a glib look at the pleasing or displeasing surface.  To be fair, many sites don't offer much space to reviews, but many reviewers also have been raised on a steady diet of action titles, arcades, and first person shooters.  Which makes them perfect at reviewing TBS games, after all.

Unfortunately, user game reviews aren't terribly informative.  As someone pointed out, Diablo 3 has a user review rating on Metacritic of 3.

There are a lot of people out there these days who just have an axe to grind.

My Prediction - 78.

I agree, not very useful, larger sample size will no doubt bring it up a bit also.

Not necessarily. There's like 4000 people who voted on Diablo 3 and it averaged around a 3. That's totally unfair. Diablo 3 is a very good game.

I agree that 3 is harsh and exaggerated, but people were voting against always-on internet requirements for single-player and for servers not being ready for the release.  Both are valid complaints.  Blizzard made a bad and IMO anti-gamer/customer decision, then amplified it with lack of preparation.   I personally don't think it should have gotten below a 6 or so, but gamers tend to have exaggerated reactions about games. I'm wondering to what extent this is an American phenomenon, and if gamers in other countries get as dramatic.

Just so everyone can keep tabs on the Metacritic churning, here's FE's slot:

     http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/elemental-fallen-enchantress

But, Fair Warning, just as so many folks have noted: the voting on Metacritic can be totally biased, bizarre, and just plain bananas ... Comments (by people who have taken the time to comment) may be slightly better and/or more informative.  As for the professional reviews, well, you have to take each one of them on its own merits ...     

I find the average review fairly accurate if slightly below my prediction. Honestly it seems like the majority of the higher scores are from apologists/fanboys bumping up the score because 'its better than WoM', which has me thinking I maybe bumped up my prediction because FE is better than WoM as well. FE should be judged against its peers, not biased against previous iterations.

66 reviews is not a lot to base much off of though. As far as professional reviewing goes I hardly count them above the average user these days, sometimes below due to the amount of ridiculous corruption that seems to persist at the more 'reputable' sites.

Edit: As for Diablo 3, idk how anyone can rate that turd well. Horribly delayed, horrible launch, scam economy (RMAH?!), terrible support, complete lack of any innovation, outspoken dev who tells you that your way of fun is wrong, what is good about this game again (?), I sure hope no one brings up the lackluster gameplay, WoW'd graphics, abysmal plot (FemDiablo, Tyrael Angel of Wisdom LOL). As someone who has played through Inferno on multiple characters and not a casual player/observer who may not have gotten to the 'real game' I felt my time and effort were entirely wasted. I only played because of all my friends who did as well, and that was the only fun part of the game. I doubt any still play as most of us felt like unpaid employees of Blizzard hawking their wares on the RMAH for less than 25 cents on the dollar. There are other 60 dollar and below games that offer everything good about Diablo 3 and far more.

Something similar could be said in reverse for those that "hate" the game. How many mention that it's not MoM, or some other game that they loved playing 15 years ago? This demonstrates an incapability to judge the game on its own merit, rather it is being judged by how "equal" it is to previous games (including E:wom!). The thought process "I didn't have fun because this isn't a clone of my favourite game X" is completely ludicrous to me.

The question is not if FE has a mechanic you loved in some other game. The question is if FE makes the mechanics it has work, and if it's fun to play. And, to be fair, there is plenty of accurate criticism in that area as well - but not in the lowest votes.

I'm on record in earlier posts as predicting 75-80 metacritic average if released on 23 October as planned and nothing since has changed my mind. I think FE is deserving of an 85-90 metacritic if it had been polished before release but the bugs, inconsistencies, balance issues and slightly 'B' grade feel that results will tell.

Big name games can sometimes get away with these problems (eg Civ 5, although even in its buggy release state it still had a more polished 'feel' than FE) but smaller name games can't.

We'll see though. There have been some decent reviews, if a couple of 90's come in FE could still scrape in above 80%.

As for the whole Diablo debate... sure Diablo has taken a pounding due to haters but haters don't just come from no where, Blizzard made all the choices which created them (in particular making single player online only but there were plenty of other dodgy decisions).

They then compounded this by making a game that is actually rather mediocre and certainly less interesting than its predecessor which it will inevitably be compared against. All in all Diablo 3 probably only deserves a 5 or 6 user review so 3.8 is not that surprising given the bad blood.

The really amusing side of all this is watching how in recent years Metacritic is showing such big discrepancies between critic and user reviews of several recent big name games such as Diablo 3, Mass Effect 3, Empire: Total War, even Civilization 5. Users are hammering games for being buggy, shallow or just generally boring while critics are pretending all these big budget games are A grade. Sure the user scores are exaggerated downwards by people with an axe to grind but in most of these cases there is still a strong kernel of truth behind the lower user scores. There are also plenty of counter examples to prove that users aren't just hating on studios for the fun of it, for example Empire: Total War was panned by users (mostly deservingly, there were some very serious bugs, including game save corruption) but the much tighter, more polished and more fun Total War: Shogun 2 received a good user score of 81.

The obvious conclusion is that while user scores are sometimes exaggerated downwards when there is a serious problem with a game, critic scores are usually exaggerated significantly upwards for big budget games.

Gamespy's 70 point review doesn't properly depict what they've said in their review. In the review they gave 3.5/5 stars.....and while that is 70%, in the comments below the review, the reviewer SPECIFICALLY said that 3.5/5 DOES NOT equal 70......yet metacritic in it's infinite wisdom decided to plunk the score in as such anyways.

The user reviews on metacritc or anywhere else on games are useless. 

The prediction thread is about what the review score will be by professional reviewers. Not kids who gave it a 0 "just because".

I would vote Diablo III exactly ZERO, like the chance that I'm going to pay for the "privilege" of "renting" single player gaming hours from their servers, or for an idiotic action house. 

Don't forget that Diablo III isn't the only purchasable game around: there are others. When you think like a customer, harsh reviews have plenty of reasons to exist... and I thank the users who take the time to write them down and warn the other players, who have to carefully decide where to spend their money.

I understand a developer might feel like you do about users who give extremely low votes, but don't forget that there are those who give 10s for "personal" reasons, as well... even FE is benefiting from those. I say the system is more than fair. 

Metacritic can't start adjusting individual scores / scales, that would lead to disaster. Maybe they do have infinite wisdom as they've realized this, who knows.

It'll be interesting to see whether the game ends up in the high 70s or the low 80s. Big difference in perception depending on which of those it ends up as. I maintain my position in 75-79.