"Official" Forums

[Rhianni]

The vnboards are good for flaming and arguing. I prefer here for real discussions.

[Wrenn]

Originally Posted by Rhianni

The vnboards are good for flaming and arguing. I prefer here for real discussions.

There are times, however, when "arguing" brings up a valid point! Sure, these points are often made quite by accident . . but . .

[Aysop]

Originally Posted by Wrenn

There are times, however, when "arguing" brings up a valid point! Sure, these points are often made quite by accident . . but . .

Valid points can be brought up whether or not someone is arguing.

[noobe]

Personally I'm glad their doing it this way.. Theres gonna be plenty of whine threads about x class, and y class being underpowered.. I'm glad their gonna be spread out a bit.

[LuBear]

I think information traveles really fast, I check all most of the fan-sites and they all pretty much offer the same information. If its something important then you'll find it on all the fan-sites. As for organizing seige attacks, I am sure if you post on one site and just ask people to pass the link you'll find it on all the fan-sites.

p.s I don't think I will every try to organize a seige on fan-sites, your just giving the information to both sides.

[Machida]

If you run a forum that the playerbase pays to use than you limit the regulations you can fairly place on those boards. The Mods on fansites can ban you for breaking the rules and not have to worry about subs being lost. Also, Mythic doesn't often have to appear as the bad guy for trying to keep the forums civilized. WoW forums are lost. There is almost nothing they can do about it so Mythic is smart in avoiding it imo.

[Valentino]

I don't really know how I feel about this one.

I think if I was fansite admin I'd be a little cheesed off that they aren't having official forums, since it's essentially off-loading a bunch of extra work to them (I dont know if official forum mods get paid or not... probably not, but if they did Id be extra cheesed).

During my gaming career I've always made use of both official and fansite forums (and a database site . They just seem to have different uses, depending on the game. If WAR doesn't have a massive population, and then that population spreads out over a few different fansites, I can see hardcore specific class information being a little harder to track down. That being said, the major EQ2 fansite is THE place for that kind of information... so once again, I guess we'll just have to wait and see. *sigh*

[Mbj]

Folks,

An unofficial timeline for official MMORPG forums:
What follows (for clarity's sake) is the kind of stuff said by players/non-players on these forums.

T minus 180 days till launch

Life is beautiful, the devs are great, the birds are merrily chirping away, oh look, there's a heretic who thinks that the game will suck, stone him, drive him off! The birds are merrily chirping away.

T minus 90 days till launch

Oh man, this game can't launch, it's not ready yet. Yes it is, no, it's not. This game is gonna tank big time. The devs suck! No they don't, things are still fine, the birds are still singing! Yeah, but they're vultures you moron!

Launch Day

This game is going to go down in flames! This game is going to rock! You devs did it! Yeah, you screwed it up! You lied to us, you cut out features! How dare you ban people from your boards, this is against our freedom of speech! Ever hear of the first amendment???? The game was down for one day, I want my money back! Yeah, give me your address and I'll send you a check for 40c if you are so poor.

Launch + 60 days

Hey, this game is great! Woot! No it's not! Stone the heretic, the devs rock! Umm, when are you going to fix the bugs? You said during beta that you were going to have all these features in, where the heck are they?!? I want them and I want them now! Shutup, the game's great, the devs will get to it! I hope you and your son get in a car accident and die this Christmas Eve Mark! You guys suck! WTF? I don't care if your internet thingie was down, I want to play and I want to play now or I want my money back! Why do you have to XXXXXX patch at 3AM EST? I'm playing from XXXX and that's the only time I have to play the game. You obviously either don't give a damn about your customers or you are racist!

Launch + 120 days

We need to start a class action lawsuit! They lied to us! The servers suck, why don't you buy some more hamsters for your server farms! Hey, we love the game! We have a few questions though! Shut up! We're talking serious bizness here! I want my money back! Hey Sanya, you're hot! When the expansion coming out? What? I have to pay for an expansion too! What a ripoff! Hey, I'm all for an expansion, this game rocks! Bring it on!

Launch + forever

See above.


That's why I don't want to have official forums. Whether it was SOE, Blizzard or us, official or semi-official forums are exactly like I described above for every successful MMORPG that I have played or watched from afar (and that is *most* of them). The unsuccessful ones were even worse. The problem is that most people who read the boards are looking for information and a reasonable number of people want to cause trouble, "grief" the forums or simply get their jollies by saying and doing things that they wouldn't do in real life. As usual, a small percentage of people make life more difficult for everyone else. Back when games had hundreds of people playing, well, no big deal. We ban those guys and life returns to normal. With millions of subs for WoW and hopefully lots and lots for WAR, well, it becomes much more complicated, difficult and soul-sucking for the devs and the community people. I wouldn't want anyone to go through what Sanya and I had to go through (and she had it worse since she is a woman and that brought out the worst in some people) in the early days of DAoC. How she and other community managers put up with the kind of name calling, insults, vulgarity, profanity without losing their minds is amazing.

And yes, some of those statements were drawn exactly from what was said to us, Blizzard, etc., no exaggeration at all. And BTW, those weren't the worst things said to us or other devs of these games.

'Nuf said.

Mark

[iCanada]

Originally Posted by Mbj

Folks,

An unofficial timeline for official MMORPG forums:

.............

'Nuf said.

Mark

Well, i agree completly. And i was actually just about to post around the exact same thing. The WoW boards are a living nightmare!

But i really don't think that your post was Nuff said worthy, you are around a wall of text too long for that.

lol.

[Saracen]

It's going to be a pain setting up server forums individually. Oh well....I see your point, though, far too much bellyaching and immaturity on most official MMORPG forums to make it worth it.

[Oath]

Originally Posted by Mbj

Hey Sanya, I want to XXXX you!

Oh to see what lies behind that defensive line.

[Mordecai]

there is "no we arent going to have offical forums because X reason" and then there's that. ^^^

[Andolar]

Originally Posted by Mbj

Folks,

[.....]
[.....]
[.....]
[.....]

'Nuf said.

Mark

I agree wholeheartedly, official forums are unfortunately a thing of the past. With the proliferation of the prevalent attitude among the first generation of children to grow up in a society immersed entirely in information technology esp. internet technology and theory, what you find in today's terms could be called, concerning morality at least, a new Dark Ages. There are people who have grown up not understanding or fully coping with the concept of reality, those who are on the verge of adulthood but largely fail to understand the separation between the seemingly real and the truly real of which in some respects there is none.

I am not saying that the only culprits are the new generation of cybergoers who have never known life without constant symbiosis with the technology around them, but the mere idea of it, has spread quicker than I am sure most sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers imagined it ever would. You can go to any corner of the world with a few clicks on a mouse, and dance on the grave of another human being just to give yourself a break from the monotony of the restrictions placed upon you by the real daily world around you.

Official forums of any kind, are unfortunately the most readily accessible places with which to do such things, and who is to tell them not to, to tell them their actions are immoral, to give them reasonable consideration for why they should not attempt to destroy the lives of others around them for the pure joy of it. Afterall, this is now a global society of internet members, so who decides what is moral, just, and resolute in the scheme of things, most considerably in an environment where people from all over the globe frequent in droves daily.

What reason is there for anyone to not attempt to harm others around them for the pure fun of it, after all, none of it is real, right? It's just the internet, these people do not exist. They will not go out and kill themselves or others if you push them over the edge with your hateful words and belligerent mockery of every facet of their lives. No harm no foul right? It's the internet, you can do anything you want, until someone gets hurt. Then you find yourself in a 10x10 for the rest of your life wondering why you egged that person on so hard, for what, five minutes of amusement, as if you were using a magnifying glass on an ant and nothing more?

The reason a forum like the one we are in currently, is going to be so universally popular in the future is because it is housed entirely in the private sector, privately run, and privately moderated. Here, you cannot so much as step on another person on purpose without facing the immediate gavel of responsiblity. And that's the way it should be. Mark is absolutely and unequivocally correct when he says that with hundreds of thousands or even millions of subscriptions, it becomes a near impossible measure to properly and successfully moderate an entire official forum as you would have to hire an army of moderators. And what ends up happening is that good people, with every well-to-do intention in the world to participate, enjoy, and learn from an official forum, are instead hurt, belittled, and overall have even their most basic fundamental human rights infringed upon by those who have no real concept of morality or reality either one. It's a sad state of affairs, but it is for the best that official forums esp. in an online gaming community, are a dying breed. Places like WHA will shine with moral, rational, and largely effective moderation, but official forums cannot hope to maintain that level of moderation.

/steps off soap box



So anyways, how's the weather? Nice and sunny here

[Theomega]

After Mark's reminder of how anonymity can bring out the worst in people & from a few seconds of browsing WoW's forum, I don't see why any developer should have an official forum ever again.

[Uchiha_Itachi]

Sounds good mbj, personally I think its better you guys focus on making a great game then focus on moderating boards. I used to go to community sights for wow anyway, the officially official ones always had to many threads about "why are class is gimp part 4" and "my classes dad can beat up your classes dad"