Originally posted by Geriden

I would have major concerns about even buying this game now that will not be offical forums.

You can not pass this over to some fan site its not profesional.

This to me shows me that

you as a company do not want to listen to your community

Or  even care about there opinions and as a paying customer you shold always listen to your community base.

and it is also a way to ignore your comunitys issues.

It preventa a person who may be interested in trying the game from reading negative or postive topics about the game.

 
Most people who think about a new mmo usualy check there forums to see whats going on and if there is any major issues etc

so thats my opinion and im sure im not the only one who would think this.

 How in any way are we showing we don't want to listen to our community when we are providing means for the community to speak to us directly, just not official forums. Trust me, I would bet ANY amount of money, I would even bet my JOB that I have a FAR better overall look of what the DAoC.***  As I said above, it is FAR easier and more effecient to track, tally and report the information sent in via Feedback Forms than to try and gather all that same information from the forums where it is all mixed in with the trolling, flaming, bickering, bragging and epeen waving of thousands of posters with nothing better to do than run up a post count so they can feel more important than the next poster who comes along.

*** (Yes, I know mistakes were made in the past, ToA, etc. But I'm referring to the last 1.5 years when I've been in charge of the Feedback Form system, I'm sure anyone currently playing DAoC will agree that there has never been a period of time when the patches more reflected what the community wanted as a whole.)

Definitely agree with the poster above me. WoW would have been a huge success regardless of if they had official forums or not.

Secondly, I'm really tired of WoW being used as the barometer of what a successful MMO is. This isn't so much pointed at you directly, just taking this moment to drop a general rant from all the "Will it kill WoW?" threads I see everywhere. A MMO doesn't need to have NEAR the number of subs that WoW has to be a success. By that standard every single MMO to date other than WoW has been an abysmal failure, which simply isn't the case. DAoC was a HUGE financial success and it never topped more than about 300k subs in it's prime. Both it and UO are still hugely profitable and therefore still financially successful with their current sub counts. Heck, even AC and AO are still kicking and bringing in profit after all these years.

I've said from the start that they indeed have their pros, just that IMO, and the primary word here being opinion, both as a gamer from that side of the fence, and as a Dev from this side of the fence, I feel that the cons outweigh the pros.

Originally posted by Areel

No one changed my mind about wanting an official forum, but I did have one thought.  Someone mentioned Server forums.  Now, I love Server-based forums, they allow a specific community to plan events and trade.  And it's true that most of the time, third party sites will not host Server forums.

But considering the RvR focus of the game, Server forums would not be a good idea.  People are going to be planning raids on the enemy.  But there are always some idiots that post this information publicly.  If there were Server forums, then raid plans would often get ruined by some careless poster.  The other side would be alerted, and they'd be prepared.  I saw it a couple times on my server in WoW.

"Hey, what time was that raid on Darnassus tonight?"

And when the Horde showed up, half the Alliance was waiting for them...

Actually most fansites will add whatever forum sections their community feels it needs, if you ask nicely and the admins think there is a real community desire there. VN has server/cluster forums for DAoC. Pretty sure several of the other fansites did as well back in the day.

Originally posted by Shoal

It is not needed because of the originator of the game.  Mythic has had a very successful policy of no official forums for years.  They supply a direct feedback and Q&A mechanism through the Camelot Herald site.  In addition, they do very actively monitor indy forums.  But, the main communications link is via the various Camelot Herald mails.  What this allows Mythic to do is eliminate all the BS that 99% of forum traffic is made up of (WoW forums, for instance).

So, don't despair.  There will be the equivilant of Camelot Herald for WaR.  And ways to get legitimate feedback and questions regarding WaR back to Mythic.

Exactly, same system as DAoC, just kicked up a notch or 2. Cause really, why just repeat when you can improve? :)

Originally posted by Traelin

Originally posted by Adythiel
Here is the problem with your #1 argument Traelin. You say the cost is outweighed by the benefit. Do you have any figures on how much money it will cost? It's easy to say it's worth it when it isn't your money being spent. Even with EA picking up Mythic and contributing money towards WAR, they have access to data and financials we aren't privy to. If EA-Mythic decides to not implement official forums, they have their reasons for it. Nothing we do can get them to implement them.

Whenever I think about official forums, I always go back to the early days of Everquest. EQ used to have official forums. They were brought down when it became too much of a hassle to keep them worthwhile. Moderating an official forum is a 24 hour a day job. Even during non-peak hours, people are posting. A lot of those are trolls. So you have to pay someone to moderate the forums in the middle of the night and the very early morning as well. I think DAoC did perfectly fine without any official forums. I don't see how an official forum would have prevented ToA from releasing. It wasn't until it had been out for a while and people started collecting the artifacts and master levels that the problems really began to show up. Can you just imagine what the official forums would have consisted of if they existed? VN Boards were bad enough. The feedback form and polls used by Mythic when logging into the game are fine as I see it.

I played WoW on release. I recently stopped playing it. I used the official forums for information maybe twice in that entire time. I visited them semi-frequently early on, but as soon as it turned into the cesspool you see now I stopped using them. It took me much longer to find anything of value on the official forums than it did by visiting 2-3 community sites such as Warcry or Allakhazam. I used those 2 sites in particular exponentially more than I used the official site. The only reason I went to the main site was to get the official patch notes. I used the Herald constantly when I was playing DAoC.

Oh no, let me make it clear. I do not know exactly what it would cost to maintain official forums, but being in the IT industry and knowing a bit about web servers, websites, server loads, sys admin salaries, etc., I could probably come up with a reasonable guess if I spent the time crunching the numbers in Excel.  Yes, it would cost some dinero.  With that being said, in my 10 years of professional experience, I have never seen a scenario where the community (ergo, the customer) didn't benefit with proper handling of communication channels.  In online gaming, this would partially equate to the existence of official forums.

As to your experiences of EQ, I can't comment because I honestly never played it.  I *suspect* that a lot of the problems related to that game had to do with Sony, because (this is MHO, don't attack me here ) everything they touch turns to lead.  Again, you are more knowledgable than me WRT EQ though.

As for the WoW forums, I used them incessantly.  All the time.  I went there for blacksmithing tips, warrior and pally skill tweaks/updates, recommended class changes, upcoming patch notes...basically, everything except for quests which I used Thottbot for. As purely anecdotal evidence, everyone (literally) that I know IRL used those forums that played the game.  And I'm talking an entire office I used to work at, family members, and friends.  Their forums became "mission critical" to us, and outside fansites became supplementary material.

Again, you keep assuming that just because there are no official forums there will be no "proper handling of communication channels". Just because this is the manner a lot of companies take, doesn't mean it is the only one. And you left off one little aspect in your theoretical cost analysis there, Mods. Even if you figure a ratio of 1 mod per 10,000 users, which IMO is a VERY high estimate and probably not going to work realistically, for a game with 2 million subs/forumites, that is still a team of 200 people JUST to Mod the forums... That is larger than the actual entire development team. Even if you take it further and say 1 Mod per 20,000 users. That's a Mod team of 100 people, which is still larger than most development teams out there.

I played WoW for quite a while, still play it actually. I have never used the official forums, all of that information is just as readily accessible on fansites. Just because you and your friends/coworkers/family chose those forums as your source of info doesn't mean they're the only available source.

Originally posted by MysticXSab
I don't care if there isnt an official forum, but I'd like a nudge in the fan forum direction (ie, unofficially support one of them). I love browsing forums. I just keep thinking of the presentation about IMAGINATION. Give me a venue, doesn't have to be official, but I lose my want to go onto forums if I have to visit 5 different ones to keep up with everything.

I think you'll find once the game launches the cream of the crop of fansites will definitely rise to the top. There will be 2-3 really good fansites that all have all the same info and you'll do perfectly well on any of them solely, without having to jump around from one to the other.

Originally posted by Kyleran

Its funny, a majority of the replies here support the decision to not have official forums...

But looking at the poll numbers.... over 50% of the respondents think its a bad choice.... while 32% don't really care...(mostly because they aren't into forums)......

but sure...lets not have official forums....

and please, stop pointing at DAOC's successes w/o forums.... they released a game killing expansion because they were totally out of touch with their core gamers, it was a niche game compared to EQ and others (and I still play DAOC btw) and the lack of a good forum was a negative..not a positive.... no matter how many arguments Richard tosses up to support the decision.

You could argue that my "opinion" is no more valid than Richards... except that I'm the one paying his salary... so it carries a bit more weight....

I had nothing to do with the decision for DAoC to not have forums, I wasn't even in the industry back then, much less working for Mythic. And honestly, opinions are equally valid regardless of which side of the fence you're on.

I can honestly say I have never frequented the official forums for ANY MMO I have ever played. And trust me, I'd bet a LOT of money that I've spent more time playing MMOs than just about everyone in this discussion. Even if you take away the 2 years I spent doing it as a job for this very site. The only thing I've ever found on official forums that I couldn't find on fansite forums was an excessive amount of whining, flaming, trolling and an overall cesspit.

Yeah, ToA sucked, I think that's been well established, not really a bright ray of enlightenment there. But quite honestly, a lot of that was due to listening to the extremely vocal minority, which for the record are generally the type of people on the forums screaming the loudest that their class is underpowered and need a boost even though they're constantly in the top of the RP gainers each week.

DAoC's feedback system, IMO, is a far better system than official forums. Feedback forms are a lot easier to track and tally over periods of time than posts on a forum are. I can pull up my feedback report and tell you exactly how many times last May that someone wrote in and said Scouts needed some love or that Vamps were overpowered. I can spit you out a graph showing how many more times each month for the entire year someone said Valks are overpowered vs Valks are underpowered. I can spit out a list of the top 20 issues reported each month for the last year complete with breakdowns of how many times each item has appeared in the top 20, the percentage of total times that issue has been reported vs the total number of issues, etc.

So yeah, after having worked on this side of the fence long enough to have an idea which manner is easier to collect ideas, issues, suggestions, etc from the players, either forums or the feedback system, I'm definitely in favor of the feedback system.

Originally posted by Traelin

Originally posted by Distaste
I am all for no official forums.

All you see is X and X is overpowered, this sucks, blah blah blah. Generally for every good thread there is about 50 that are whining or unintelligent posts(WAR is a WoW ripoff! OMG!!!).

These types of posts exist anywhere you go...not having official forums isn't going to change it, all it succeeds in doing is making it harder for valid concerns to be addressed.  And if you don't want to read the whining posts, don't read them. It really is as simple as not mousing over and clicking that post.

With all of WoW's flaws, I have to give them a LOT of credit with their forums.  It is truly a knowledge base for the game.

And on the same note, the informative posts, the class skill guides, the crafting guides, the overall knowledge base for the game as you call it, will exist anywhere as well. As I said above, any fansite worth it's and wants to be competitive will have all of that. Heck, there are already fansites out there for WAR that have Character Builders and interactive maps in place and the game is still almost a year from launch.

Originally posted by Traelin

Originally posted by Richard_Mythic

Originally posted by Justice87

My vote is for that its a good thing they arent having any Official boards. All they should have is a Tech support chat. Where you can connect with a tech support employee and get one on one help...Kinda like Myth Wars has. (see more details on Myth Wars site)

There can be many different manners to contact tech support without needing Forums to do it.

Agreed.  But one can't deny how invaluable official forums are, in terms of gathering the community together in an organized fashion.  Plus it facilitates easier (and more efficient) information sharing, and one cannot minimize the perceived "direct line of communication" effect that they have on the customer base.

I've been working in the software industry for a decade now (yeah I'm getting old), primarily supporting the US govt.  One thing that has never been lost on me, is how important it is to give the customer the ability to address concerns, suggestions, or information sharing amongst the community in an organized manner.  For games, it allows the users some catharsis just to vent at the CMs; for others, it allows them to discuss class tips, techniques, or game quests amongst each other in one centralized location.

And even with all the bashing we do of WoW, one has to objectively admit that their forums work -- very well.  Sure, there's a whole lot of complaining that goes on.  But many of us used the forums on a daily basis to get insight into crafting, class skills, and upcoming game changes.  In today's online gaming communities, and with how pervasive the Web is, IME it doesn't make business sense to *not* have official forums.

You keep assuming that just because there are no forums that means there is no "direct line of communication" to the Dev team... You don't have to have forums give the customer said ability to address concerns, suggestions or anything else with the Dev team.

Official forums are no better for the type of information sharing (crafting, class skills, etc) than the fansite forums. Trust me, any fansite worth visiting out there will have all the info you need, you won't need to bounce around between 5 different ones.

Originally posted by beauxaj

I don't really care.

On one hand you've got official forums which do turn into the whine/complaint fests ala WoW.   On the other hand if they have no forum it could be a slight problem.

I believe they are doing the same thing they did with DAoC, the Camelot herald was a fantastic source of real, solid, information without all the extra fluff.  I spent each day there while playing DAoC, and I'll probably go to the War Herald each day as well.

Indeed, the WAR Herald will operate much like the Camelot Herald, only better. :)

Originally posted by Areel

2.  Official forums allow the Community Managers to only have to visit one site.  They want to post a message?  One stop posting.  They want to gauge the general ideas of the community?  They're all in one spot.  And Community Managers know the difference between random whining and serious concerns.

The downside?  Community Managers with official forums often get the soul-crushing job of being a forum Moderator.  Much of their time is wasted on locking threads, editing objectionable material, and otherwise dealing with the assholes.  That means that they're less inclined to share their knowledge with the community.  People also start to EXPECT a dev reply.  So many meaningless threads that start with the title, "Devs, plz respond!"

Then again, many Vanguard players today, after the official forum was closed, feel adrift.  There is no centralized voice, and they are scattered to the winds.

But some of us, myself included like visiting all the different fansites. I like how the communites on each are so different and varied. They all offer a different atmosphere. They allow the different players to find a community that is most comfortable to them, rather than forcing them to all congregate in one.

And I'll never be accused of modding someone's post simply because I didn't like what they said. I have, and never will have, no mod powers on any fan site. If a post gets deleted here, it's cause you broke MMORPG.com's rules, not because you posted something Mythic didn't want to hear.

3.  Forums do not create the community.  The community creates the atmosphere of the forum.  For this, let's look at two games that were recently in development, and had official forums.  Lord of the Rings Online, and Vanguard.  LotRO had a very calm, friendly forum environment during development.  Interesting discussions were common, and trolls and flames were kept to a minimum.  On the other hand, Vanguard's community started out with an ego problem, and it showed in their forums.  Anything negative about the game was shot down.  Flamers and asshats prowled through every post.

Essentially, it's the people that define how an official forum will develop.  Not the pressence of an official forum, itself.

Really, I think the pros outweigh the cons.  But I admit that there is no perfect solution.  Official forums have both advantages and disadvantages.  I just hope the WAR community won't be fractured by the absence of a central community.

Personally I'm the opposite, I believe the cons outweigh the pros, as long as there are avenues of communication for the CM to get info out to the players (the Herald) and the players to get information to the CM/Devs (the Feedback System).

Originally posted by Deathstiny

I'll play the game regardless but voted "bad thing". Currently I'm subscribed to 6 different forums in order to stay on top of any new developments that happen wit the game. Quite frankly that's a pain in the ass. I'd rather have one site I can go to every day to see if there is something new and exciting going on. It's certainly not a game breaker for me but official forums are just part of good customer service in my opinion.

Cheers,

Deathstiny

Guild Master of Reborn

Reborn

You can't really compare the flow of "information" now to what will take place once the game launches... All the stuff you're visiting 6 difference sites to get your hands on now is in a lot of cases exclusive content. Interviews, articles, etc. Once the game launches, all important info concerning the game, be it bugs, patch notes, issues, upcoming changes, anything, will be posted ONE place, on the WAR Herald.

Originally posted by Traelin

Originally posted by checkthis500
And the whining is the reason why I don't like official forums.  It's the only thing that isn't offered by unofficial forums.

One of the beauties of official forums is that, like any other forum, you don't HAVE to read them...so I don't see why the whining would bother you.  On the other hand, forums do offer a direct line of communication to the devs (via the CMs), as well as valuable resources on class-based, game-based, quest-based, etc. issues.  To me it signifies a level of professionalism if you will.

But why does it need to be official forums to provide that "direct line of communication to the devs (via the CMs)"... These aren't official forums, yet here I (the CM in question) am responding to your post...

Originally posted by Justice87

My vote is for that its a good thing they arent having any Official boards. All they should have is a Tech support chat. Where you can connect with a tech support employee and get one on one help...Kinda like Myth Wars has. (see more details on Myth Wars site)

There can be many different manners to contact tech support without needing Forums to do it.

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.

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...

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.

Indeed it is! :)

www.imdb.com/name/nm0391326/

Originally posted by cupertino
None of us have played the game...

I have! ;)

Now now, at least TRY to disguise the fishing for infoz a LITTLE... ;)