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.

My Prediction - 78.

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.

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 ...     

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.