I agree with the negative comments on GW2G. I registered and spent about a week there browsing the threads, and felt discouraged. Too many arm chair commandos with big egos.
MMORPG.com at least allows for mostly free speech in terms of discussion, and does a pretty good job of filtering out the trash and allowing some heated debates.
I don't think ANet not having an official forum is a PR disaster, but it certainly does seem odd. In this day and age, most games have their own official forums, and people have come to expect that. ANet certainly needs a better median to speak with players directly than GW2G as well.
Yeah, we don't have any armchair game devs here either.
It's not a PR disaster because if the mods go full retard, anet can just say that guru is simply a fansite and they take no liability for the actions of the mods over there. It's smart on their part. Official forums usually turn out to be either heavily censored (mortal online) or a cesspool (most other games), so might as well leave that burden to people who really want to deal with moderating forums.
And yeah, guru is definitely hampering your free speech, man. Preach it. You have the right to make your internet voice heard on a privately-owned domain! (note: you don't)
If you think anet having official forums would create some kind of GW2 utopia forum (I'll be here all day guys) with no problems of its own, you're just playing yourself.
I agree with the negative comments on GW2G. I registered and spent about a week there browsing the threads, and felt discouraged. Too many arm chair commandos with big egos.
MMORPG.com at least allows for mostly free speech in terms of discussion, and does a pretty good job of filtering out the trash and allowing some heated debates.
I don't think ANet not having an official forum is a PR disaster, but it certainly does seem odd. In this day and age, most games have their own official forums, and people have come to expect that. ANet certainly needs a better median to speak with players directly than GW2G as well.
Yeah, we don't have any armchair game devs here either.
It's not a PR disaster because if the mods go full retard, anet can just say that guru is simply a fansite and they take no liability for the actions of the mods over there. It's smart on their part. Official forums usually turn out to be either heavily censored (mortal online) or a cesspool (most other games), so might as well leave that burden to people who really want to deal with moderating forums.
And yeah, guru is definitely hampering your free speech, man. Preach it. You have the right to make your internet voice heard on a privately-owned domain! (note: you don't)
If you think anet having official forums would create some kind of GW2 utopia forum (I'll be here all day guys) with no problems of its own, you're just playing yourself.
I'll take the potential problems of an official GW2 site to the *actual* problems we have now with Guru's politburo, any day of the week.
PR disaster not having offical forums? Not really, here's why:
If you don't like what Arenanet produces, then there isn't a convienent outlet to tell them that.
' Buy the box and tough luck if it wasn't what your expecting. We have you as a box sale and besides it's not like you have to pay every month, so why complain? Ypu don't like the game? Oh well put it down to experience, but ask us how many we've sold and 7 odd million sounds very impressive!!'
It's actually pretty clever, there's litterally no offical way of af gauging how a playerbase feels about the game and Arenanet can sit in there bubble and as long as people buy a copy alls good. Personally I think offical forums, for all their problems, are still a useful means to have a two way conversation with a MMOs community. Arenanet have played this card before and it looks like there still going down this road for better or worse...
This exactly, official forums IMO should only consist of tech support and customer service. Any other suggestions, complaints, rants, and what not can be spouted on fansites. Especially these days when flaming and trolling are a bigger part of overall internet culture than ever.
If Anet really wants to get player input they can add polls in game, thus having input from people that actually play rather than the minority of players that actually post on forums.
I don't see the issue, they have a simple policy and it was violated. The moderator was polite and straight to the point that it was a violation. It wasn't handled badly if you ask me and if you think it was then you've had ever little interaction with forum moderators.
I go to guru for the dev tracker. After following a few threads I got very irritated over there and just stopped reading anything beyond the dev tracker - which is real surprising as I read and post (though not a ton) here at mmorpg.com
I used to have a real problem with game companies not having their own forums but then I realized I really don't spend time at game forums beyond support and dev trackers now that wikis are so prevalent. If I have something to discuss I can find a fan forum somewhere and thankfully there are quite a few GW2 forums out there. Or I'll just come here:)
What I don't want to happen is Arena Net spending any time right now playing forum police - I want everyone including Martin to be testing, fixing, and polishing.
Guild Wars Guru censors posts often. If you post something a moderator disagrees with, it's ninja deleted. They say you can mail them and ask about it, but they don't respond. I've been using Guru since Guild wars 1 was out, and it's been the same. Send a mail to the Guild Wars team about it, I did. Guru shouldn't be their go to spot for posting because they censor so much discussion unless your opinions are exactly the same as the mods.
support@guildwars.com is where you want to mail them about it or tweet them about it @Guildwars2. If enough people raise a stink it should get their attention. Sick of guru mods censoring and having to go to that trash hole for news. No point in me posting there because it gets deleted.
Comments
Yeah, we don't have any armchair game devs here either.
It's not a PR disaster because if the mods go full retard, anet can just say that guru is simply a fansite and they take no liability for the actions of the mods over there. It's smart on their part. Official forums usually turn out to be either heavily censored (mortal online) or a cesspool (most other games), so might as well leave that burden to people who really want to deal with moderating forums.
And yeah, guru is definitely hampering your free speech, man. Preach it. You have the right to make your internet voice heard on a privately-owned domain! (note: you don't)
If you think anet having official forums would create some kind of GW2 utopia forum (I'll be here all day guys) with no problems of its own, you're just playing yourself.
I'll take the potential problems of an official GW2 site to the *actual* problems we have now with Guru's politburo, any day of the week.
So, anyone want to make a thread on GW2guru about how Anet should make an official site ? I just hope it doesn't get locked or something...
closed for a reason; read ToS and find out why
This exactly, official forums IMO should only consist of tech support and customer service. Any other suggestions, complaints, rants, and what not can be spouted on fansites. Especially these days when flaming and trolling are a bigger part of overall internet culture than ever.
If Anet really wants to get player input they can add polls in game, thus having input from people that actually play rather than the minority of players that actually post on forums.
I don't see the issue, they have a simple policy and it was violated. The moderator was polite and straight to the point that it was a violation. It wasn't handled badly if you ask me and if you think it was then you've had ever little interaction with forum moderators.
I go to guru for the dev tracker. After following a few threads I got very irritated over there and just stopped reading anything beyond the dev tracker - which is real surprising as I read and post (though not a ton) here at mmorpg.com
I used to have a real problem with game companies not having their own forums but then I realized I really don't spend time at game forums beyond support and dev trackers now that wikis are so prevalent. If I have something to discuss I can find a fan forum somewhere and thankfully there are quite a few GW2 forums out there. Or I'll just come here:)
What I don't want to happen is Arena Net spending any time right now playing forum police - I want everyone including Martin to be testing, fixing, and polishing.
Guild Wars Guru censors posts often. If you post something a moderator disagrees with, it's ninja deleted. They say you can mail them and ask about it, but they don't respond. I've been using Guru since Guild wars 1 was out, and it's been the same. Send a mail to the Guild Wars team about it, I did. Guru shouldn't be their go to spot for posting because they censor so much discussion unless your opinions are exactly the same as the mods.
support@guildwars.com is where you want to mail them about it or tweet them about it @Guildwars2. If enough people raise a stink it should get their attention. Sick of guru mods censoring and having to go to that trash hole for news. No point in me posting there because it gets deleted.