Staff Writers Dan Fortier and Derek Czerkaski take opposite sides of the issue of game official forums. Are they needed, or is it enough to have third party forums?

Dan Fortier:

As often is the case, this week's debate was inspired by recent events in the world of MMOs. Many of us take having official game forums hosted by the developers for granted, but several weeks ago Sigil, the developers of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes closed down their forums prior to the launch of the game and moved them under the auspices of their Affiliate Program. This week Derek Czarkaski and I will be taking opposite sides of this issue for your amusement.

I'm not a big forum person and I can't really think of any time I needed to use a forum for any game I have played, but this move just seems like the ultimate cop out to me. If you are going to go through all the trouble of hosting support forums and have them moderated, why not just have regular open forums? While I agree most game forums after release are nothing but a massive whine-fest, these people are paying you as much as I pay for people to take out my trash every month. At the very least they could do is put up with their customers. Pawning them off on your 'official fansites' is really just passing the buck..

You can read the debatehere.

Having forums or not is just a business decision.  With the very low quality of posts I think it is a good idea to ship off forums to somewhere else and let those people deal with the headaches.  As long as there is ingame abilities to report bugs and petition for issues you will be able to let the devs know about problems.

The benefits of getting rid of whiners is a good thing.  Controlling your press in a sense.  You also get rid of those with an agendas trying to get the forum masses behind their pet issues.

In the end, I think the players are forcing devs to take the position of taking away a forum.  There is too much negative press on them vs the positives IMO.

It's my opinion that an official forum needs to be maintained by the company producing the game. I expect it as part of my monthly fee and feel as though any company pawning it off on anyone else is just trying to save money and drive a wedge between themselves and their player base. Official forums ARE a central source of current information, as well as a place to vent frustrations, hopefully in a constructive way. They are also certainly places where people with limited abilities to communicate, either because of language barriers, lack of education, or anger issues will gather, and those types, if the content of their posts is suitably destructive, can and should be censored. For the most part, those people are merely frustrating to those who want to communicate, and are easily ignored, especially when the proper forum tools are made available.

Not hosting an official forum is the equivalent of a company saying "we don't care that much about our paying subscribers to moderate a forum where you can all gather and bounce ideas off of each other. It is my hope that this is NOT the MMOG trend of the future. It will only stifle the good ideas that forums generate.

Originally posted by delateur

It's my opinion that an official forum needs to be maintained by the company producing the game. I expect it as part of my monthly fee and feel as though any company pawning it off on anyone else is just trying to save money and drive a wedge between themselves and their player base. Official forums ARE a central source of current information, as well as a place to vent frustrations, hopefully in a constructive way. They are also certainly places where people with limited abilities to communicate, either because of language barriers, lack of education, or anger issues will gather, and those types, if the content of their posts is suitably destructive, can and should be censored. For the most part, those people are merely frustrating to those who want to communicate, and are easily ignored, especially when the proper forum tools are made available.

Not hosting an official forum is the equivalent of a company saying "we don't care that much about our paying subscribers to moderate a forum where you can all gather and bounce ideas off of each other. It is my hope that this is NOT the MMOG trend of the future. It will only stifle the good ideas that forums generate.

I Think that Vanguard should have had forums, tho they should have locked them publicly and open for subs to their game, the public can still get their info from other forums, and we players might get aheads up whats going on with patches and such, yes their is some news now and then on the official site, but still especialy with Vanguard there is so much then can be discussed between the playerbase and the devs. Forums are not always 1 way trafic, i expect also news and info that devs can provide on the forums.

official forums are great, as long as nothing breaks, and everyone playing the game is a fanboy.  otherwise, all they do is piss off paying customers by locking/deleting posts about OBVIOUS problems ingame.  pretty much insert any game's name and you'll have that going on.  a recent, excellent example, is eve-online.  but, like i said, any game, any time there's issues, they'll lock/delete posts, ban users, and pretty much piss off the fanbase with their favoritism.

going to "official" forums is probably good if you're ONLY reading guides.  outside of that, unless you're a mindless fanboi, all that will happen is that you'll hate the game because of mo-rons enforcing the communist party line of thought on everyone involved - the state is never wrong, conform or be banned.  or is that borg?  i forget.

Originally posted by Thony

I Think that Vanguard should have had forums, tho they should have locked them publicly and open for subs to their game, the public can still get their info from other forums, and we players might get aheads up whats going on with patches and such, yes their is some news now and then on the official site, but still especialy with Vanguard there is so much then can be discussed between the playerbase and the devs. Forums are not always 1 way trafic, i expect also news and info that devs can provide on the forums.

You know they can still provide information on a website without having a forum.  What they mean by the forum is user's can post. 

In support of Vanguard, they said a very long time ago what their policy was on forums. It should have been to no surprised for an informed potential customer.

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Originally posted by wjrasmussen
As long as you understand that is your baggage so to speak. Which is cool if you really feel that way. I just hope you back it up with more than just words and NEVER purchase or subscribe to any game that doesn't have official forums. That would be sending a very mixed signal AND would be inconsistant on your part.

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Well, far be it from me to suggest that every opinion isn't a form of baggage, so yes, I fully own up to my opinion being a part of my baggage. Perhaps you mean to suggest that my opinion of forums is viewed by me (and consequently should be viewed by others) as some sort of decree handed down from one far superior to others? If so, I certainly do not have that view of my opinions, and weigh all opinions, mine included, on the rationale that backs them up.

As to how this translates into whether or not I should subscribe to a game or not, let's just say you lost me... I did not say I insist upon an official forum in any game I play. I said that I felt a lack of an official forum does not speak well of the company in general. MMOGs are SOCIAL games, and a forum seems to me a natural offshoot of any online game. If you want to keep people subscribing, then showing a willingness to see how your player base feels, even if it only means hosting a forum and providing limited responses to some of the hotter topics, appears to be a "smart thing." I'd much rather have the people who are running the game run the forum rather than a group of players who have no official ties to the game other than they pay their $15/month, same as me. I'd also like knowing that anyone posting on the forums is a paying subscriber to the game, rather than some random forum lurker who simply likes to cause grief and yet has no personal stake in the game itself. These might seem like crazy ideas to you, and that's quite alright, but I can certainly feel the way I do about a game's policies and still choose to play the game, because this subject, like most things in life, is not simply black and white.

^{_{I expect many more mmos in the furture to NOT have official forums.Its just yet another way they (the Dev teams) can avoid work, avoid having to deal with their customers, etc...}}

Plus, with NOT having forums, it  gives them the perfect excuse for NOT listening to their customers,which they arent going to do even with a forum.BUT this way they can say "We didnt know", "You didnt tell us" or whatever lame excuse they choose when they screw up.

And probably the top reason, though they will never admit to it, is that it allows them a better chance to hide the condition of their product.NOT only from their prospective customer base, but from themselves and thier "bosses".Its not like they want to be reminded the bugs and issues they havent fixed for the last year, are still not fixed.

Its the only thing thats really making steps forward in mmos,the devs are learning more and better ways to ignore their customers  and hide the bad  things from those that might be interested.

At least they've stopped crowing about the paltry 400k or less people their products often manage to hold.

One of the best things WoW did, was show the other mmo teams just how badly they are doing from a business/investment prospective.Of course  it wont sink in for them for sometime,because they want so badly for it to not be true,even though it is.

Originally posted by delateur

 

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Originally posted by wjrasmussen
As long as you understand that is your baggage so to speak. Which is cool if you really feel that way. I just hope you back it up with more than just words and NEVER purchase or subscribe to any game that doesn't have official forums. That would be sending a very mixed signal AND would be inconsistant on your part.

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Well, far be it from me to suggest that every opinion isn't a form of baggage, so yes, I fully own up to my opinion being a part of my baggage. Perhaps you mean to suggest that my opinion of forums is viewed by me (and consequently should be viewed by others) as some sort of decree handed down from one far superior to others? If so, I certainly do not have that view of my opinions, and weigh all opinions, mine included, on the rationale that backs them up.

As to how this translates into whether or not I should subscribe to a game or not, let's just say you lost me... I did not say I insist upon an official forum in any game I play. I said that I felt a lack of an official forum does not speak well of the company in general. MMOGs are SOCIAL games, and a forum seems to me a natural offshoot of any online game. If you want to keep people subscribing, then showing a willingness to see how your player base feels, even if it only means hosting a forum and providing limited responses to some of the hotter topics, appears to be a "smart thing." I'd much rather have the people who are running the game run the forum rather than a group of players who have no official ties to the game other than they pay their $15/month, same as me. I'd also like knowing that anyone posting on the forums is a paying subscriber to the game, rather than some random forum lurker who simply likes to cause grief and yet has no personal stake in the game itself. These might seem like crazy ideas to you, and that's quite alright, but I can certainly feel the way I do about a game's policies and still choose to play the game, because this subject, like most things in life, is not simply black and white.

Let's say you didn't like getting slapped in the face.  So I slap you in the face to which you say you don't like that, but then you give me $15.00.  Now I come back a month later and slap you in the face.  You say you don't like that but then you give me $15.00. You are training me that despite you saying you don't like it I will still get $15.00 every month for slapping you in the face.  See, I am after the $15.00 a month you may or may not like getting slapped in the face.  I got my $15.00 but you still got slapped.

The only thing in the end they care about is money.  All the other posturing and posing is just to the end of getting money.  What registers on their radar isn't your claimed emotion about the situation, it is the tally at the end of the month. Did they meet their numbers?  You can throw a hissy fit, but if you still pay the fee, you have trained them that the current situation is worth your money.  Maybe they think  you love throwing hissy fits and that is what you are really paying for!

Where is your power in this situation?  What can you control and what can you not control? What might you be able to influence?

Ok, let me help you form a more accurate analogy of my feelings on official forums, wrjrasmussen. Let's say that instead of a slap in the face, it's more like a gnat biting my arm. In other words, if I'm not thinking about it, then it's pretty much not bothering me, but if I pause to actually give it consideration, it IS annoying. Let's say that this gnat on my arm is taken in the context of a really great paintball tournament that I'm enjoying immensely. I paid to enjoy the tournament and all that goes with it, not to be bitten by bugs. Sure, if they were really thinking of me, they could have sprayed for them, but I'm not going to enjoy my game any less or think I didn't get my money's worth because they didn't.

In terms of the actual subject apart from that highly exaggerated analogy you tried to construct, a MMOG that supports a forum is saying that it cares what its player base thinks enough to let them post about it, within the limits of reasonable debate and fruitful conversation. I am not implying that one should boycott a game because it doesn't have a forum. They should boycott a game that is not enjoyable. What I AM suggesting is that it is reasonable to expect that our participation in a MMOG should warrant an interest in the company finding out our opinion of it. I don't expect that every suggestion be replied to or implemented, but the players DO come up with some pretty amazing ideas, and I'm all for creating venues for civilized discussion relating to MMOGs.

Originally posted by delateur

Ok, let me help you form a more accurate analogy of my feelings on official forums, wrjrasmussen. Let's say that instead of a slap in the face, it's more like a gnat biting my arm. In other words, if I'm not thinking about it, then it's pretty much not bothering me, but if I pause to actually give it consideration, it IS annoying. Let's say that this gnat on my arm is taken in the context of a really great paintball tournament that I'm enjoying immensely. I paid to enjoy the tournament and all that goes with it, not to be bitten by bugs. Sure, if they were really thinking of me, they could have sprayed for them, but I'm not going to enjoy my game any less or think I didn't get my money's worth because they didn't.

In terms of the actual subject apart from that highly exaggerated analogy you tried to construct, a MMOG that supports a forum is saying that it cares what its player base thinks enough to let them post about it, within the limits of reasonable debate and fruitful conversation. I am not implying that one should boycott a game because it doesn't have a forum. They should boycott a game that is not enjoyable. What I AM suggesting is that it is reasonable to expect that our participation in a MMOG should warrant an interest in the company finding out our opinion of it. I don't expect that every suggestion be replied to or implemented, but the players DO come up with some pretty amazing ideas, and I'm all for creating venues for civilized discussion relating to MMOGs.

Well, if you are not going to enjoy is any less, then what really is the point of your rant?  Great you gave your opinion.  I am just saying it isn't effective.

No duh, I gave an exaggeration, but you focus on it rather than the important meaning. Where is your power and what are you telling them about how  you want to be treated.  But as you say, you won't enjoy the game any less because of it.  So they really don't have any business incentive from you to make a change.  That is what I mean by you being ineffective here.

Well, Vanguard is an example of what not to do on many layers.

1- Strong verbal opposition to gold farming websites, yet ideal flourishing setting; goldfarming sites can't ask for a better setting (see the 3rd point).

2- Sigil has stated that they will shun any website having ads of gold-farming website, yet, they are very focused on this website, here at MMORPG.com unofficially.

3- The game enforced everything they developp on every player, you have to enjoy everything or then walk away from their game, if for any reason you don't enjoy an aspect, skipping it isn't a viable option.

4- No official forums, this way it is easy to correct what a 3rd party will do as "misinformation".

5- Doubtful promotion tactics.  EQ grows by person to person feedback, 1 friend to a friend.  Sigil cares a LOT about what is been said and to get peoples try it, as a leap of faith.  Games who focus so much on such leap usually lacks on the addictive factor.

6- The game is centered on a world, where the player has to adapt, rather than been centered on the players (instancing).  The player experience is dependant on the goodwill of other players who aren't adventuring with them.

These are merely a few aspects that come easily to pinpoint critical design mistakes with the game.

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Originally posted by wjrasmussen
Well, if you are not going to enjoy is any less, then what really is the point of your rant? Great you gave your opinion. I am just saying it isn't effective.
No duh, I gave an exaggeration, but you focus on it rather than the important meaning. Where is your power and what are you telling them about how you want to be treated. But as you say, you won't enjoy the game any less because of it. So they really don't have any business incentive from you to make a change. That is what I mean by you being ineffective here.

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The point of my "rant" is to express an opinion about the debate. You have mistakenly translated a response to an article into some sort of call to arms. My opinion may or may not influence whether I play the game, but it certainly isn't a requirement for formulating an opinion or expressing one.

I find value in official forums, and I stated my reasons why. Your expression on what it says to the company from a business standpoint (profit margin) is a point well-made, but is also somewhat off topic. Perhaps they will see the value of an official forum someday, perhaps not. I've mentioned that official forums, especially those that are only open to the subscribed player base, can be very helpful, and I still believe that. I also acknowledge that they can be difficult to maintain and acknowledge properly, but I think that the difficulty is more than offset by the ideas that an invested player base offers. The insights of the players can often lead to improvements that increase the life and/or population of the game. This also translates into profits.

When a company intends to release a game that is FAR from being ready for release, closing down the official forum just helps hide the backlash from their customers.  If the game were truly great and really ready for release, I'll be we would have had Vanguard forums at launch. 

Sigil's failure to provide offiical forums for anything other than technical support is just one more way that the company has demonstrated their total lack of ability to service their customers. 

Experience:

So, i had a diplomacy issue.

I went to silky venom.... Other than it not being able to load correctly (They have since switched hosting)... There was a thread on the subject.

I look at it, it didn’t have a resolution.

Went to Ten-ton-hammer. There’s a thread.... No resolution, no dev post.

Went to 4 other sites.... Each had a thread on this issue. No resolution, no dev post... Save for the most under populated site.

It had a thread, and a dev post.


Isn’t this great? I wasted an hour looking for a development post about a largely common issue, only to find ONE (1) dev post on the subject.... on the least visited site of the 20 they have listed.

What was that resolution you ask? "Keep an eye on the affiliate sites for the resolution to this problem".

"Sweet, witch one?"

Opinion:

I just want to say, if they are not going to provide the same services as other mmo's, then they need to lower my subscription by 2$.

Shirking off the responsibility of maintaining of community forums is sad. “Because we don’t want to deal with it” is a lame excuse.

Having to search 20 fan sites of debatable quality is frustrating, not to mention they all have speculative information, and some times contradict.

Trying to pass this off as an “Easer more reliable solution” is just completely unsupportive of your customer base, your wasting our time, because it is not.

Few days later....

So now what? I guess ill search the 19 other sites all day for one bit of info.

I think it’s somewhat sad that we do not have official forums, hosted by the company that made the game, and bandwidth paid for by the money we pay them.

Instead, we have 20 or so fan sites with conflicting information (Click link in sig) and the bandwidth bill goes to those poor community members that run the fan sites.

With 100k+ people playing this game... How did they expect FANS to be able to host things in a reliable manner?

Basically, they have dumped the responsibility and cost onto its fans.

Then someone said....

"Would you rather have an awesome website with all the appropriate information available at a glance, or them  to pay those same two web developers to check but reports and crunch code?"

well...

Sorry, but this attempt at an excuse and rationale isn’t going to work. Its silly.

The things you listed our not our problem, and we should not suffer cutbacks in service because of it.

I owe them nothing, and i am not there buddy, I’m a customer, and I want official forums.

Bugs, numbers, imbalances are not my problem to fix, or help fix. We pay the same amount for this service as others, where are our forums/site?

While I have some symphony for there project/product, at the end of the day...none of what you listed has any bearing on me as a customer.

And I fell no need for "Good will" on a product I pay for.

well it is like this, one they had forums in the beta, and once they got close to release and started changing things right and left people got upset, and when the g80 did not work with vanguard, people got really upset. The forums also had dev posts which conflicted with their current vision as it was supposedly all along.

That aside forums with current issues and ways to get around them till they are fixed is a good thing. Forums where the devs post up coming issues, downtime, patches, and events do exist. LoTRO has a very nice setup, DDO has a par for the course, WOW are overloaded with the spectrum of everything, but everyone of those games are not hurt by haveing forums because people can see what is going on in the game. Even if they are moderated so no one can say anything bad that will tell you as much about the game as a fourm with a dozzen trolls no one is paying attention to.

Last vanguard has how many servers? they took in 60 or 70 dollars a game and 15 a month for the game, now several other games have an equal or greater number of servers have foums also for that same 15 a month. To put a sharper point on it, the person who generally looks through the forums on company time is usually a pr person not a coder being paid much less, who is looking for stuff based on a list of issues the devs have answers for. The devs who are looking through the boards are doing it on their own time because they belive in their game or simply are reading through them to see what people are saying. I have been in many mmos through the years, and vanguard does not want people to know the population of their servers is dramaticly less than it was durning the beta, and as time goes on with issues that sigil is not addressing getting smaller and smaller.

And for those of you out their wondering if I put my money where my mouth is, yep I cancled my collector edt pre-order, and refuse to buy the game while it is broken.

saying - is it enough to have third party forums? is like saying - is it enough if I have 1 meal a day?

Any excuse can be made but there all going be rediculous, there is no excuse for not having official forums to support your own game, it doesn't stop the haters, it doesn't stop complaining it just puts it all over the place on the internet....

Originally posted by xAlrythx

saying - is it enough to have third party forums? is like saying - is it enough if I have 1 meal a day?

Any excuse can be made but there all going be rediculous, there is no excuse for not having official forums to support your own game, it doesn't stop the haters, it doesn't stop complaining it just puts it all over the place on the internet....

Originally posted by delateur

 

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Originally posted by wjrasmussen
Well, if you are not going to enjoy is any less, then what really is the point of your rant? Great you gave your opinion. I am just saying it isn't effective.
No duh, I gave an exaggeration, but you focus on it rather than the important meaning. Where is your power and what are you telling them about how you want to be treated. But as you say, you won't enjoy the game any less because of it. So they really don't have any business incentive from you to make a change. That is what I mean by you being ineffective here.

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The point of my "rant" is to express an opinion about the debate. You have mistakenly translated a response to an article into some sort of call to arms. My opinion may or may not influence whether I play the game, but it certainly isn't a requirement for formulating an opinion or expressing one.

I find value in official forums, and I stated my reasons why. Your expression on what it says to the company from a business standpoint (profit margin) is a point well-made, but is also somewhat off topic. Perhaps they will see the value of an official forum someday, perhaps not. I've mentioned that official forums, especially those that are only open to the subscribed player base, can be very helpful, and I still believe that. I also acknowledge that they can be difficult to maintain and acknowledge properly, but I think that the difficulty is more than offset by the ideas that an invested player base offers. The insights of the players can often lead to improvements that increase the life and/or population of the game. This also translates into profits.

When people disagree with you are they off topic?