Not really, and certainly not when it was released. Compared to D2 it was unspectacular, uninspired, limited and built around the auction house. Covering up the database breaches early on, the massive exploiting and the server issues did not help. If you force people to play online, remove LAN features, and then fail to provide adequate server capacities and performance, then the user feedback will reflect this.

I had waited for D3 for ten years, and I played D2 for several years, as well. My interest in D3 died in the third week. I never played a game that annoyed and frustrated me more than D3 did with its Inferno mode. Some of the worst design I have seen in the genre. Now, I would not give it a 3/10 either, because if you just play through the story once or twice, you get 20-40 hours of good entertainment from it, and I do not regret the purchase, but gameplay-wise it is a far worse title than D2 and definitely a league below the excellent Torchlight 2, which had a fraction of the budget. D3 is an "okay" game. Cutscenes and voice acting were great, and I liked the painterly style, too, but loot, character and monster/encounter design, as well as handling of act travelling and poor, barely random map generation were all huge disappointments to me, as a genre fan.

But I agree that user ratings are pretty useless. Actually, I think the professional metascore is also meaningless after a game has been out for a few weeks and development continued. Static scores meant something 20, 25 years ago. Today, they are often counter-productive since they do not reward continued support.

Whiners harp on how 70 (or its equivelant 7.0/10) is a bad score.   I completely disagree ... but, then, my bias probably comes from my go-to source for game reviews I've stuck with all these years:  Gamespot.  No, Gamespot hasn't reviewed Elemental Fallen Enchantress, at least not yet, but nonetheless here is Gamespot's breakdown of what varying scores mean:

http://www.gamespot.com/misc/reviewguidelines.html

I quote:

• 10.0: Prime - This exceedingly rare score refers to a game that is as perfect as a game can aspire to be at its time of release. Obviously, the constantly changing standards for technology and gameplay will probably make this game obsolete some day, but at its time of release, a game earning this score could not have been improved upon in any meaningful way.
• 9.0-9.5: Superb - We absolutely recommend any game in this range, especially to fans of that particular genre. However, games that score in the 9 range are also typically well suited to new players. Games that earn 9s are naturally uncommon, and earn GameSpot's Editors' Choice Award for their outstanding quality.
• 8.0-8.5: Great - This range refers to great games that are excellent in almost every way and whose few setbacks probably aren't too important. We highly recommend games in the upper half of this range, since they tend to be good enough to provide an enjoyable experience to fans of the particular genre and to new players alike.
• 7.0-7.5: Good - A game within this range is good overall, and likely worth playing by fans of the particular genre or by those otherwise interested. While its strengths outweigh its weaknesses, a game that falls in this range tends to have noticeable faults.
• 6.0-6.5: Fair - Games that earn 6-range ratings have certain good qualities but significant problems as well. These games may well be worth playing, but you should approach them with caution.
• 5.0-5.5: Mediocre  -A 5-range score refers to a game that's "merely average" in the negative sense. These games tend to have enough major weaknesses to considerably outweigh their strengths. There's probably a substantially better, similar game out there for you.
• 4.0-4.5: Poor - Games that just don't work right and maybe didn't spend enough time in production tend to fall in to this category. They simply lack the cohesion and quality that make other games fun.
• 3.0-3.5: Bad - You probably shouldn't get too close to a game in this range. Any of its positive qualities most likely serve only to make the rest of it seem even more disappointing.
• 2.0-2.5: Terrible - Beware, for a game in this range is almost entirely devoid of any remotely decent or fully functional features.
• 1.0-1.5: Abysmal - Ouch. The rare game that falls in this lowest-of-the-low range has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Don't play this game

Granted, other game review sites may use different interpretations.  I like that Gamespot makes it difficult to get such a high score, with 9.5s virtually unheard of and 10 the forbidden holy grail that nothing has achieved.  In fact, the highest review score ever on Gamespot for a PC game was 9.6 achieved by the original Diablo:  http://www.gamespot.com/games.html?platform=5&mode=all&sort=score&dlx_type=all&sortdir=asc&official=all

And if you sort through their reviews by date, you'll find they review games going all the way back to Zork in 1980 -- that's 32 years ago -- although the oldest game I found they've reviewed and actually assigned a point score to was the original XCOM: UFO Defense which was published Dec 31, 1993 -- 19 years ago, though the date of the review was 1996 -- and earned a score of 9.0.

Exactly.  I don't think many people are aware that there was a concerted effort by certain online communities (namely 4chan) to drag Diablo 3's score down as low as possible.  You even have instances of people registering dozens of times just to offset anybody who submitted a positive score.

A fair assessment, I suppose the biases will balance each other out. I think FE will be a very solid game after a couple more large patches. Releasing it now was just asking to take some flak, I would have been paranoid about releasing a finished game after the disaster that was WoM. Thankfully a little more community criticism was accepted this time instead of catering to the crazy fanboys that think everything that Stardock makes is perfect. I cringed so many times during the WoM development process and it personally taught me an important lesson about taking positive feedback with a grain of salt. Stardock doesn't seem to be hurting financially so I am not sure why they rushed this out a month or two ahead of time except for possibly the Christmas season.

I just realized how much I typed up about Diablo 3 there. I didn't mean to hijack the thread but its like someone said Fable 2/3/4 or Dragon Age 2 were the greatest RPGs ever made and I had to make a response for the sake of sanity. I hate this age of mediocrity when hype matters more than substance and people are peer pressured into saying games that suck are great while games such as Witcher 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Metro 2033, etc get little attention. As far as conspiracy theories of concentrated efforts to drag down Diablo 3's score, do you think people are motivated to do that for games they like? I just checked their recent updates and forums to see if they have fixed any of the issues plaguing the game to see if I should be a bit more lax in my criticism but it looks like nothing has changed.

Everyone who posted a number is based on what they think it will get and it is based on thier opinion. So trolling me will not affect that. 

Yea, and you said 68. So when you give your "opinion" in the future we can reflect how mainstream it is.

While I completely agree with you, most gamers out there today don't mind being spoon fed their entertainment. That's why games like DIII and products like Steam are becoming so successful.

Games like FE, where you have to think, will take a hit because thinking is 'work'. It's unfortunate, but popular demand generally coincides with entropic demand.

And when you give "your" opinion in the future, I can reflect how you substitute mainstream/popularity for merit/value.

For some reason I can't get to metacritic?  Is it down or something wonky on my end?

Actully the professional reviews are the ones that are not to be trusted in ANYTHING.  User reviews is the only way to gauge a game until you actully play it. But you should read the reviews to see why they gave the score they did and see if thier concerns are similar to your concerns.  And you simply filter out most of the fanboys/Hater reviews that don't make some sort of point as to why they hate or love the game.

Now I'm not saying that you have to agree with the score. People have different taste. WOM was a horrible game but there are some who think it was a wonderful game (Don't know why but they do.) 

And I'd bet the reason you find the user reviews useless is because you can't stand when someone disagrees with you. But Fanboys/Haters tend to be this way.

If this thread was called "what would you rate this game?" then you might have a point.

But this thread is about predicting what the average professional review score will be, i.e. metacritic. 

The site is completely bugged.

I made a login for it, and whenever my login is cached, the site gives me an error.

User reviews are total crap.  This game sucks because it's steam only!!  This game is crap because it's a sequel and doesn't have this minor part of the game or changed from 3rd person to first person!  Player reviews are total shit.

That's just plain ignorant.

The fact that it is not a 'what would you rate this game?' thread is, actually, exactly my point -- professional reviewers aren't "mainstream" fans.  Die-hard fans are befuddled Diablo III is being lambasted for its atrocious copying of Assassin's Creed's rightfully blasted 'single player games should require constant connection to our servers, and we aren't responsible for maintaining our servers even though our servers failing makes their paid-for products completely unusable due to the constant connection requirement we forced on everyone' with low reviews and FE isn't getting 10/10s everywhere.  Most replies in threads to postings of 70/100-ish reviews of FE posted thus far have been in shock and horror and disbelieving anyone could rate FE 'so low.'