Mark Jacobs rails against official forums
Filed under: Fantasy, Culture, Forums, Warhammer Online
He lays out a mock-schedule for the way player (mis)behavior would develop as the game moved closer to release, poking fun at the schizophrenic nature of official forums - how the community as a whole can be both loving and hateful, cynical and naive, reactionary and... well, usually just reactionary. He also says that he doesn't want to have to put himself or any of his community team through that kind of hell, and that's what informed their decision to stay away from official forums. It's not like it stops people from flaming the game though, and community reps still need to wade through community forums anyway, so why not put it all in one place? I almost wish they'd just admit it was the money...
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Anthony said on 10:55AM 3-15-2008
It isn't the money it is the experience of Dark Age of Camelot that has done this. There was never the need for official forums and the game was easilly able to listen to the players through the various reps who were dedicated to all aspects of the game.
There just is no point.
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GRT said on 11:44AM 3-15-2008
The money? Please. The cost of running a forum is a trifle compared to what they're going to be spending for server farms and bandwidth.
I agree with the decision, really. "Official" forums always devolve into a seething mass of asshats that (usually) mis-represent the community and put off potential new players. Best to dilute the negativity a bit. It only takes a small percentage of a forum's population to make the whole place unsavory, and the more these few disgruntled players (if they even are players and not just haters) get spread out, the better it is for the game.
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Squee said on 11:44AM 3-15-2008
Official forums are bad, so as fan made ones...for the simple fact that both censure what players say, even the fan made ones. If the critiques are to extreme they simply delete your post or ban you, leaving only the sheep's voice to be heard. Constructive criticism is a good thing but most of the time the moderators or the company's that monitors the forums have big egos and don't like to be criticized. Game forums are the closest thing to a communism experience one can get in a democratic country...China, Russia anyone !
Fan made forums are partly if not totally runned by the company's that puts pressure on the fan that run the forums or simply the fan takes upon himself to run the forum with an iron-clad fist in hopes of impressing the company and lending a job over there ($$$).
I rarely sign up in those forums because I don't blend in very well will all the sheep's in there. I say things the way I see them..If it looks like shit & smells like shit, well it must be shit ! A lot of the people on forums cock suck the moderator or admins , or simply act like ones in hopes of becoming ones.
Of course I am generalizing and not all forums are like what I describe, except for the people sucking to moderators that is a universal rules :-)
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ultrasnarl said on 2:44PM 3-15-2008
He's right. Look at WoW.. the only useful information that comes from the official WoW forums are Blue posts, which in the case of Warhammer, would probably be posted on the Herald anyway. People don't go to the official WoW forums looking for good information anymore, they go to third-party sites like Elitist Jerks or WoW Insider.
After seeing what the official WoW forums have become, as well as the old DAoC forums, I don't blame him one bit for not wanting to put himself or his people through that ever.
And the money argument is completely ridiculous. As another commenter noted, the cost of hosting a forum compared to the cost of the actual game infrastructure is a drop in the bucket.
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