Curse

Coverticus · Jul 23, 2009, 01:39 PM // 13:39

For the argument of an "official" forum, probably a good example of it not really being worth doing is the current player base and the official wiki. How many players use it (percentage wise) I wonder, certainly many I have met on my travels in GW raise the eyebrows when I say "Wiki is your friend, use the in-built search function" as they have no idea what I am talking about. And tbh, I think this would the same for an official forum.

Looking at other games (MMOs and others), usually fan-based ones tend to be better as its controlled by, supported by and, in essence, loved by the player base in-game. I am currently out of GW and playing Perfect World (no giggling please!) and it has the same thing - fan based forums have more depth, content and control over the information supplied. The "official forum" is, well, pants. Any revenue generated is better spent on the game than supporting a forum (thus paying indivuduals time and salaries unless it could be done on a volunteer basis, unlikely though). The majority of companies will more than likely do this, since the attitude will be "the tools are there, let the fans do it if they need it".

ANet have always played their cards close to their chests on everything they have done. And I don't see this changing now or even when GW2 is out in the wilderness.

Test Me · Jul 23, 2009, 02:12 PM // 14:12

Let me summarize this long discussion:

Lack of an official community support site for over 4 years now suggests lack of acknowledgment of either the existence or the importance of the community for this game. Which may be a strong indicator as of why things are as they are today related to community status, GW2 information and other.

And we need to keep that in mind when we're trying to overly analyze ANet's intentions, reactions, financial motivations, etc. And we need to come to terms with the fact that ANet just doesn't consider its community all that important as we tend to believe (on guru and the like sites).

We have a couple of CMs that have no say in any decision and usually can't say or do anything to influence the internal decision making at ANet (from what I get). That is all ANet has given its community. Once we adjust our expectancies from ANet by acknowledging this, we can have more realistic discussions.

Until that happens we'd just be a bunch of whiners believing that if we whine enough they will actually pay us some attention and care. No, they won't.

JR · Jul 23, 2009, 02:16 PM // 14:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Test Me

Lack of an official community support site for over 4 years now suggests lack of acknowledgment of either the existence or the importance of the community for this game.

Not in the slightest. Not having an official forum for the community is an approach many games have used before, and quite a few noteable Community Managers have said it is the most beneficial option for the developer and for a community of this type. By no means does it automatically imply they care less about the community.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Test Me

And we need to keep that in mind when we're trying to overly analyze ANet's intentions, reactions, financial motivations, etc. And we need to come to terms with the fact that ANet just doesn't consider its community all that important as we tend to believe (on guru and the like sites).

That part I'll agree with.

Calaval · Jul 23, 2009, 02:39 PM // 14:39

Whenever I’m interested in a new MMORPG I take a look at the official site and then look at their forum, be it for signing up for beta or learning anything of interest, rarely do I go to a fan site forum first if they have an official forum.

Guru and the other leading fan forums are great but Guild Wars without an official forum to me just looks unprofessional and lazy.

Another downside of not having an official forum is being bombarded with ads from fan forums of competing games that may grab the viewers attention.

Fril Estelin · Jul 23, 2009, 02:44 PM // 14:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by JR

That part I'll agree with.

I know it's the geek/fan in me talking, but I would have loved more transparency from Anet via the CMs. I know fully well that there are commercial reasons justifying the approach they take, yet the dev updates were a really good step in the right direction. But getting words from the designers, dev and the whole team once a month in 2000 words doesn't answer some of the questions we have (see the thread on game redesign for a tiny example).

Oh and, as you said, multiplying the channels of communication doesn't help us understand exactly what's happening. We've got the official wiki and guildwars.com, plus just started now FB and twitter (Flickr and youtube are more specialised). But maybe it's just me (like many others) being too curious

.

Fansites have been pushed aside, whereas they used to "feel" part of the "community strategy". I know that Regina and Martin are professionals, and Regina knows how to use social medias, yet I feel there's a huge, enormous untapped potential in fansites. I guess there'll be a "clean slate" from this point of view when GW2 and we'll have to make the transition whichever way we see fit, FB, twit, fansite, forum.

P.S.: regarding transparency, if even Microsoft now submits source code to the Linux Kernel, everything is possible!!

Inde · Jul 23, 2009, 02:49 PM // 14:49

Calaval, very good points. Even about the ads. Unfortunately, unless everyone wants to *ahem* start handing over $49.99 for GURU: THE FORUM GAME we needs ads to support our servers.

And Fril, I think you've summed up my exact thoughts very nicely.

Brett Kuntz · Jul 23, 2009, 05:30 PM // 17:30

Official forums are garbage. First, they need to hire and pay staff to run them. They can't have volunteers because if someone like JR deletes or locks a topic for whatever reason, and that reason was a bad reason, now Anet looks bad and people yell at Anet, even though JR was a volunteer. So Anet needs to waste my money (the money I used to buy GW) on buying a forum, a server to run that forum, and to pay a bunch of people to moderate that forum. And for what? What do I owe the pleasure of all this wasted money? A forum that is no better than a public forum.

Official forums also kill any chance of un-official fansites and forums ever really taking off. There are a few extreme exceptions to this rule, such as if your game is really popular like WoW, or really small, like say 1,000 players total. In those extreme cases, official forums and un-official forums can co-exist quite well.

Guild Wars took the right approach when it came to fansites and forums. Instead of wasting money running a fansite with information, and an official forum that needs to be staffed, they instead spent that money on other areas that would actually improve the overall game experience.

Gigashadow · Jul 23, 2009, 07:14 PM // 19:14

This is a good article about forums. You may remember this developer as Citan from Asheron's Call 2 (Turbine).

http://www.eldergame.com/2008/06/30/...e-forum-tiger/

Inde · Jul 23, 2009, 08:40 PM // 20:40

Not really Gigashadow. Eric Heimburg isn't exactly a neutral guy on forums and community interaction. He suffered through his first experience dealing with a community on a failed game that he was the Live Team Producer over. There was actually and legitimately a reason for all the "this game sucks and is dying" screams that the fans gave for AC2 which eventually shut down. He's probably a bit defensive about it and will be for the rest of his career.

Mordakai · Jul 24, 2009, 05:02 PM // 17:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

Not really Gigashadow. Eric Heimburg isn't exactly a neutral guy on forums and community interaction. He suffered through his first experience dealing with a community on a failed game that he was the Live Team Producer over. There was actually and legitimately a reason for all the "this game sucks and is dying" screams that the fans gave for AC2 which eventually shut down. He's probably a bit defensive about it and will be for the rest of his career.

So, is the moral of this story is that the 10% of your user base that posts on forums do matter?

Test Me · Jul 24, 2009, 05:37 PM // 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kuntz

Official forums are garbage.

That is a bit naive from a business perspective.

How much trust do you have in a software product produced by a company that does not have a web site?

To put that question into context for GW: what does it mean for an online community based game not to have any official community?

We are in the era of social sites and social X and Y and GW is precisely that: an online social game. Not putting your money where your mouth is (community in the case of GW) is a big mistake. I bet online community/social support will get better and better for MMOs and whoever will get it right and at the right level of integration with the game itself will definitively be the winner.

And btw take a good look at the site of GW on different browsers. It's more than crap. An online software company in 2009 unable to build a decent official site. Shameful.

Quote:

Official forums also kill any chance of un-official fansites

Untrue. Plenty of evidence to contradict that statement out there.

Quote:

Guild Wars took the right approach when it came to fansites and forums. Instead of wasting money running a fansite with information, and an official forum that needs to be staffed, they instead spent that money on other areas that would actually improve the overall game experience.

Again, more speculation on subjects we have no clue. What qualifies you to make such statements about the financial state of ANet? Would that be expensive compared to the costs of maintaining the game server data centers for GW1?

And consider this: any online game company that cannot afford an official forum is probably not going to be around for long most probably.

Inde · Jul 24, 2009, 05:51 PM // 17:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mordakai

So, is the moral of this story is that the 10% of your user base that posts on forums do matter?

He doesn't have actual #'s. People like to make that up as they go along, changing it to support whatever point they want to make.

Mordakai · Jul 24, 2009, 05:58 PM // 17:58

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

He doesn't have actual #'s. People like to make that up as they go along, changing it to support whatever point they want to make.

But, it was an official forum, right? So, how hard would it be to get the actual numbers?

He knows the number of people playing his game.

He says he cross-referenced forum users to actual players (not sure how hard this would be to do... if you had a lot of people on your forum, that would be a full-time job!

In any case, it was amusing to me that he uses a "10%" number, and then goes on to argue why this small minority can kill a game. I just don't see it, I guess.

Inde · Jul 24, 2009, 06:06 PM // 18:06

Mordakai, I've read the comments on that post and there's a lot of them that are right. I respect Eric, I'm a big fan. But those who played AC2 didn't use their official forums. Why? Because they kept switching them out, the forum software was terrible. All of their developers and even their executive producer at the time used the fan forums to communicate. Why Eric is ignoring and denying that fact is beyond me. Their fan forums, despite what he is saying, were significantly larger then their official sites. Which means that a large portion of their game population indeed didn't bother with the official forums.

So his perspective is skewed on this. As I said though, a lot of people like to make up #'s to prove their point. On certain games you see a large percentage of the population use forums. On other games, not so much. It also depends on how the developers want to LOOK at their community.

Small example. Guild Wars has sold 6 million units. You see Guru's forum have almost 200,000 people signed up for them. Are either of these numbers in any way, shape or form accurate as to the # of people there actually is? Of course not. But what's going to prove the better point? If I'm talking to a shareholder, I'm going to proclaim and announce that 6 million number. When in reality when you take away all the dead accounts, the banned bots, those who bought multiple accounts, those who purchased more then 1 chapter... the # just starts to dwindle away. Same thing applies on Guru.

Developers guard their number of active accounts fiercely. This information is not given up. It's an industry matter, not related to the fans I would say. A developer is not going to go tossing around these numbers freely. Which makes Eric's statements even more suspect because his time with other gaming studio's has been limited. So he's drawing these percentages from a game where the majority of those who used forums, didn't use the official ones. His 10% remark is also quite funny when you consider they only had 5k forum posters. I can make an educated guess how many people viewed those forums every day and if that number is indeed correct... 10% of his player base used the forums... then Asheron's Call 2 was an even bigger failure then I thought in terms of # of players.

Martin Alvito · Jul 24, 2009, 06:14 PM // 18:14

The big problem with an official forum is that it IS a marketing tool.

In my view, the moderators here can sometimes be a little heavy-handed in editing to keep things sunny side up. I know why you do this, and it's not that I don't respect what you do. (If you want to experience GW anarchy, look at QQ forums. Awful.) Let's face it, though: the CMs have conditioned you well by ignoring the negative and rewarding the positive.

Official forums always end up taking the censorship a large step further. Since it's a marketing tool, the game company prefers to blunt criticism as much as possible without looking disingenuous. They don't want to censor like the Chinese government, but they don't want Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to have a strong voice either.

With an unofficial forum such as this one, I can say what needs to be said and have confidence that it will stick 95% of the time. That just never happens on an official forum, and the result is that a lot of players never hear a lot of views. And that's just the way the company likes it.

Mordakai · Jul 24, 2009, 06:19 PM // 18:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

I can make an educated guess how many people viewed those forums every day and if that number is indeed correct... 10% of his player base used the forums... then Asheron's Call 2 was an even bigger failure then I thought in terms of # of players.

Ahh, thank you, that is most informative.

lord of all tyria · Jul 24, 2009, 06:29 PM // 18:29

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

QQ forums. Awful.

The Team Quitter forums are full of quality threads.

Martin Alvito · Jul 24, 2009, 06:48 PM // 18:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by lord of all tyria

The Team Quitter forums are full of quality threads.

Love the sarcasm.

Truth is, there's good information over there. But there's hardly a thread that wouldn't be improved by quality moderation, and these days 90% of the posts are either banal, terse insults, pictures or simply devoid of meaningful content.

The result is that other than classic stickied posts, you have to sort through a mountain of dreck to get anything useful.

Mordakai · Jul 24, 2009, 06:57 PM // 18:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martin Alvito

The result is that other than classic stickied posts, you have to sort through a mountain of dreck to get anything useful.

Sounds like the internets.

Martin Alvito · Jul 24, 2009, 07:02 PM // 19:02

Right, but at least the internets comes equipped with search engines.

At the end of the day, the purpose of the moderator is to make the site usable, much like the search engine. Both filter useless data.