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....

If it doesn't stop it then not having the forums won't matter. 

Originally posted by delateur

 

---

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.

---

 

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?

How about paying an extra $3.00 per month to get access to a forum? This could be  used for running the forums.

---

Originally posted by bubbles69
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.

---

Bravo for you, bubbles69! I was kindly supplied a 10 day trial key by a total stranger who was giving them away on another forum, and after downloading the client (which seemed to need to download the entire game twice, for some odd reason), I too was a bit surprised at the state of the game. Of course, like most have said, it's a beautiful game, and the 3 modes of gameplay (combat, crafting, and diplomacy) are all quite enjoyable, although diplomacy is by far my favorite. However, I am a victim of the mem leak issue and unlike some who have the game simply crash to desktop, I have a complete system lockup that requires a hard reset. Needless to say, this issue has completely ended any desire I might have to buy the full game. If this issue wasn't there, I still might hesitate, because the death penalty seems a bit harsh and the game is not very solo-friendly, although it IS soloable if one chooses their quests carefully.

As to the more on-topic part of the post, it does seem interesting that the official forums were completely shut down after launch, given the bug-laden nature of the game. The timing is just too perfect for it to be coincidental...

---

Originally posted by FreddyNoNose
When people disagree with you are they off topic?

---

No, when people are off-topic, they're off-topic. Perhaps you can look up the definition of both and see how it's quite possible for them to do one or the other in tandem, or separate from each other. To provide you with an example to get you going, in this instance, we're discussing the value of official forums, which has little to do with whether a person can enjoy the game those forums relate to. My feelings about forums was translated by wjrasmussen as some sort of hardcore protest that should see expression in boycotting the game entirely. This is off-topic, because it has nothing to do with the merits of official forums or why they might be unnecessary (the topic of the debate). I hope that clarifies any confusion you might still have.

I think any online game should have official forums but with Vanguard it was *such* a copout. They knew the game was unfinished and they don't want the people they hoodwinked into paying for a beta test to all be griping in a central location. They hope that by spreading out the crying they won't look so bad.

I have no way of proving it but I bet the whole no forum thing was straight from SOE. They are having to spend so much time doing spin control on their own forums with their crappy games that they probably "suggested" that sigil close theirs.

A developer that is proud of their game and willing to stand behind should be more than happy to provide a place where their customers can gather and talk about the game. The WoW forums are a great example of this. Sure there is a lot of garbage on those forums but there is also a real sense of community.

"I have no way of proving it but I bet the whole no forum thing was straight from SOE"

Well I can tell you that isnt the case. Shortly after joining the pre-release forums a year ago I stumbled across a discussion about Sigil's decision not to host official forums post-release; at the time they were still contracted to Microsoft for the publishing rights and were still very confident and determined to release a complete and "gold ready" game.

Anyway, Im on the side of thinking no official forums is like stumbling in the dark when it comes to resolving game issues and questions. And frankly, though I do adore the game, there are many of them. Even though I played beta, a very late in the day revamp to my chosen class left me feeling like a newb when the game launched. I shudder to think of the 1000s of "petitions" Sigil are having to deal with  - or cancelling - in game simply because their customers cant find the relevant information outside of game.....no wonder it took 3 play sessions for my particular broken quest issue to be resolved - actually it wasnt resolved, Id given up and abandoned the quest by the time a CS employee got back to me.

Im gonna stick with it, but knowing the gaming community in general I know a huge section wouldnt just give up the quest, they will give up their sub too.

Give your playerbase a forum Sigil, you're inhibiting the formation of the very community you were so determined to build.

 

official forum a big plus,

Great source of info and i have never played a game where the official forum is to moderated .

if a game doesnt have official forum i m not sure i would buy that game.

I don't know how I could have gotten into Anarchy Online to the extent that I did without reading the official fan forums. AO is such a complex game it seems to be almost a necessity.

I only played WOW for a couple of weeks but never visited the forums. Got on fine.

I'm now into Guild Wars and if there is an official forum I'm not aware of it. They do have a central source of information in the GuildWiki which I find to be absolutely phenomenal, having all the information I ever need without all the whiney crap that most forums have. The Wiki is the best source of information in terms of completeness and clarity I can think of for any game I've been into.

My .02.

Some of my better gaming experiences happened with smaller budget games where the development team actually uses their forums to discuss game issues with its players.  As a player it is rewarding to know that the developers are working with you and not against you for the vision of the game.  That kind of teamwork between players and developers can only happen when the game has official forums.

I know a lot of the big budget games could care less to hear any of the players oppinions.  The big budget developers have many meetings, market analysis studies, test teams, QA teams, marketing strategies, and publishers all telling them how to make a game.  If a developer is going to make a game without the input of its playerbase then they do not need forums.

The decision to have official forums or not is a choice by the developers.  It is OK to not have forums, as long as there is a mechanism for players to report bugs and issues.  Regardless of forums, I will not pay to play a game that does not listen to its playerbase about bugs and issues.  So, does that communication need to be on forums?  No.  Does there need to be some way to communicate?  Yes.

Wow, I wish I had gotten in on this earlier, far too many posts to go back and respond to all the points and opinions equally now though. :( So I'll just jump in here with my opinions and such on the matter...

1) Any company who doesn't have official forums needs some manner to put out official info. Thats a given, you shouldn't have to search 20+ fansites for a single dev post addressing a major issue. Mythic never had official forums for DAoC but has had the Camelot Herald to put out official info, and IMO has done a rather good job of it over the years.

B) In the same sense that if there are no official forums, then the devs need an avenue to put out info, if there are no official forums there needs to be an avenue for the players to talk to the Dev team. DAoC, which doesn't use official forums, has the Feedback Form on the Herald site. I personally read over 55,000 feedback emails generated by that form last year alone. Each and every one read, tracked, categorized, tallied and passed to the Dev Team in an easy to read monthly report.

3) I know I'm speaking a lot from the PoV of DAoC, but since that's the only MMO (Well, not counting WAR, but we haven't gotten to that stage yet) I've worked on, it's where my experience comes from.

D) Official forums take FAR more resources (time and money) from the development of the game that in most cases, as long as the above criteria is met, they aren't cost effective. I know personally, from a player point of view, I'd rather the time be spent on getting the game ready for launch if it's still in development or spent working on fixing issues if it's live. Take the big cheese for example, WoW's official forums. I use them only because they're the ones I hear the most complaints about. How many people do you think would have to be brought onto staff and paid to keep those forums inline? Now how many more artists, designers or programmers could that same money hire?

5) As the Community Coordinator for WAR, I am registered, and frequent every WAR fansite on the web that has a decent community and activity established. By decent I don't mean personality or amount of flaming/trolling, I just mean how active they are. I prefer to let the followers of the game establish their own lottle communities around the web. And they are vastly different, going from WHA (warhammeralliance.com) to WRVR (war-rvr.net) to OW (only-war.com) to WAR Vault you see a completely different style of community. They have different posting styles, different things are important to them, etc. I prefer to come to the comminity of your choice than force you to come to the community of our choice.

E) By using fansites as the main forums for a game, I can never be accused of modding a post simply because I didn't like what the player said. I don't have Mod Powers on any WAR or DAoC forum in existence, nor will I ever. If a post you make regarding a Mythic product ever gets modded, it's because you broke some rule the fansite in question has in place, not because you said something we don't want to hear.

7) If I ever do make a post on forums that is in anyway on topic. Which like I said above, it would never be anything important that isn't also posted on the Herald, I would also cross post it on all the forums I visit. Like when I've run WAR contests in the past, it was posted on the WAR Herald, but I also started a thread on all the WAR fansites as well.

I'll stop ramling there for now, but I'll be watching the thread, this is actually a very interesting topic for me, both from the PoV of someone who works in the industry and from the MMO gamer PoV.

Richard i just don't see the passion in the gaming industry anymore, it's become more about money than creating good games. I've seen the same old crap cosntantly being made for many years now and i'm starting to get tired of it.... for example mmorpgs have all looked at eachother and copied eachother, the upcoming mmorpgs all follow the same lines aswel and nothing interests me.


All we get these days is PR crap :\ For example the whole SWG NGE and the CU BS..... if i was in charge of that game i'd give the people wat they wanted, why is that so hard? Did they want to kill the game? why can't they just create classic servers?
Also whats this RVR fluff? It's just another name for faction vs faction but to make it seem like a new PVP idea........

 

I dunno without official forums the relationship between community and developer is widened even more and what we want will be ignored more and mmorpgs will just become worse........... WE need a "GOOD" developer/publisher that'll be close with the community and not feed us BS and lie but to do what WE WANT.


This is something: NCsoft,SOE,Mythic and all the other crap companies are not offering...... I mean Warhammer Online is nothing like Warhammer IMO it's just DAOC2 in a warhammer skin. Whata  boring choice of races tooo, why do we need 2 sets of elves? Why not Vampire counts,lizardmen or Skaven?

For me the game developers MUST have official forums, if nothing else for the player community to feel like they have a place to state their worries, concerns, bug, and satisfaction/disatifaction with the game. Especially with bugs/game issues its good to at least get acknowledgment  of these things.

 An MMORPG is a different beast to most other games, to say that its ok for a game developer to have no presence on an official forums is to not understand the needs of an MMORPG community.
The official forums do however need to be strictly moderated with clearly posted and adhered to posting standards, persistent trollers and flamers should be banned from posting, negative comments if posted in a 'constructive' manner should be allowed. The game developers also benefit from official forums in that they can at least feel out the communities position on game issues and how the game is being received, which should help in the decision making process for further game development.

Not having official forums to me is similar to the current trend of pushing products still in Beta out of the door and expecting full box price and full subscription price to be paid by the early adopters, it's unethical and a very cynical business practice. The mere fact that Sigil closed down it's offical forums prior to releasing an unfinished product (which was even admitted by the company) is a glaring example of this type of  bad business practice.

Originally posted by FreddyNoNose
How about paying an extra $3.00 per month to get access to a forum? This could be  used for running the forums.

 That would actually be a good idea, it would likely cut down on the number of people who troll/flame and just maybe increase the quality of the posts made. I for one would be willing to pay a small surcharge to be able to post on official forums.

Originally posted by Richard_Mythic
Wow, I wish I had gotten in on this earlier, far too many posts to go back and respond to all the points and opinions equally now though. :( So I'll just jump in here with my opinions and such on the matter...

1) Any company who doesn't have official forums needs some manner to put out official info. Thats a given, you shouldn't have to search 20+ fansites for a single dev post addressing a major issue. Mythic never had official forums for DAoC but has had the Camelot Herald to put out official info, and IMO has done a rather good job of it over the years.

B) In the same sense that if there are no official forums, then the devs need an avenue to put out info, if there are no official forums there needs to be an avenue for the players to talk to the Dev team. DAoC, which doesn't use official forums, has the Feedback Form on the Herald site. I personally read over 55,000 feedback emails generated by that form last year alone. Each and every one read, tracked, categorized, tallied and passed to the Dev Team in an easy to read monthly report.

3) I know I'm speaking a lot from the PoV of DAoC, but since that's the only MMO (Well, not counting WAR, but we haven't gotten to that stage yet) I've worked on, it's where my experience comes from.

D) Official forums take FAR more resources (time and money) from the development of the game that in most cases, as long as the above criteria is met, they aren't cost effective. I know personally, from a player point of view, I'd rather the time be spent on getting the game ready for launch if it's still in development or spent working on fixing issues if it's live. Take the big cheese for example, WoW's official forums. I use them only because they're the ones I hear the most complaints about. How many people do you think would have to be brought onto staff and paid to keep those forums inline? Now how many more artists, designers or programmers could that same money hire?

5) As the Community Coordinator for WAR, I am registered, and frequent every WAR fansite on the web that has a decent community and activity established. By decent I don't mean personality or amount of flaming/trolling, I just mean how active they are. I prefer to let the followers of the game establish their own lottle communities around the web. And they are vastly different, going from WHA (warhammeralliance.com) to WRVR (war-rvr.net) to OW (only-war.com) to WAR Vault you see a completely different style of community. They have different posting styles, different things are important to them, etc. I prefer to come to the comminity of your choice than force you to come to the community of our choice.

E) By using fansites as the main forums for a game, I can never be accused of modding a post simply because I didn't like what the player said. I don't have Mod Powers on any WAR or DAoC forum in existence, nor will I ever. If a post you make regarding a Mythic product ever gets modded, it's because you broke some rule the fansite in question has in place, not because you said something we don't want to hear.

7) If I ever do make a post on forums that is in anyway on topic. Which like I said above, it would never be anything important that isn't also posted on the Herald, I would also cross post it on all the forums I visit. Like when I've run WAR contests in the past, it was posted on the WAR Herald, but I also started a thread on all the WAR fansites as well.

I'll stop ramling there for now, but I'll be watching the thread, this is actually a very interesting topic for me, both from the PoV of someone who works in the industry and from the MMO gamer PoV.

So, now you’re saying, that the developers cant focus on the game, if they are running the forums????

I wasn’t aware that programmers, artists, and writers were also forum mods.... Who woulda thunk it.

 

 

Don’t punish your player base because of mismanagement or bad planning. Don’t Shift the cost of community around YOUR product to your fans...

Fan sites ALL HAVE CONFLICTHING INFROMATION!

You know, that a "Decentralized community" has been used in the past?

 

By an oppressive leadership/governments.

"Keep them stupid, keep them apart, keep them uninformed, and you’ll have less chance of an uprising when you do something wrong".

 

This is the same mentality.

 

Fan sites devoted to specific classes/game play will always come up, and developers should have been watching, and responding to them all along, but not , as they have started doing, at the cost of a central community.

 

Keep the central community, and pay for, and keep up with your own official forums. Because 9 times out of 10, if im looking for a piece of information, the answer comes from others experience in that area...not the developers.

And im tired of looking at 20 sites to find it.

 

Please reread my post in this thread. And realy read it, while in your gamers shoes.

There's no need to get all big and colorful, I can read regular font just fine and using big colorful font doesn't make you more right, just makes you look loud and whiney...

You do realize there is FAR FAR more to running a major set of forums than just Mods right? No, the Devs wouldn't be too busy to do their jobs because they're modding the forums, they wouldn't be.

But you ARE expecting them to take time away from working on the game to post on said forums... Yes yes, a single post doesn't take long. A couple seconds to maybe a couple minutes tops... The problem comes in when they respond to one post, every single other person on the forums who has posted something wants the same attention to their thread as well. So yes, as I said, it DOES take resources away from the development of the game. It cuts into the Developers' time that could be spent actually working on the game. It cuts into programmers time handling code issues on the forum, rather than handling code issues in the game itself. Money that could be spent hiring new artists, programmers, designers etc would no have to be earmarked to hire new Mods for said forums. Besides, it's my job to communicate with the community. And really, as long as I have one "centralized" (since you seem to like that word so much) avenue to disperse information and collect information (the Herald), why does it HAVE to be forums?

I love how you take one single line of my entire post, misconstrue it and try to use it as an argument, completely ignoring the rest of my reply, then tell me to go back and "really read" your post again...

Originally posted by Richard_Mythic
There's no need to get all big and colorful, I can read regular font just fine and using big colorful font doesn't make you more right, just makes you look loud and whiney...

You do realize there is FAR FAR more to running a major set of forums than just Mods right? No, the Devs wouldn't be too busy to do their jobs because they're modding the forums, they wouldn't be.

But you ARE expecting them to take time away from working on the game to post on said forums... Yes yes, a single post doesn't take long. A couple seconds to maybe a couple minutes tops... The problem comes in when they respond to one post, every single other person on the forums who has posted something wants the same attention to their thread as well. So yes, as I said, it DOES take resources away from the development of the game. It cuts into the Developers' time that could be spent actually working on the game. It cuts into programmers time handling code issues on the forum, rather than handling code issues in the game itself. Money that could be spent hiring new artists, programmers, designers etc would no have to be earmarked to hire new Mods for said forums. Besides, it's my job to communicate with the community. And really, as long as I have one "centralized" (since you seem to like that word so much) avenue to disperse information and collect information (the Herald), why does it HAVE to be forums?

I love how you take one single line of my entire post, misconstrue it and try to use it as an argument, completely ignoring the rest of my reply, then tell me to go back and "really read" your post again...

But, under this idea of affiliate system, they now need to do it 20 times over, or Not post at all, anywhere.. to achieve this "Money saving" or “Time saving” your are referring to.

I didn’t ignore you entire post, I just pointed out that that argument is invalid. I read the rest of your post, and nothing has changed.

It’s been used to often, and simply isn’t true.

Once again, your not doing us a favor by cutting back customer support (in all facets) because of mismanagement, or lack of funds.

We as customers do not owe you understanding, or pity, for a product we by and subscribe to, its simply not our problem.

You want one way communication... which isn’t really communication. Its you telling the community, like over a radio... what is happening, which is fine for news and such. But totally detaches you from any feedback, or concerns that the community as a whole (and not just some large guild site, or specialized site (IE: Crafters)).  We are in the information age here,  one way communication went out with world war two, and if  information had been as prevalent then, as it is now, allot of things most of the world didn’t hear about when it was happening...would not have happened.  This is my tieback to  my apparently, less valid, "Whiney" Statement.

Bottom line.... If developers wish to continue this route, of Speaking AT the people that play there games...then its a sad state of affairs. Especially for games that, for the most part, rely on its community for its long life.  No other thin in mmo's retain player more than the community that surrounds it.  Go ahead...split them up... 

I really have my doubts about any community manger, that doesn’t see the usefulness of forums for a Community.

Also, holding your hands over your ears and saying "I wont read that because its not constructive" is a very tired excuse coming out of developers mouths.. You reap what you sow, and you (The developers, publishers, and managers) create the tone of the community you manage.

You need to be able to read the good, and the bad, because even if you think the comment is whiney, or non-constructive...its valid, there is always a reason, and you need to hear it, and address it if you want it to go away (of corset her are some that just bitch, lol)

But, under this idea of affiliate system, they now need to do it 20 times over, or Not post at all, anywhere.. to achieve this "Money saving" or “Time saving” your are referring to.

My job, not thiers, as I said above, which you seem to have yet again overlooked...

I didn’t ignore you entire post, I just pointed out that that argument is invalid. I read the rest of your post, and nothing has changed.

Invalid because you took it out of context and misconstrued it.

Once again, your not doing us a favor by cutting back customer support (in all facets) because of mismanagement, or lack of funds.

We as customers do not owe you understanding, or pity, for a product we by and subscribe to, its simply not our problem.

No where does buying/subscribing to the game guarantee you official forums. You keep accusing us of taking away something you're entitled to or ripping you off by not giving them to you and that is simply not the case.

You want one way communication... which isn’t really communication. Its you telling the community, like over a radio... what is happening, which is fine for news and such. But totally detaches you from any feedback, or concerns that the community as a whole (and not just some large guild site, or specialized site (IE: Crafters)).  We are in the information age here,  one way communication went out with world war two, and if  information had been as prevalent then, as it is now, allot of things most of the world didn’t hear about when it was happening...would not have happened.  This is my tieback to  my apparently, less valid, "Whiney" Statement.

Bottom line.... If developers wish to continue this route, of Speaking AT the people that play there games...then its a sad state of affairs. Especially for games that, for the most part, rely on its community for its long life.  No other thin in mmo's retain player more than the community that surrounds it.  Go ahead...split them up... 

Speaking of which, you apparently didn't read my post as you claim, or you just skipped over the part where I flat out stated that a company MUST have a way for the playerbase to speak to them, ie DAoC's feedback system and login polls.

To think that forums are the only means to facilitate communication between the company and the players is like wearing blinders. You're only seeing the only possible solution that YOU want.

I really have my doubts about any community manger, that doesn’t see the usefulness of forums for a Community.

DAoC just celebrated it's 5th Anniversary having never had official forums. There are other games out there that don't have them. There are several who have them but they aren't worth going to. Yes, I admit there are some pros to having official forums. There are also many cons, which you can't seem to admit. Nor can you seem to accept that there are feasible, workable alternatives to official forums...

Also, holding your hands over your ears and saying "I wont read that because its not constructive" is a very tired excuse coming out of developers mouths.. You reap what you sow, and you (The developers, publishers, and managers) create the tone of the community you manage.

You need to be able to read the good, and the bad, because even if you think the comment is whiney, or non-constructive...its valid, there is always a reason, and you need to hear it, and address it if you want it to go away (of corset her are some that just bitch, lol)

Where did I indicate in any manner that I only read the good? :P I am active on every single WAR fansite daily, reading all the good AND bad. As I posted above, I read MANY thousands of feedback emails, both good AND bad... I can't count the number of times I've been informed what I should go do with my mom, or what unpleasant thing I need to shove into various orrifices. It's part of my job, I have no problem reading the bad with the good.

I never indicated I didn't read your post, I was just informing you of how you came across posting like that.