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. 

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.

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.'  

So you have read them all and disagree with every single one of them?  And I suppose you think the "Professional" Reviews are of more value? 

Sorry but that makes no logical sense.  But then I call them as I see them and reviews have been valuable to me in gauging if I'd get the game or not.  Only thing better than user reviews is acully playing the game itself (Beta, etc.)  I have bought games in the past based on negative feed back too. Because what people are saying as negative was a feature I liked. 

For example:  There are a few people who are glad that there are no ships in FE.  So if I would to read user reviews from them and they were praising the DEVS for not having ships in the game, giving the game 9.0 . Well I would see this as a big negative  so then I would look at other reviews and see if there were positives that would counter this. I'd also have researched the game on the Games website as well.  Then go back to the User Reviews to see what people thought about each feature.

Sure it does. A professional reviewer is a verified person without any known axe to grind. He or she is accountable. An anonymous Internet user has no accountability. It could be the PR people of the company giving it a 10 or some disgruntled customer giving it a 0.

User reviwes are useful, if the author presents the pros and cons for him, no matter if positive or negative. Such a review tells me if the game may be for me or not, a simple number does not.

After what some "professional" reviewers have written over the years, the percentages they give are highly suspect to me, too. I need a detailed review to decide if I like a game or not. Many reviews in magazines don't mention things I am interested in, too - like if I can save at any time, does it require a permanent online connection, is a DRM in place which can damage my system, at what resolution can it be played, do turns in TBS games take seconds, minutes or hours to complete, and so on.

The thing is, one needs to spend the time to make a survey on the net to get an informed opinion how a game does.

There are good reviews and bad reviews. There are professional reviews and there are user reviews. These two variables are not related to each other.

The metacritic score (based on professional reviewers) will affect a consumers choice much more than the user score.

Do you think the same of those who predicted a 90+ metacritic?

Because if FE ends up about 79, which seems extremely likely to me, then those 90+ guys are just as far, or further, out of mainstream as the guy who thought it would get 68.

And if FE gets 77, which is feasible, then your 87 estimate will be more off the mark than the 68 guy. So lets just accept people have different opinions.

And, again, I find mainstream thoughts are worthless.  Popularity != right

At the end of the day, all I can say is that users' reviews spared me some mighty disappointments, while critics' reviews would have had me jump straight into them.

Please continue. 

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

Hey, someone had to do it.

EDIT:
The OP states December 1st as the date, so the jury's not out yet, but at least there's finally an official score.

A second tip for people looking at metacritic scores:

The 'pro' reviewers are tracked to see if they are over or under the 'final' score.  So you can see how far off they usually are from the average and weight their opinion based upon that.  Ie, a reviewer that's 10+ points above/below, on average of their reviews vs. the scores, isn't worth listening to at all.  Same with their 'averaged' score that they give.  If it's above 75, then they haven't been reviewing enough games (or stick to just AAA games that everyone likes - which also means that they aren't worth listening to).