@People defending a lack of official forums on the principal that there are other forums that the devs visit.

Official forums are the central point, where you know--if they read anything--devs read what you're saying there.

They might read this or that fan forum, or central hub forums like this site, but they most certainly read their own forums. It's a place for players to go as well and find like-minded (and like-paying) people to discuss the game with. Official forums have less trolls because when you troll too hard, you risk throwing your character away here.

Edit: The Every Decision ANet Makes Is Absolutely Perfect Fanboyism on this site is insane.

I always look at forums like MMO-Champion or Elitist Jerks and compare them to the official Blizzard forums.

Yeah, pretty easy to see why devs wouldn't want official forums.

Their actually developers, not just community people, have to spend far too much time on damage control and explaining simple concepts to simple people who QQ very loudly and very often :)

Originally posted by gladosrev2

Because GW2 already has a forum?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/

:)

The devs use it, and it works, so why would they want to make an 'official' forum? Just so people can start creating topics here about 'EEVIL MODS DELETING CRITICAL TOPICS ON TTHE OFFICIAL GW2 FORUM OMGZORG!!!11" ? We've seen it before on virtually every MMO. Official forums suck, and that's about it.

There is a reason why all other MMO's NEED an official, monitored forum, and GW2 does not. Those games suck, and negative topics need to be deleted, while GW2 is awesome, and can easily thrive on a unmoderated fan forum :)

You know, I just took a look at the site and they have 3700 people viewing them right now including 900+ members, so that's pretty good for "unnoffical forums".

And the games not even launched yet.

If they just add in some server specific sub forums once that info is known I thnk it could function as a perfectly acceptable meeting place.

Originally posted by adam_nox

official forums are the difference between a serious mmo and a game.  It's not optional, if they think it is, they are being stupid.

GW1 had no forums for years

http://guildwars.com/products/guildwars/features/default.php

Does ArenaNet plan to offer Official Guild Wars Forums?

At this time, we do not have plans for an official forum. We are pleased with the support of the many fansite forums that are currently in operation, and encourage fans who would like to participate in forum discussion to visit our Community Page for a list of fansites and forums.

but ANET later added a support forum

https://forum.guildwars.com/forum

Originally posted by gladosrev2

Because GW2 already has a forum?

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/

:)

The devs use it, and it works, so why would they want to make an 'official' forum? Just so people can start creating topics here about 'EEVIL MODS DELETING CRITICAL TOPICS ON TTHE OFFICIAL GW2 FORUM OMGZORG!!!11" ? We've seen it before on virtually every MMO. Official forums suck, and that's about it.

There is a reason why all other MMO's NEED an official, monitored forum, and GW2 does not. Those games suck, and negative topics need to be deleted, while GW2 is awesome, and can easily thrive on a unmoderated fan forum :)

Have you even used the Guru forums?  There's absolutely nothing unmoderated about it.  And it's not just that it's moderated, but it's moderated by other forum users, sometimes very petty and biased ones, who seem unable to stay at arm's length from the arguments and frequently throw their mod status around to bookend their opinions.  It's probably one the most heavily moderated forums I've ever visisted.

Originally posted by catplay

So ANET can't afford a forum? Why?

I mean.. every serious company can, but not them? I guess they do not like peoples to come and said what they do not like?

What do you think?

Oficial forums are a cesspool of whiners and drama.

Nothing good ever came from any game's oficial forum.

It's a concious decision from Arena.net and i'm soooo glad they did.

Even guru is already a whiners pit, people whine about classes being gimped before the game is released...

The only oficial forum i would agree with is a purely technical and bug reporting one.

Originally posted by adam_nox

Originally posted by ariboersma

this is silly.. the next thing people will be complaining that Arenanet starts with an A and A is in EA OMG CONSPIRACY!!! They are still considering an official forum, they even did the whole "we cant comment on that" in a recent interview. WHo cares really... all official game forums do is turn into flame wars and the company has to monitor it. THere is already a few forums for that and Anet Devs frequent GW2 guru.

uhh

official forums are the difference between a serious mmo and a game.  It's not optional, if they think it is, they are being stupid.

That is silly and many professionals in the industry would laugh at what you just said. Forums are not a necessity, they often get in the way of a game before its release and there really is no point to a forum at this point anyways.

You want news and updates, check their damn website. You want to state your oh so self important opinion on a game you have never played? Do it here as you have, or on some other website forum. Software developers get tired of ever dramatic self important gamers demandign and suggesting things, making a scene, for a game they havent even played yet.

Smart studios just chose not to deal with the BS and work on making a game, getting feedback from their own testers and leaving it at that.

IF you have a problem with that, then there are plenty of other hobbies you could get into.

I'd be happier without an official forum. If its not someone complaining something is broken because they lost 1 pvp fight then its spam of "Blue/admin pay attention to what i have to say!!!" threads. There is an expectation that since players pay for the game then they better get a response and service.  When an admin does respond it just gets flooded with "do you even play your own game!?" comments and side derails of other topics.

Its not like they dont have other ways to communicate with them just twitter, facebook, youtube, and a contact us page.

There is no difference between a company wanting to get feedback via a forum in typing forum.mycompany,.com and forum.fansite.com

The only real advantage I see of having an official forum is having a place to go when you need support for a game.  Generally you can find lots of helpful things to try to look for a solution to a technical problem on the official forums.  Without a support forum, you generally have to fill out a ticket and wait to get a usually generic response that isn't helpful in the slightest.  Players can generally find temporary fixes to technical problems faster than developers can, and developers might not be as aware of these technical problems if it wasn't for the forums.

Originally posted by catplay

So ANET can't afford a forum? Why?

I mean.. every serious company can, but not them? I guess they do not like peoples to come and said what they do not like?

What do you think?

SWTOR has a forum and look how it turned out.......

Originally posted by Saxx0n

SWTOR has a forum and look how it turned out.......

The devs were held accountable for bad decisions. God forbid. [Mod Edit]

Official forums are the reason most games die. The people enjoying the game (the majority) are playing the game, and the people are are disgruntled about something run to the forums and ***** their heart out.

What happens then? Well I'll tell you what happens, the devs listen to them ,and the game turns to **** for everyone else. GW2Guru is enough, the devs talk to people there, it allows constructive feedback, and it keeps the community together.

The only problem with GW2G is that the moderators are kind of knee-jerk and quickfire when it comes to edits, deletes, and locking. They're only dealing with a TINY community right now. I feel that needs to be stressed. Guild Wars 2 is likely going ot be thousands of times bigger than GW1, and they could potentially have millions of people pouring in there when the game goes live.

Now, consider the shortfalls of this... unstable approach to moderation. Let's say that someone reporting a bug has their thread deleted because a mod misread their post, and every time they try to repost, it gets deleted. And then the mod gets paranoid (and I have seen this happen on GW2G) and starts deleting all threads relating to that bug. They do have paranoid trips over there. I've seen it first hand, it's ugly.

Again, imagine this with a couple of million people posting. They'd lose control. Someone is bound to flip out in a really bad way, because, again, they have some control freaks there, people who get paranoid, people who shouldn't be moderating in the first place, people who don't have the right mindset for it.

When this blows up, and I can guarantee you that it will, it's going to be a PR disaster for ArenaNet.

That is why you need an official forum.

Consider this bit of easy to understand wisdom: A GW2G moderator isn't under contract, and most of them are volunteers and not being paid. Not only that, but these volunteer moderators are likely completely anonymous even to the GW2G staff. So they have no accountability and they require no real sense of responsibility. Nothing bad can happen to them if they flip a shit, other than being banned from GW2G. They can just get another name and keep going. But the damage to ArenaNet's reputation because of this would be irreparable.

GW2G is okay as a site, but their moderators just aren't prepared for the massive influx, and their moderation style does not fit a body of people that large. If ArenaNet doesn't get their own forum and leave the responsibility with GW2G, then... well, this is all going to go horribly, terribly wrong.

Originally posted by Puremallace

Originally posted by Saxx0n

SWTOR has a forum and look how it turned out.......

The devs were held accountable for bad decisions. God forbid. [Mod Edit]

Forums provide a very small mechanism for feedback. I doubt highly if the only feedback they had was forum QQ that any serious changes would have happened. 

[Mod Edit]

[Mod Edit]

Originally posted by Shroom_Mage
Can't edit on mobile but want to add that the vast majority if GW2 players will never know guru exists. That alone makes it an abysmal excuse for an official forum, and I could still come up with several other reasons why guru is abysmal.

Well, they could tell everyone about it. They could link it as a "Recommended Forum" as they did with Guild Wars.

And that's where I see it all falling apart...

The thousands of voices complaining about how ArenaNet told them to go to a forum where they can't even report bugs without a moderator leaping on them...

Yeah, this is going to end well.

maybe they cant deliver on their promise like every other mmo dev and wont be able to handle the onslaught of QQ's