For anyone that has read this post up to this point I thank you, and for anyone that tells me our fansites can still thrive regardless if there are official forums or not...you are dead wrong! I speak from experience. 99% of a gamers player base uses official forums and not fansites. I've ran prvious fansites and they all died soon as official forums went live in other games. Sure our fansites will receive a bit of traffic, but not as much as they would have without official forums.

I read your whole post, I know for a fact that I am not dead wrong about what I am going to tell you.

You have a fansite, that means you have to put work into it, offer things the official website does not. You might think how am I supose to compete with a official website, wel you can but you really need to have to plan/think and do research for that, make it stand out. The only reason I can think of when fansites run dead is that they do not offer anything special, they don't stand out or make it known.

I am currently into retail, and yes our shops do sell things that other shops also sell, but I make sure we make the difference with the care we take towards our products and our customers, where John or Jane Do who only work for their paycheck without any commitment towards their products or customers will fail.

Stop crying a river.  Here is the deal.

#1.  If you want people to visit YOUR site / forums DO IT BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE to ensure the experience users have with you is unbeatable.

#2.  I personally feel for any online game to not have official forums is a mistake.  If I want to get my news on a game I play I want to get said news from the developers.  Not a third party that could have their information wrong.

Kicked in the gut? Oh please.  This is nothing but a cry for attention because you're afraid your site isn't up to par.

Originally posted by Reklaw

 

For anyone that has read this post up to this point I thank you, and for anyone that tells me our fansites can still thrive regardless if there are official forums or not...you are dead wrong! I speak from experience. 99% of a gamers player base uses official forums and not fansites. I've ran prvious fansites and they all died soon as official forums went live in other games. Sure our fansites will receive a bit of traffic, but not as much as they would have without official forums.

I read your whole post, I know for a fact that I am not dead wrong about what I am going to tell you.

You have a fansite, that means you have to put work into it, offer things the official website does not. You might think how am I supose to compete with a official website, wel you can but you really need to have to plan/think and do research for that, make it stand out. The only reason I can think of when fansites run dead is that they do not offer anything special, they don't stand out or make it known.

I am currently into retail, and yes our shops do sell things that other shops also sell, but I make sure we make the difference with the care we take towards our products and our customers, where John or Jane Do who only work for their paycheck without any commitment towards their products or customers will fail.

Very much this, while offical forum is my nr1 source, fansite that gives good guides or other handy stuff that people might have use for will thrive.

fansite that offer offical news and forums usaly die as i dont need to visit those sites, the offical forum covers that part.

League of legend i rarely visit riots main page and instead visit solomid.net 99.9% of the time. As they have great guides and a better layout over streams then what riot offers.

But it is alot of work to make and maintain such fansite and hench very few manage to thrive

Originally posted by Khaeros

Your website is pretty bad.  Consider: Guru is the current 'pub scroll' cesspool of the GW community.  There's no point in having another.

 

PvX still does builds under gwpvx.  gwrpc does roleplaying. 

 

Find a niche that your site can cater to, and you will find traffic.  Don't serve the same purpose as another site.  Guild wars wiki doesn't do builds because the people at pvx do it ten times better (plus they aren't terrible at the game - well, 10% of them, anyway)

Damn dude you could show some tact towards the OP. They obviously spent some time working on it.

As someone who has owned a fansite in the past (Crypticgamers.org) and worked for fansites of a game with offical forums (Republicnews.net), I can easily say that if you have good content you will get fans.

Both websites ive worked for are now defunct but guess what? I had a ton of fun doing it, and at the time I was seriously into both games/companys we covered and all I cared about was having my own place to give my opinion about a game. My own little microphone to speak to the world.

I get your frustration, but ANet did NOT kill your fansite, no one has that ability but you. I shut down crypticgamers.org because my main tech guy moved away. So is it my tech guys fault that his choice to move made me go "Ok i cant do this on my own" and close down? NO way! I still respect that man to this day (Dustnite).

Republicnews went under because the owner ran out of motivation and funds for the website since he ran multiple sites and had to pick and chose which ones to keep, and although I was upset when republic news got shut down by our bossman, I understood his reasoning and simply enjoyed my time writing for the site.

Just have some fun man!

I think the devs at ANet have learned that to have a succesful game you have to have a community that you're envolved in with.

Riot Games & their forums and community is a perfect example.

EDIT: and I think if you wanna make a fansite worth looking at make something like this: http://www.zybez.net/ (a runescape fansite) with lots of content, forums ect

Have a reason for people to visit your site.  Provide an item database, build tools, tutorials, and other features.  Find out what the community needs and wants.

Fansites for RIFT, WoW, EQ2, and other games all thrive with those games having official forums.  Provide something useful to earn your clicks and people will use your site.

Honestly I have no sympathy for you.  You come off sounding entitled and your site looks useless.  Time to do some work if you want the payout.

mmo-champion thrives for getting ppl news about their games faster and more accessible than the wow forums/page itself. And by datamining PTR patches etc.

I can see a GW2 website work well like this

In your case, I'd look at it as an opportunity.

Find a way to set yourself apart from the Official and data mining sites that offers something useful to the players and a forum that entices the type of players you want to cater to.

In other words: Specialize.

Encourage potential contributors to submit relavant material.

Your site will get traffic.

The current director of AOC came from running his own fansite to running an IGN forum to Community Manager for AO to Game Director for AO .  The draw to his site? A great database and great commentary.

Obstensibly, the only thing ANet adding an official forum does is thin the amount of  superficial content you'll need to post.

Originally posted by marzatplay

Having been a long time Guild Wars player (6 years), I wanted to give back by creating a fansite for Guild Wars 2 gamers where members could communication about the game on different levels. Like many others, I created a fansite thinking that Guild Wars 2 would not have any official forums similar to Guild Wars. 6 years ago this was a brilliant move by ANet as it allowed Guild Wars fansites to thrive, many of them still around today; the most successful of these being http://www.guildwarsguru.com.

 

Like many other fansite owners, I have put in a lot of time and money into creating [mod edit-link removed] This is a social networking community/fansite with forums, blogs, videos, albums, polls and more. A way for gamers to stay in touch outside of the game. Upon release of Guild Wars 2, there were plans to add a real time messaging service as well as live chat rooms, but now I find myself wondering what's the point?

 

Yesterday I read ANet's community blog as found here: http://www.arena.net/blog/building-community and felt like I was kicked in the gut by the company I had supported for 6 years and the game I fell in love with as the best PvP game that I ever played. The reason is that I had reached out to ANet through email and twitter asking if Guild Wars 2 would have official forums, or if fansites would recognized and listed on their website similar to how it was done in Guild Wars. On all occasions I never received a reply back. I never received a response, or a confirmation. I was ignored and although disappointed thought it might be because they were too busy working on the game to reply to all communication.

 

[mod edit - link removed] Guild Wars 2 Headquarters) was supposed to be a thriving fansite, a place for Guild Wars 2 gamers to turn to when there were no official forums to communicate with other Guild Wars 2 fanatics. Instead it's going to be a dead site just like all the others once the official forums go live. It was wrong of me to assume that there would be no official forums without receiving any communication back from ANet, but considering there were no official forums to-date, the original Guild Wars did not have any official forums, and the fact that ANet didn't hint at any official forums; I was 100% certain that there would be none, and once again just like in the original Guild Wars, fansites would thrive.

 

In their blog, ANet said that they would continue to work with their fansites and would continue to support them, but let's be honest here...this is an attempt to save face for basically saying...sorry for s*&^#ing you! (But in a professional manner). Don't p*ss in my tea and tell me it's lemon! If this is the direction you decided to take, why don't you take the time and contact your fansites to tell them exactly how you plan to support them. You just shocked a big minority of your player base, but a very dedicated minority at that for spending their time and money into creating fansites for your product. 

 

Personally I'm shocked that we receive word of official forums only now when the masses received this news as well. Most games have official forums before the game goes even into Alpha testing. Had I known this ahead of time, GW2HQ may very well not be online today and I would have saved myself hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a sript and hiring developers to help tweet the fansite to what it is today. I guess in the long run the fansite that should be most irate about this is http://www.guildwars2guru.com as ANet staff post on those forums and those were as official you got to forums without them being actually run by ANet.

 

For anyone that has read this post up to this point I thank you, and for anyone that tells me our fansites can still thrive regardless if there are official forums or not...you are dead wrong! I speak from experience. 99% of a gamers player base uses official forums and not fansites. I've ran prvious fansites and they all died soon as official forums went live in other games. Sure our fansites will receive a bit of traffic, but not as much as they would have without official forums.

 

Although official forums are great for the community, and I too will post and visit the official forums...Tisk Tisk ANet...you really messed us (the fansite owners) up on this one. Didn't expect this and quite disappointed. Nevertheless I will continue to support you and your game as the original Guild Wars gave me the best gaming experience of my life, and I thank you for that.

 

Cheers!

Your site is technically different than official forums. You're a social networking site rather than just forums to post messages to on occasion. You gotta use your thinker to expand on that and bring people to the site. It has a decent look to it and all, but honestly, when it comes to business, you adapt or die. If you bring something to the table that is somewhat unique, people will come - if not, well, we see what you've done so far, and how you're expecting your site to end up.

Plenty of fan sites still prosper with games that have their own maintained site.

...and while I know nothing about yours, Guru needed to not be the "main" for GW2 anyways. Some of the mods over there are simply awful. Frankly, I don't blame Anet for wanting to distance themselves from them.

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Plenty of fan sites still prosper with games that have their own maintained site.

...and while I know nothing about yours, Guru needed to not be the "main" for GW2 anyways. Some of the mods over there are simply awful. Frankly, I don't blame Anet for wanting to distance themselves from them.

I always kind of shook my head over the devs' decision to post pretty much exclusively there. There ARE some good people at guru, but either most of the mods are on power trips or there are one or two super active ones making the rest look awful.

That said, I will certainly visit official forums but I've already found my "home" in a fan forum and am unlikely to budge from it as my main discussion board.

What Wickedjelly said.

All this means is that now fansites will stand or die off based purely upon their own merits.

Isn't that how it should be? I mean, MMORPG.com's Guild Wars 2 section isn't going to go away or die off even after release. Neither are all of the fansites out there. It's just going to be that people are going to be drawn to the ones that suit them the best.

The problem with the old method is that Guru felt like a monopoly. That's all that's changed, if I'm honest.

---

@Sarielle

You know what amazes me? They chose to post over there after what Guru did to Izzy.

Oh, that was a sordid affair. See, Izzy was responsible for balance in Guild Wars, and he used to get attacked on Guru something fierce. (No, not joking, look it up on Google. It's all there.) It actually caused him to end up with bad nerves, so much so that he eventually refused to deal with the Guru community. It was that bad. And the moderators stood back and did nothing about it, whilst people freely assaulted him. Not just his ideas/arguments, but him.

That's the kind of place Guru is. I think it's absolutely insane that they chose Guru for their community reps to post at, frankly. I knew this would end in tears. :|

Originally posted by Wickedjelly

Plenty of fan sites still prosper with games that have their own maintained site.

...and while I know nothing about yours, Guru needed to not be the "main" for GW2 anyways. Some of the mods over there are simply awful. Frankly, I don't blame Anet for wanting to distance themselves from them.

Agreed 100%.  The mods at guru have created a disrespectful and negative forum for GW2. 

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser

@Sarielle

You know what amazes me? They chose to post over there after what Guru did to Izzy.

Oh, that was a sordid affair. See, Izzy was responsible for balance in Guild Wars, and he used to get attacked on Guru something fierce. (No, not joking, look it up on Google. It's all there.) It actually caused him to end up with bad nerves, so much so that he eventually refused to deal with the Guru community. It was that bad. And the moderators stood back and did nothing about it, whilst people freely assaulted him. Not just his ideas/arguments, but him.

That's the kind of place Guru is. I think it's absolutely insane that they chose Guru for their community reps to post at, frankly. I knew this would end in tears. :|

Yeah, I'm glad for official forums if for nothing else that NEW fans won't get guru as their first introduction to the community. I honestly don't think most of the posters are that bad -- at least not the regulars -- but the inconsistency and favoritism in moderation issues can be very offputting.

I actually hadn't seen the way Izzy got treated. -facepalm- is all I have to say about that.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Iselin

Sorry that they're making your hobby (business?) less viable but games, especially MMOs, without official forums are a relic from the past.

Otoh, WOW has always had them and their fan sites continue to thrive many years later. Once you get over your shock maybe you should start thinking of a change of focus from the general to the more specific? Just a thought.

GW didn't have one because it was made with a really small budget by a team that just quit Blizzard (including Wows first lead designer). I mean we are talking about a dozen people or so alltogether, 3 programmers (who also were among the 4 people who wrote all quests) and a minimal team.

GW2 have a great budget and a huge team. Having no forum for the first game make sense but not really for the second.

Wish there was a like button. Spot on good chap!

Yes, lets whine about a game getting a official forum which it deserves.

Why does GW2 get ingame chat? Pff, now the program I made for players to chat ingame is useless.

gw2 guru is a cesspool. cant wait for official forums.

Originally posted by Dream_Chaser

 

The problem with the old method is that Guru felt like a monopoly. That's all that's changed, if I'm honest.

Do you know what a monopoly is? How is guru a monopoly?

Originally posted by Skarecrow7

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by Iselin

Sorry that they're making your hobby (business?) less viable but games, especially MMOs, without official forums are a relic from the past.

Otoh, WOW has always had them and their fan sites continue to thrive many years later. Once you get over your shock maybe you should start thinking of a change of focus from the general to the more specific? Just a thought.

GW didn't have one because it was made with a really small budget by a team that just quit Blizzard (including Wows first lead designer). I mean we are talking about a dozen people or so alltogether, 3 programmers (who also were among the 4 people who wrote all quests) and a minimal team.

GW2 have a great budget and a huge team. Having no forum for the first game make sense but not really for the second.

Wish there was a like button. Spot on good chap!

I wish these forums had a "like" button too.  The RIFT forums have that and it works nicely.