Official Forums
Dan Fortier and Derek Czerkaski return this week for a Saturday Debate. This week, they're arguing over whether or not games need to have an official forum.
Editorial By Derek Czerkaski on February 24, 2007
Saturday Debate: Official Forums
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?
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily those of MMORPG.com, its staff or management.
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..
While it's true that official forums are valuable central hubs for information, how much purpose do they really serve? It's not like open discussions are ever allowed. I can't think of a single MMO to date that's really allowed their customers to openly discuss controversial gameplay elements without severe restriction. Case and point; SOE loves to over mod their forums. A great example that comes to mind is associated with Star Wars Galaxies, and the backlash they received after the NGE. I found it amusing to see a thread created, locked, and deleted all within the span of a minute. On top of absurd moderation, negative criticism is nearly always censored on official forums. Praise is always welcome, however, to hell with anyone who believes the game is not perfect; they're clearly just trolling and flaming. Ignore the fact that they paid their $50 for the game too.
Besides, what good are official forums? Let's face it, in all honesty, devs never come out and associate with their clients. In the off chance that they do, it's prepared statements and clarifications. They never express their opinions, or come out and honestly bond with their community. Devs post to save face (PR is usually involved) and to deny rumors, but when's the last time a dev logged in and talked about a good group experience they had, or asked their community for some suggestions?
Fan site forums, on the other hand, allow a much broader scope of things. While it can make finding information somewhat more difficult, you're much more likely to find numerous, varied perspectives. Heck, look at MMORPG.com for example. If you ask people on an official forum, they're not going to tell you all the game's flaws and how it could improve, not without getting moderated. However, with the fan sites, you're able to express yourself much more openly and freely. Devs can't hide their mistakes, they can't censor the nay sayers, and they can't ban you for having a different opinion than the majority of the players. Empower the players, not the devs; that's what gaming SHOULD be about.
Wow, you sound bitter and jaded. Despite those admirable qualities you are overlooking some important points. First off, I doubt very seriously that a Guild or Fansite that is popular enough to become an affiliate will be any less rabid than the mods on an official forum. In fact, the folks running it would probably be the first choice for mods if they weren't running their own forums. The Devs can always pull their support of the forum if they don't like the vibe too so it's not like they are given Carte Blanche to say whatever they like either.
Secondly, without a single source for important information, you start running into he said, she said situations where different sites can give conflicting information depending on who you listen to. Sure the idea is to keep all the important information filtered out to all of the Affiliates, but once again I ask: What other reason would you do this other then to avoid dealing with the issues yourself?
As for passing on the buck to other folks, I couldn't disagree more! Forums are a luxury, not a necessity. Your $15 a month covers client access, server maintenance, and technical support. In my opinion, as long as there's phone and email support readily available, as well as GMs in game to provide assistance, then they've provided all of the help that they're required to for their customer. If Devs start to tactically retreat from certain sites due to backlash from their community, I think there are bigger problems at large anyway. It's been my experience that, once the Devs stop caring and interacting with their players, that's when the game dies out significantly. I'm also a firm believer in "If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen", so if Devs lack the professionalism and the fortitude to deal with negative criticism, he shouldn't be posting in the first place.
The he said, she said problem usually remedies itself within a short period of time. In my personal experience, all games tend to centralize their information gradually to a few brief sites over time. Even though they're not official forums, they've become central databases for reliable information pertinent to the game. This is also beneficial to the game itself, as folks become a more tightly knit community in game and out of it as well, as they can become familiar with each other's play styles, help each other solve problems, maybe even meet up and group together through forum planning. Also, you can begin to notice "icons" who tend to be well known for posting good information, being a trolling jackass, etc etc.
The point that I hope I'm bringing across to everyone is that the players need to bond together on their own. Fan based forums provide: valuable opportunities to build tightly knit communities amongst the player base, a more interpersonal relationship between the players and the Devs, and a more open yet dispersed flow of readily available information. I don't care what anyone says, censorship and excessive moderation will always be much more predominant on an official forum than a fansite, and that's not something I care to deal with, period.
Customer support in general is at an all time low as far as I'm concerned and in my experience players tend to find a workaround for various in-game issues much faster than customer support and having a central location to see all the non-technical issues that crop up is invaluable. With the recent trend towards releasing games in Beta shape it's even more critical to have an easy way to chart common problems. If you've ever put in a trouble ticket in a modern MMO you know that it's much simpler to do a quick search on the main forums to see if a lot of folks are having the same problems. Perhaps this won't change much without official forums, but I don't see how dividing up your community is ever a good thing.
Now that we've had our say on the topic, We would like to hear everyone's take on this. Drop us a note in the forum topic.
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.
Just look at WoW, everytime something gets locked or devs dont respond people get pissy and blame blizzard and give them grief for even more crap. IMHO official forums are a waste of money and resources that the company could better spend on CS, GMs, and game development.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
That’s the bottom line, and the cold reality of it.In closing....
I play an online game, and that’s the only game I wish to play. "Hunt the net for info" is not what I pay my sub for, and is not part of the game, and they are not doing me a favor by forcing me to play that game.
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....
When people disagree with you are they off topic?
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...
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.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.
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)
My job, not thiers, as I said above, which you seem to have yet again overlooked...
Invalid because you took it out of context and misconstrued it.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I am speaking in general, not everything is directed at you. Try not taking things so personally.
DAOC has only survived (in this regard) because of the polls in players eyes... I personally feel that login polls, and official forums are indeed required. And yes, there is precedent for having official forums, and many people, including myself, feel it is part of our subscription. After all, there are player that play, and players that post are there not? Official forums are community, and also, data base of experiences, and also.. meta-game, the game outside of the game.
"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 missed the part where that was the response... Every time "No forums" come out of the developers mouths it usually because of this "Would you rather us fix the game".... Which, as i said, is not our problem as player/customers, so the pity/buddy/friend card doesn’t apply. And you did flip your stance on this 2 times now.
First you said it would divert money from making/maintaining the game, i said...That’s not our problem, don’t make us suffer for it, then you said we would expect Developers to post, and that they would be taken away from the game to do so...again...Where is this our fault? I see vanguard devs, and DAOC devs posting all over... Your here? So 1) How does this really impact anything (To have forums or not), and 2) Why is this our problem, and why should customers not get and official centralized area to interact with others? Now your saying its not there job... its your positions...so...What’s the problem again?
The only ones that loose out in this situation is your customers.. Especially some of the less MMO savvy ones.
If you wish to continue with the corporate "We didn’t promises you anything" line. well, technically, you (Meaning Game Developers) don’t promise, grantee, or even acknowledge there even is a game if you read most EULA...so...what’s your point? Sounds like we should just take it... My wallet always makes these decisions for me anyway.
The guarantee is the precedence, and that most have become dependant on them. so yes...for a great many. its is required. Don’t ignore this.
And its not like DAOC has had the largest subscription base, or really, that large of a community... No offence, it has always been a "Boutique" game... where such things have been allowed. Again, no offence.
I still do not however, agree with the policy.
I appreciate the discussion.
EDIT: Finished a thought.
Richard, I've been a player of DAOC on and off for the past 4.5 years.... and from my perspective, not having official forums goes down as one of the games greatest weaknesses.
I know you mentioned the Camelot Herald, and I agree, its a great source of information...but it offers the user no feedback option. You mentioned some sort of feedback system on the website...I never knew it was there. And although you said you read over 55K of them... how many of them did you reply to? Its the reply thats important. I find your replies here on this site to be a wonderful thing, I feel I am actually communicating with Mythic, even if its only in a small way. I never felt that way in DAOC....ever.....in fact, I felt mostly ignored.
Speaking of feedback, perhaps if Mythics designers and developers had been interacting with their user base more often, the debacle of the TOA expansion would never have occurred. (rating only behind the NGE expansion SONY put out)
I currently play Vanguard, and I love reading a Dev's reply whenever they appear. Trouble is...unlike you..I don't get paid to game or deal with games... so I don't have time to read 5 or 6 fansites to find those rare replies.... right now I depend on someone posting the link here in MMORPG.com so that I can zip over to the other site. And I'm sure Dev's don't have time to visit lots of sites to post replies.
You claim fansites are a waste of valuable resources. You need to understand, good customer service is never a waste of resources. I know many people who've quit these games due to bad customer service (me included). I'd be willing to pay extra for the fansite...what would it cost..an extra buck a month? Hell, you'd probably just sub-contract them out like WOW does, and let your dev's visit once in awhile.
In the end, Mythic is like most game developers...they get too wrapped up in their own vision of what they "think" we customers want....and dismiss us as whiners if we don't warm up to their pre-conceived notions about our needs.
Oh yes, I still have one account open on DAOC (down from the peak of 4) and I can not tell you of a single good fansite that I can go to right now for valuable info on the game. (VNBoards? Oh please....) And certainly I see no way to provide feedback as well.
There are lots of companies that dont have official forums, or where the dev's dont post.
Relic - has official forums - they took the best of their fan forums and made it the official forum.
Guild Wars - puts lots of info out on their web site, and the community manager does the rounds of the fan forums.
Tabula Rasa (Still in development) but they will have no official forum. Community Manager (CuppaJo) does an excellent job visiting the various fan Forums.
I believe NCSoft going forward will no longer have official forums for its games. They do have quite good tech support though.
Personally I would rather the dev's stuck to developing the games and companies had a couple of good community managers to do the rounds of the fan forums.
Personally - I like fan forums - its a smaller more intimate community.
Richard, let me start out by saying I appreciate you coming here and giving us your point of view.
Now, My wife and I are also very happy subscribers to DAOC (as well as other games) and we both do enjoy your game immensely. (By the way, DAOC in my opinion has the best PvP/RvR system on the market). Unfortunately, we both are in agreement that not having official forums is a bad idea. The vnboards for a lack of a better term are basically a cesspool, with no real definitive way to know if your thoughts and desires are actually reaching the makers of DAOC. Sure, you do see Missy and Sanya occasionally, but I personally feel there is no consistency to it. Just a feeling I admit, but more important, a negative feeling by a customer.
I am obviously a proponent of Official forums for several reasons:
1. It promotes a community. Affiliate sites can supplement a community (see Mobhunter) but they can never replace it. Each affiliate will draw it's locals and eventually the site will develop a bias based upon those locals. This is not a beneficial outcome for either the consumer or the provider (see #6).
2. It provides a "reliable" source for two-way communication. Whether that communication happens or not is up to the company. I've seen bad (SOE) and I've seen good (Eve Online, recent events excluded of course).
3. It is a convenience for the customer in finding solutions or similar feelings. Splintering this amongst several locations is just bad. Sure you don't have to provide these forums. There is no contract saying you do. Customer service is and will always be an expense in any ledger. The truly successful companies will continue to be successful as long as they realize it is a necessary expense. So I'm not really sympathetic to the money cost issues you raised. Nor do I feel it's a detriment to the developers. To prevent "Ivory Tower" syndrome, I believe it should be a requirement for developers to spend an alloted time trying to understand their customer. Whether it happens or not is irrelevant, an effort should be made.
4. It allows the game maker to address concerns without showing favoritism. For example, the outrage when a WoW developer posts on boards like Fires of Heaven or Smedley speaking about SWG on Fires of Heaven. Sure they have the right, but your invoke anger in those who feel they're getting ignored while others are getting attention. Do I think it's fair for people to think that? No. But it doesn't matter when your dealing with customers.
5. It gives potential customers a centralized place to research before they purchase. Which, by the way, should be a plus for the company because they do have control. Whether that's ethically right or wrong is debatable but it is valid.
6. It allows for a centralized place for the company to gather what I consider very valuable feedback for their product. I would even go so far as to say an official forum is just as much a benefit to the company as it is to the consumer. Some marketing companies would kill to have a place where people voluntarily gave them feedback. Yes I know you said you have feedback forms. Like a poster said before, the wife and I had no idea this was available. In any case, feedback forms do not help provide validation or invalidation to thoughts and ideas a poster has that a forum does. In most cases, customers feel like with feedback forms they are feeding a "black hole" of sorts. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant, it's the perception.
7. Finally, it shows that the game maker cares enough to at least attempt to provide an outlet for their customers. In the case of Vanguard, no official forums is seen by me and apparently by many others as an attempt to hide from their customers. Once again, right or wrong, it's all about perception. The fact that it has been mentioned that other companies are planning to go this route only gives me the impression that they anticipate releasing shoddy products. True or not who knows. Perceptions.
Now with that out of the way I do have an idea on how to properly manager a forum.
Publically state that your policy will be to only respond to well thought out and orderly posts and stick to it. You've heard of Pavlov, right? Same principle. Customers see that whining, screaming, and generally carrying on will not get the same results as orderly and well thought out and they will eventually be conditioned to act accordingly if they wish to be validated. It's not a tough concept to comprehend, but I have yet to see any one company apply to it. It requires little to no moderation. Let the whiners whine, let the flamers flame, and let the trollers troll. If you have a system like WoW does with the blue symbol next to posts, you will allow your customers to see what posts are deemed worthy of a reply. Ideally, you may come to a point where a majority of your forum community only actually bothers to read the posts with that mark. I honestly would like to see this tried at least once to see if my theory has any holes in it.
The downside, you have to respond to EVERY orderly and well thought out post. May not be feasible, but if an honest effort is applied I do believe the costumer will be satisfied.
Once again, thank you for coming here, we really do enjoy your game and you guys have really done a bang up job the past year or so in being more responsive. I'm just not so sure your on mark with your opinion of the subject at hand, but it's all good.
Thanks.
That wouldnt stop the flamers because they tend to post once and go - definitely need the carrot and stick approach - reward the people who are polite, and have well thought out posts, and smack down the rude flaming jerks.
Still I think I prefer the relic approach - nominate the best of your fan sites as the official forum and have your community manager and occasional devs post there. Of course that probably wouldnt work if you have a million customers using the forums.