Curse

Dominator1370 · Dec 04, 2007, 03:09 AM // 03:09

I'd be all for open official forums if Guild Wars had substantially fewer people playing. Unfortunately, there are far too many people playing Guild Wars (and far too many of them immature) to all coexist peacefully on the same forum. And since it's been brought up, no, it's not the same as taking all the fansites and sticking them together. Why? Because you have to find a fansite. You don't go to www.guildwars.com/forum.php or click the ingame "Official Forum" button on the welcome screen. If there was an open official forum, nearly everyone who played Guild Wars would be on it occasionally, including the 12 year olds who have nothing better to do than spew garbage all day (no, not all 12 year olds do this, but a lot of them do).

I think there's a better solution: have an official forum, but require permission to post on it. Why? Centralized information and discussion. The wiki is great for detailing the way the game is. However, it doesn't (not should it) deal with possibilities or future changes. It would be a place to discuss what is going to happen in the game and, more importantly, what should happen in the game. The key difference would be that no one uninformed or likely to spew drivel would be able to post. Informed and competent discussions could be had without distraction in a place where they are directly under the nose of, or perhaps including, the Guild Wars staff. Of course, this also eases the moderation burden drastically; there would only be a small number of people who likely won't need any appreciable amount of moderation anyway aside from technical issues and weeding out the occasional bad egg.

This brings to mind the State of the Game article in which Ensign (I believe) talked to Izzy about changes that he (and many others) felt needed to be made, and had been rather vocal about for quite some time prior to. If we could get together similar minds in one location where they could regularly discuss possibilities with their enlightened peers in a place we can be sure the staff will see, maybe we won't have to wait so long for the right changes to be made.

This leads naturally to the selection process. It's assumed that fansites aren't going to die anyway. As such, those who prove their mettle, either on a fansite, in-game, or elsewhere can be allowed access.

It's true that staff have talk pages on the wiki, but lets be honest: those things are nightmares. Wiki pages aren't meant for conversations, especially multi-thread conversations that, as all communication from staff should be, are clearly organized and accessible. And folks, lets be honest, a lot of the posts on those talk pages are pointless.

I think creating an official forum but restricting access is something that could make for better early information as well as allowing for changes (and the right ones, at that) being made in a more timely manner.

P.S. Sorry about the book. Just remember, posting "tl;dr" is worse than posting nothing at all

Xx_Sorin_xX · Dec 04, 2007, 03:38 AM // 03:38

i think official wiki proved it should be left to others (in my opinion)

i think that original wiki is much better than official wiki on almost all things, and i feel that a forum wouldnt be much different.

Sir Green Aluminum · Dec 04, 2007, 03:50 AM // 03:50

Sorreh I did'nt read everything but I think Anet is doing what all the other new online games are doing and not having Official Forums so they don't have to pay Mods and don't have to constantly monitor the threads/put out the fires and have everything a mod says as a promise. GWGuru does all that stuff for Anet so it gets put at the top of the list of fansites and that's where they want you to go, not some less modded place.

pamelf · Dec 04, 2007, 04:48 AM // 04:48

I'd just be perfectly happy if Guru put up a GW2 forum here finally...

Lagg · Dec 04, 2007, 07:46 AM // 07:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dominator1370

This brings to mind the State of the Game article in which Ensign (I believe) talked to Izzy about changes that he (and many others) felt needed to be made, and had been rather vocal about for quite some time prior to. If we could get together similar minds in one location where they could regularly discuss possibilities with their enlightened peers in a place we can be sure the staff will see, maybe we won't have to wait so long for the right changes to be made.

Actually, I like this idea a lot.

We could have some sort of player elections where established members of the community (such as Ensign and others) are voted for to be members of a small player council that has a more direct link to ArenaNet. This way our voices would be heard through those representatives. Exactly like modern parliamentary democracy works.

This would cancel the need for a real forum, which would indeed become huge and unmanageable.

Of course, it would be shifting the responsibilities to a different person, as those representatives would be continously bombarded with "HAI PLAESE TELL ANETS TO STOP NERFIN MAH LOOTZ, PLOX".

So no, there is no be-all end-all solution, but I do understand why ArenaNet shuns the idea of an official forum for everyone.

leprekan · Dec 04, 2007, 07:58 AM // 07:58

/signed 100 times.

Most people never visit a fansite when they have a problem. If there was an official forum .. (listed on the box) people would know where to go when they have an issue. Anet skirting this basic responsibility to the customer has always been beyond pathetic to me. If I sent clients to a "fansite" when they had issues I wouldn't wonder why I was down to 10% of my client base in 31 months.

Fan sites are not accurate as to what is taking place in a game. No offense to mods here but being censored by a mods version of what is pertinent or not to a customer does not paint an accurate picture. GW2 is a chance at a fresh start I pray they take it.

Kakumei · Dec 04, 2007, 08:07 AM // 08:07

Assuming for the moment that an official forum doesn't come about--and all signs thus far point to this being the case, and I'm generally ambivalent on the matter--I've wondered a bit what Guru's going to do when it starts to get closer to GW2 time. New site/forum entirely?

thedrumchannell · Apr 09, 2008, 06:00 PM // 18:00

/signed

This is a great idea!

You can't see me · Apr 09, 2008, 06:28 PM // 18:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rahja the Thief

/notsigned. It would be one giant cesspool of bitch. Gross....

Well what do you call this?

I'm on the fence with this one. More input with the price of more garbage to sort through to find it. Hey, if Arenanet has the time to do it, I don't see a problem with it that we don't already have with these forums.

Aera Lure · Apr 09, 2008, 06:29 PM // 18:29

Wouldnt it be a pretty sparse forum? We dont know anything.

I imagine when it comes time for Beta there would be another section on these forums dedicated to GW2.

Zinger314 · Apr 09, 2008, 07:39 PM // 19:39

The true reason that ArenaNet will never have forums is because they have to pay for moderators.

(EDIT: Wait, who bumped this? And did I really say the same thing twice? Creepy.)

netniwk · Apr 09, 2008, 07:41 PM // 19:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

The true reason that ArenaNet will never have forums is because they have to pay for moderators.

Nice way to kill the costs,is it not?

Bryant Again · Apr 09, 2008, 07:54 PM // 19:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lagg

Still, if threads are sorted by quality instead of activity, a pointless flamefest could get plenty of bad ratings and move off the front page.

If a flamefest does turn into a megathread on the front page, it will be because people give it a good rating, not because it's active. A good example would be the ongoing discussion concerning Ursan Blessing, where many people have different opinions on the matter and it often does turn into a flamefest, although the argument is constructive.

Even though this is an old response, I'll reply.

The problem here is when people start giving bad threads high-ratings. Given the large majority of griefers and idiots on the internet, I still don't believe it would work.

Spaced Invader · Apr 09, 2008, 08:23 PM // 20:23

As a matter of fact, there have been official forums since the very beginning:
http://forums.guildwars.com/
They're just not open to the public.

In general, official forums are usually a pool of junk. Approximately 100% of the posts are QQ-threads with 8304 vocal lobbies and sub-lobbies trying to attract the dev's attention with their endless crying and drama.

Even the offical GW forums were becoming like that, when release was getting closer and all the guild invites increased the user numbers from 300 to x000.
I can't even imagine how horrid it would be with half a million users.

[e]what the flip, didn't notice this thread has been necro'd

warcrap · Apr 10, 2008, 09:41 PM // 21:41

/signed
an official forum would be quite lovely and NCsoft can give Anet the prior funding for it until they get rich of gw2 with the hordes of expansions and whatnot.

those two cons are easily fixable.

-make a limit 3 threads per 10 minutes

-and ANet can afford official forums since i heard there new business plan for gw2 ought to score them alot of money.

warcrap · Apr 10, 2008, 09:47 PM // 21:47

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zinger314

The true reason that ArenaNet will never have forums is because they have to pay for moderators.

(EDIT: Wait, who bumped this? And did I really say the same thing twice? Creepy.)

not really they can just do what everybody else does and get volunteer player mods.

Fear Me! · Apr 13, 2008, 05:52 AM // 05:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vinraith

Don't have a strong opinion one way or another about an official GW2 forum since I don't particularly care about the game, but regardless I would say it'd be nice to have a separate GW2 forum here on guru to keep the GW2 speculation from cluttering up the GW1 fora.

/signed. I agree wholeheartedly with above poster.