The idea of not having official forums is simply a way of not dealing with the massive criticism that they must have known would have been unleashed when they released an unfinished product. It smacks of running for cover. Not having official forums is so blatantly dysfunctional (they are, after all, the main means of communication and feedback between the devs and the player community), that the defenses for doing that can't really be taken seriously. It's clearly a sign of problems, and just one of many with this title.
I can struggle threw the issues, as I’m having fun, but official forums, as you said, are very necessary tools.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
Turbine, A company I can't really stand as much as SOE has an offical forum for LOTO, plus if you pre-order it's 9.95 a month.Now exactly how is Vanguard providing more value without having a board and charging 14.95?
I just find it a total cop out, that they do not have an offical forum with the current state of the game polish.
Turbine, A company I can't really stand as much as SOE has an offical forum for LOTO, plus if you pre-order it's 9.95 a month.Now exactly how is Vanguard providing more value without having a board and charging 14.95?
I just find it a total cop out, that they do not have an offical forum with the current state of the game polish.
Most games have official forums. As far as attitudes on those forums, "You reap what you sow."
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
Most games do have centralized forums, but just because most do, doesnt mean that it's the right thing, or the only way to do things either. Different is just that, different.
What I get tired of seeing is that Sigil doesnt have forums because they knew it was an unfinished product, and they wanted to avoid the complaints that they'd see. That's pretty much garbage, simply because this was their plan for quite awhile. Suggesting they were doing this to avoid backlash they knew that they'd have a few years ago is fairly ridiculous. If they were 100% sure this was going to happen, they oughta pick up some lottery tickets, and head to Vegas and lay some money on all aspects of the Super Bowl, because they can obviously read the future.
Both Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot have had very successful experiences without having official forums, so saying that its a must have simply isnt true. Both those games have proved that simply isnt the case, however, there is one pretty big difference, which IS an issue.
Ultima Online did not release without an official forum, it farmed out the O-Forum duty to Stratics after the game had been live for YEARS. Communities were built, and information was readily available. Stratics was simply a fan site that the vast majority of UO'ers were familiar with, and had used, and many of them were already visiting the site, it was a very natural transition.
Vanguard in it's current state, has so many changes, that it's hard to keep track of. Not only that, there is just an utter lack of information in general about the game, and what someone experienced in beta, might have changed. People feel obligated to look in multiple sites because there just isnt a deep knowledge of the game itself.
No official forums works, there are very solid examples that they do. Where Vanguard erred, was not providing official forums, for at least a period after release, so communities could forum, and there would be a central repository for information in the early stages of the game, especially while it's going thru all these changes. During this period, the fansites/affiliates would have sorted themselves out, and the community would have found it's favorites, and some would have stayed, and some gone away. (Does anyone really expect all the fansites to stay alive, and to see Dev's checking, and responding to all of them? Heck no. (http://www.cuffslinks.com/vanguardsoh/)
What Sigil is trying to do, can work, and it could be a good idea, they just forgot what made it successful with other games, and they omitted the early steps. While I like the game, and still think the no-official forums can work, I really think they blundered in a massive way by not offering additional ways for it's player base to communicate early on, during the most critical stage of the game.
Most games do have centralized forums, but just because most do, doesnt mean that it's the right thing, or the only way to do things either. Different is just that, different. What I get tired of seeing is that Sigil doesnt have forums because they knew it was an unfinished product, and they wanted to avoid the complaints that they'd see. That's pretty much garbage, simply because this was their plan for quite awhile. Suggesting they were doing this to avoid backlash they knew that they'd have a few years ago is fairly ridiculous. If they were 100% sure this was going to happen, they oughta pick up some lottery tickets, and head to Vegas and lay some money on all aspects of the Super Bowl, because they can obviously read the future. Both Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot have had very successful experiences without having official forums, so saying that its a must have simply isnt true. Both those games have proved that simply isnt the case, however, there is one pretty big difference, which IS an issue. Ultima Online did not release without an official forum, it farmed out the O-Forum duty to Stratics after the game had been live for YEARS. Communities were built, and information was readily available. Stratics was simply a fan site that the vast majority of UO'ers were familiar with, and had used, and many of them were already visiting the site, it was a very natural transition. Vanguard in it's current state, has so many changes, that it's hard to keep track of. Not only that, there is just an utter lack of information in general about the game, and what someone experienced in beta, might have changed. People feel obligated to look in multiple sites because there just isnt a deep knowledge of the game itself. No official forums works, there are very solid examples that they do. Where Vanguard erred, was not providing official forums, for at least a period after release, so communities could forum, and there would be a central repository for information in the early stages of the game, especially while it's going thru all these changes. During this period, the fansites/affiliates would have sorted themselves out, and the community would have found it's favorites, and some would have stayed, and some gone away. (Does anyone really expect all the fansites to stay alive, and to see Dev's checking, and responding to all of them? Heck no. (http://www.cuffslinks.com/vanguardsoh/) What Sigil is trying to do, can work, and it could be a good idea, they just forgot what made it successful with other games, and they omitted the early steps. While I like the game, and still think the no-official forums can work, I really think they blundered in a massive way by not offering additional ways for it's player base to communicate early on, during the most critical stage of the game. A for idea and effort, F for implementation.
Bottom line... The People in the industry that care about community, support forums, the ones who do not, want to shut off that line of communication.
It has been discussed over and over again in the industry circles.
Reasons to not have an official forum: (As told by Gama sutra and many many panels of industry vets)
1. Money, from hosting, to moderation.
2. The feedback is irrelevant to the company, or developers.
3. It stops bad press, by decentralism of information about the product as told FROM THE USERS PERSPECTIVE.
And finaly, IMO im tired of looking at 20 sites.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
Ultima Online did have official forums, until the time when the game had aged so long, that the community had shrunk, and had ALL READY coalesced at the stratics site.
Keep in mind, most of the links above, are from original developers of UO and many, many other titles.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
Facts are that UO moving their official fourms off to Stratics was a good thing, and the UO community still thrives there. What I see as the best part of it, is that it's a semi-neutral territory for both the gamer, and the dev. The articles you cited, and yes I did read them, I dont feel get to the heart of the issue for the most part.
If the dev's had an active and healthy relationship with their player base, I dont for a second think it would matter what was done as far as forums. I think detractors point to the old SWG forums as a example quite often. They were in general a giant gripe fest, where no matter what the player base said, they never felt the like the devs had their hands on the pulse of what the player actually wanted from the game. To me, that's not a result of the official forums, and you could make a case that it's a result of Lucas Arts, but the point I'm driving at, is how poorly the dev's communicated with the playerbase.
In UO, the shift to Stratics, which many players used, and was already Dev inhabited was a solid thing. People who wanted to gripe could do so, without fear that they were looking at in insta ban, and if that DID happen, it wasnt EA that was doing it, it was Stratics. That middle man, I think allowed for a conduit of better communication between players and developer. The bigger question though is a little tougher. Why did they need that in the first place? My answer is a little more simple, it's because the Dev's, and EA failed with their own boards.
There are pro's and con's to both, and I fully admit that I'm not a fan of what Sigil did. I understand the concept, I appreciate the concept, but they absolutely blew the implementation. To me, what they did was set themselves up to fail with this aspect of communication, and that's killer. If they felt the need to go to 3rd party forums, for whatever reason, they blew it.
If you look at the ones that succeeded, and yes, some did succeed, they succeed for a multitude of reasons and Sigil has NONE of those going for it.
1. Strong fanbase, fansite is already thiving, and is perhaps already the premier info site for your game.
2. Many communities are already formed, and as such, they have already adopted said fansite as a web home.
3. For whatever reason, the dev's already jeopardized the relationship with players on their OWN forums.
4. Game was in release for a reasonable amount of time.
Vanguard doesnt have any of those things, nor do it's affiliate site's. It causes confusion, it forces fans to look all over, and not know what to expect. It alienates people without even having that dev contact, and puts off possible users. It's saved other games, because it's shown that publishers seek out other ways or different ways to communicate with their fan base when they've failed with their own forums/plans/whatever. Like I said, I support the idea, and 6 months, a year from now, or more than that it COULD have been a good thing, Sigil tried to build a building with zero foundation for this idea.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
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?"
Opinion:
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.
I agree with you 100% This is an issue that needs to be adressed.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
My guess would be SOe station forum is where they want you to goto,
There are no SOE forums. Only the technical support ones, they will lock anything that discuses the game, and no developers post there.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
Since they close their forums, MMORPG.com population about double if you check at the online and guests stats.
Which results in a heavy attention turned toward Vanguard...which I will remember everyone, enforced raiding at 20% in the endgame, which is just as bad as EQ in the final result, as it will bring the same conclusion, the same consequences...changing the intensity of pain doesn't really improve it, pain is pain.
With raid-free servers, Vanguard would have gotten that little extra it would have require to be successful, without them, it is missing the train. Why would a casual accept "lack of instancing, CR, heavy grind" and so on? A raid-free promise would have been enough.
And as me staying out of Vanguard forums, kinda hard, you guys keep spamming the recent area up to the point Vanguard has as many as 80% of the new messages...so you will have to deal with the like of me; remembering as often as needed that raid-enforcement is the worst aspect of Vanguard.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Since they close their forums, MMORPG.com population about double if you check at the online and guests stats.
Which results in a heavy attention turned toward Vanguard...which I will remember everyone, enforced raiding at 20% in the endgame, which is just as bad as EQ in the final result, as it will bring the same conclusion, the same consequences...changing the intensity of pain doesn't really improve it, pain is pain.
With raid-free servers, Vanguard would have gotten that little extra it would have require to be successful, without them, it is missing the train. Why would a casual accept "lack of instancing, CR, heavy grind" and so on? A raid-free promise would have been enough.
And as me staying out of Vanguard forums, kinda hard, you guys keep spamming the recent area up to the point Vanguard has as many as 80% of the new messages...so you will have to deal with the like of me; remembering as often as needed that raid-enforcement is the worst aspect of Vanguard.
Im not sure what any of that has to do with this posting... but, um, thanks for posting!?
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
---------- "Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
You hate the game that much, or do you feel that people reading your post == attention?
why does his concern = dislike of the game. clearly he enjoys the game or he wouldn't vehemently be discussing the issue at all. people like you seem to idolize sigil and the devs. like everything they do is just so amazing and original. in the end, they are just another bloke like you or me. thing is they had an idea that was potentially very profitable. has anyone stopped to consider vanguard may have been made and it's concept developed at all simply as a business move? if you were one of the original devs for EQ wouldn't you flaunt it with your next title? honestly, sigil is just a mythical super team, playing off a game that everyone has very fond memories of that no game has ever captured. they aren't magic.
don't get me wrong, I enjoy vanguard. and I'm not saying sigil is made up of money grubbers who don't care about making a fun game as if I know that for fact or believe it. but, if they are just money grubbers it's clear why they'd cut corners like they are (high subscription rate and less customer support). conversely, if they care about the game and the community, then really why have they cut corners? laziness or because they had to, probably.
I'm kind of leaning towards laziness, myself. honestly, the myth and the legend that is brad and his super team does most of the work for them. that's probably why they can get away with 15 dollars a month subscription costs, and not have to deal with an official forums. sounds like a pretty sweet deal from a business perspective. and people like Andir here are the reason they can get away with it.
as has been said several times, the OP is dead on with this. they should have an official forum or at least their own newsfeed, and hire someone to maintain it. look at the camelot herald (<3 grab bag). perfect. daoc doesn't have official forums, but it does have a newsfeed that is updated constantly (which can be RSS fed to fansites). they also have a good support site and knowlegebase. everything you need is there. and there is none of the forum bs to deal with that I'm sure is the reason sigil decided against the forums. but they need something. it's important. do something, definitely lower their subscription cost. afterall, their game is so far good, but it isn't god.
So, i had a diplomacy issue. Tell us what issue might be strange but maybe some people playing the game could answer it would have saved you the time to make this topic.
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. Have you tried asking ingame first?
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.Still not asked ingame?
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.How about ingame did you ask there?
What was that resolution you ask? "Keep an eye on the affiliate sites for the resolution to this problem".
"Sweet, witch one?"
Opinion:
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$. Easy uncheck :$2.99 - Vanguard Station Players Bundle Package Shirking off the responsibility of maintaining of community forums is sad. “Because we don’t want to deal with it” is a lame excuse. Having to search 20 fan sites of debatable quality is frustrating, not to mention they all have speculative information, and some times contradict.Thats forums for ya, try and find ingame people playing and understanding the game they might be able to help you with your problem. Trying to pass this off as an “Easer more reliable solution” is just completely unsupportive of your customer base, your wasting our time, because it is not.Its abvious you that is waisting time to search all those forums, like i said you should have started this topic with the problem you have with dilpo. Now its like i say " if have this problem with something but can't find any help for it" duh like people can smell what "something" is.Again no problem if people feel the need to bash something but atleast give some more details so it might be considered a constructive topic instead of just another whine topic.
I went to silky venom.... Other than it not being able to load correctly (They have since switched hosting)... There was a thread on the subject.
I look at it, it didn’t have a resolution.
Went to Ten-ton-hammer. There’s a thread.... No resolution, no dev post.
Went to 4 other sites.... Each had a thread on this issue. No resolution, no dev post... Save for the most under populated site.
It had a thread, and a dev post.
Isn’t this great? I wasted an hour looking for a development post about a largely common issue, only to find ONE (1) dev post on the subject.... on the least visited site of the 20 they have listed.
What was that resolution you ask? "Keep an eye on the affiliate sites for the resolution to this problem".
"Sweet, witch one?"
Opinion:
I just want to say, if they are not going to provide the same services as other mmo's, then they need to lower my subscription by 2$. 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.
If you have a diplomacy question best site to go to would be http://www.vgtact.com/ . Its down today though together with silky venom. If you dont find your answer there, I doubt you will in another forum, just post your question and wait for answer.
Of course the amusing part is that SV has been down since yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I think most teh affiliates do an excellent job with SV being one of the better ones. I just have always viewed the "Official Forums" as my 1st stop for game information, then the third party sites if need be.
Now my question is this; with SV being a major spot for game information for VG as well as Dev interaction, what happens if that information is lost or the servers are down for an extended period of time? Obviously, Sigil has no responsibility to correct the issue as it's not their site.
In the end, were all told to go to 3rd party affiliate sites to interact with game issues, sites that of course have no support from Sigil. The end result of course being left in the dark even with support forums when things go wrong. I really hope someone at Sigil comes to realize that maybe keeping your eggs in someone else's basket maybe is not that great of an idea.
Copied from the SV Main Page:
Welcome to Silky Venom, the most comprehensive source for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes information and community!
04/20/2007 @ 9:00pm PDT - We are currently experiencing some technical (possibly hardware-related) failures and thus will be down temporarily while these problems are corrected. We do not have an ETA at this time as we have not yet identified the root cause.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!
What makes you think it would have been any differen if there was an official forum? Do you think that same lone developer would have posted any differently? Or do you think a resolution would have been found already?
an official forum, which has 2-10 paid employees that are mods. where the devs and the rest of the team post, make announcements, etc. where those paid employees (forum mods) can walk down the hall and/or email the appropriate dev/team member to get answers to specific questions? official forums where the person whose job it is to make diplomacy function and be fun, would probably also be directly given the questions about HIS/HER department?
no, i see no possible way in the known universe that this could be more effective than dozens of fansites who, at best, take random guesses at what is wrong, or just ignore the question altogether and where a dev might post once on a board someplace in reply to a problem and that solution never be communicated to the other two dozen sites.
nope, i don't see how anyone, anywhere, at any time, could possibly think that official forums would be better.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
So, i had a diplomacy issue. Tell us what issue might be strange but maybe some people playing the game could answer it would have saved you the time to make this topic. i like the color game, i want red.
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. Have you tried asking ingame first? k, the first remark i sort of blew off, but two in a row? you're just trolling at htis point.
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.Still not asked ingame?what server is he on? i've tried several different servers and if i run into 4 people anyplace, it's like, that's a crazy high population area.
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.How about ingame did you ask there?why would anyone ingame know anything? unless you've never played an mmo before, ingame is NOT the place you want to be asking a LOT of questions. that's why they have forums. you ask questions that no one knows the answer to, ingame, and people will just make stuff up to shut you up. maybe you should buy a clue ingame?
What was that resolution you ask? "Keep an eye on the affiliate sites for the resolution to this problem".
"Sweet, witch one?"
Opinion:
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$. Easy uncheck :$2.99 - Vanguard Station Players Bundle Packagethat makes the price drop down to like $11/month? if not, then you obviously are still trolling, are have no idea what this guy is saying. 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.Thats forums for ya, try and find ingame people playing and understanding the game they might be able to help you with your problem. ingame? why exactly is it that you keep thinking you're going to get answers ingame from random people who may know nothing at all, vs on a forum, where if people post stupidity, they'll get flamed and the wrong answer will be corrected? you seriously need to get off this ingame kick. 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.Its abvious you that is waisting time to search all those forums, sort of like the time i've lost from my life reading "ask ingame" a bunch of times from you like i said you should have started this topic with the problem you have with dilpo. Now its like i say " if have this problem with something but can't find any help for it" duh like people can smell what "something" is.because you know more about this game than the couple of dozen official fansites where devs post? and you know more than the dev that posted about the problem? seriously? you do?Again no problem if people feel the need to bash something but atleast give some more details so it might be considered a constructive topic instead of just another whine topic.it could be said that your repetitive nonhelpful post is just another form of whining. maybe you should ask ingame if people have problems and you could solve them ingame for them for their ingame problems but only while they're ingame.
get it?
edited to add: i just want to point out that the op DID state he finally found a dev post on the issue. so, what aspect of this game are you more of an expert on than one of the game's devs? you seem to think that random people ingame, and yourself on this board, would know more and give a better answer than one of the game's devs?
seriously?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Any problem I have had in game I have been able to resolve by asking my guild or politely asking people in the chat channels in game. Would this method have worked in your case Bloodworth?
I doubt it, because only nubcakes ask questions in general chat without first researching on the web to solve their own problems and the OP does not sound like a nubcake.
And that is regardless of the question which was related to diplomacy that not everyone does,etc,etc,etc.
Exactly, Some people like being self reliant in the sense they try to look up the answers themselves instead of appearing helpless ingame.
There is no legitimate excuse for not hosting official forums. The reason they chose not to is to avoid the massive complaints they knew were coming because of releasing an incomplete buggy product.
Comments
I can struggle threw the issues, as I’m having fun, but official forums, as you said, are very necessary tools.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
I just find it a total cop out, that they do not have an offical forum with the current state of the game polish.
Most games have official forums. As far as attitudes on those forums, "You reap what you sow."
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Most games do have centralized forums, but just because most do, doesnt mean that it's the right thing, or the only way to do things either. Different is just that, different.
What I get tired of seeing is that Sigil doesnt have forums because they knew it was an unfinished product, and they wanted to avoid the complaints that they'd see. That's pretty much garbage, simply because this was their plan for quite awhile. Suggesting they were doing this to avoid backlash they knew that they'd have a few years ago is fairly ridiculous. If they were 100% sure this was going to happen, they oughta pick up some lottery tickets, and head to Vegas and lay some money on all aspects of the Super Bowl, because they can obviously read the future.
Both Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot have had very successful experiences without having official forums, so saying that its a must have simply isnt true. Both those games have proved that simply isnt the case, however, there is one pretty big difference, which IS an issue.
Ultima Online did not release without an official forum, it farmed out the O-Forum duty to Stratics after the game had been live for YEARS. Communities were built, and information was readily available. Stratics was simply a fan site that the vast majority of UO'ers were familiar with, and had used, and many of them were already visiting the site, it was a very natural transition.
Vanguard in it's current state, has so many changes, that it's hard to keep track of. Not only that, there is just an utter lack of information in general about the game, and what someone experienced in beta, might have changed. People feel obligated to look in multiple sites because there just isnt a deep knowledge of the game itself.
No official forums works, there are very solid examples that they do. Where Vanguard erred, was not providing official forums, for at least a period after release, so communities could forum, and there would be a central repository for information in the early stages of the game, especially while it's going thru all these changes. During this period, the fansites/affiliates would have sorted themselves out, and the community would have found it's favorites, and some would have stayed, and some gone away. (Does anyone really expect all the fansites to stay alive, and to see Dev's checking, and responding to all of them? Heck no. (http://www.cuffslinks.com/vanguardsoh/)
What Sigil is trying to do, can work, and it could be a good idea, they just forgot what made it successful with other games, and they omitted the early steps. While I like the game, and still think the no-official forums can work, I really think they blundered in a massive way by not offering additional ways for it's player base to communicate early on, during the most critical stage of the game.
A for idea and effort, F for implementation.
"It may be true that having forums is just a big money sink that provides a hellish pit of whining and contradictory drivel. But you should have them anyway, because it is evidence that you are actually listening. It is the equivalent of posting your phone number, directly comparable to meeting someone’s gaze across a table. It’s inviting people to come over to your place to catch up on what’s going on in their lives. Telling people you’ll plant bugs in their houses instead (aka “monitor the fansites”) is not really an acceptable substitute, though you should of course feel free to go visit from time to time."
or
The Virtues As Applied to Community Management
And a little.
MMORPG Developers still haven’t figured out that crazy beast, the customer.
yet another opinion..
The Vocal Minority II
humm... see a trend?
Community building
Bottom line... The People in the industry that care about community, support forums, the ones who do not, want to shut off that line of communication.
It has been discussed over and over again in the industry circles.
Reasons to not have an official forum: (As told by Gama sutra and many many panels of industry vets)
1. Money, from hosting, to moderation.
2. The feedback is irrelevant to the company, or developers.
3. It stops bad press, by decentralism of information about the product as told FROM THE USERS PERSPECTIVE.
And finaly, IMO im tired of looking at 20 sites.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Ultima Online did have official forums, until the time when the game had aged so long, that the community had shrunk, and had ALL READY coalesced at the stratics site.
Keep in mind, most of the links above, are from original developers of UO and many, many other titles.----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
In some cases it's agree to disagree.
Facts are that UO moving their official fourms off to Stratics was a good thing, and the UO community still thrives there. What I see as the best part of it, is that it's a semi-neutral territory for both the gamer, and the dev. The articles you cited, and yes I did read them, I dont feel get to the heart of the issue for the most part.
If the dev's had an active and healthy relationship with their player base, I dont for a second think it would matter what was done as far as forums. I think detractors point to the old SWG forums as a example quite often. They were in general a giant gripe fest, where no matter what the player base said, they never felt the like the devs had their hands on the pulse of what the player actually wanted from the game. To me, that's not a result of the official forums, and you could make a case that it's a result of Lucas Arts, but the point I'm driving at, is how poorly the dev's communicated with the playerbase.
In UO, the shift to Stratics, which many players used, and was already Dev inhabited was a solid thing. People who wanted to gripe could do so, without fear that they were looking at in insta ban, and if that DID happen, it wasnt EA that was doing it, it was Stratics. That middle man, I think allowed for a conduit of better communication between players and developer. The bigger question though is a little tougher. Why did they need that in the first place? My answer is a little more simple, it's because the Dev's, and EA failed with their own boards.
There are pro's and con's to both, and I fully admit that I'm not a fan of what Sigil did. I understand the concept, I appreciate the concept, but they absolutely blew the implementation. To me, what they did was set themselves up to fail with this aspect of communication, and that's killer. If they felt the need to go to 3rd party forums, for whatever reason, they blew it.
If you look at the ones that succeeded, and yes, some did succeed, they succeed for a multitude of reasons and Sigil has NONE of those going for it.
1. Strong fanbase, fansite is already thiving, and is perhaps already the premier info site for your game.
2. Many communities are already formed, and as such, they have already adopted said fansite as a web home.
3. For whatever reason, the dev's already jeopardized the relationship with players on their OWN forums.
4. Game was in release for a reasonable amount of time.
Vanguard doesnt have any of those things, nor do it's affiliate site's. It causes confusion, it forces fans to look all over, and not know what to expect. It alienates people without even having that dev contact, and puts off possible users. It's saved other games, because it's shown that publishers seek out other ways or different ways to communicate with their fan base when they've failed with their own forums/plans/whatever. Like I said, I support the idea, and 6 months, a year from now, or more than that it COULD have been a good thing, Sigil tried to build a building with zero foundation for this idea.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
We need official forums and an official site.
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
There are no SOE forums. Only the technical support ones, they will lock anything that discuses the game, and no developers post there.
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Well...
Since they close their forums, MMORPG.com population about double if you check at the online and guests stats.
Which results in a heavy attention turned toward Vanguard...which I will remember everyone, enforced raiding at 20% in the endgame, which is just as bad as EQ in the final result, as it will bring the same conclusion, the same consequences...changing the intensity of pain doesn't really improve it, pain is pain.
With raid-free servers, Vanguard would have gotten that little extra it would have require to be successful, without them, it is missing the train. Why would a casual accept "lack of instancing, CR, heavy grind" and so on? A raid-free promise would have been enough.
And as me staying out of Vanguard forums, kinda hard, you guys keep spamming the recent area up to the point Vanguard has as many as 80% of the new messages...so you will have to deal with the like of me; remembering as often as needed that raid-enforcement is the worst aspect of Vanguard.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
----------
"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
Agree with OP.
This hurts new players who want to get in to it when they have to search over 20 sites.
why does his concern = dislike of the game. clearly he enjoys the game or he wouldn't vehemently be discussing the issue at all. people like you seem to idolize sigil and the devs. like everything they do is just so amazing and original. in the end, they are just another bloke like you or me. thing is they had an idea that was potentially very profitable. has anyone stopped to consider vanguard may have been made and it's concept developed at all simply as a business move? if you were one of the original devs for EQ wouldn't you flaunt it with your next title? honestly, sigil is just a mythical super team, playing off a game that everyone has very fond memories of that no game has ever captured. they aren't magic.
don't get me wrong, I enjoy vanguard. and I'm not saying sigil is made up of money grubbers who don't care about making a fun game as if I know that for fact or believe it. but, if they are just money grubbers it's clear why they'd cut corners like they are (high subscription rate and less customer support). conversely, if they care about the game and the community, then really why have they cut corners? laziness or because they had to, probably.
I'm kind of leaning towards laziness, myself. honestly, the myth and the legend that is brad and his super team does most of the work for them. that's probably why they can get away with 15 dollars a month subscription costs, and not have to deal with an official forums. sounds like a pretty sweet deal from a business perspective. and people like Andir here are the reason they can get away with it.
as has been said several times, the OP is dead on with this. they should have an official forum or at least their own newsfeed, and hire someone to maintain it. look at the camelot herald (<3 grab bag). perfect. daoc doesn't have official forums, but it does have a newsfeed that is updated constantly (which can be RSS fed to fansites). they also have a good support site and knowlegebase. everything you need is there. and there is none of the forum bs to deal with that I'm sure is the reason sigil decided against the forums. but they need something. it's important. do something, definitely lower their subscription cost. afterall, their game is so far good, but it isn't god.
If you have a diplomacy question best site to go to would be http://www.vgtact.com/ . Its down today though together with silky venom. If you dont find your answer there, I doubt you will in another forum, just post your question and wait for answer.
Now my question is this; with SV being a major spot for game information for VG as well as Dev interaction, what happens if that information is lost or the servers are down for an extended period of time? Obviously, Sigil has no responsibility to correct the issue as it's not their site.
In the end, were all told to go to 3rd party affiliate sites to interact with game issues, sites that of course have no support from Sigil. The end result of course being left in the dark even with support forums when things go wrong. I really hope someone at Sigil comes to realize that maybe keeping your eggs in someone else's basket maybe is not that great of an idea.
Copied from the SV Main Page:
Welcome to Silky Venom, the most comprehensive source for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes information and community!
04/20/2007 @ 9:00pm PDT - We are currently experiencing some technical (possibly hardware-related) failures and thus will be down temporarily while these problems are corrected. We do not have an ETA at this time as we have not yet identified the root cause.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience!
~ The Silky Venom Staff
an official forum, which has 2-10 paid employees that are mods. where the devs and the rest of the team post, make announcements, etc. where those paid employees (forum mods) can walk down the hall and/or email the appropriate dev/team member to get answers to specific questions? official forums where the person whose job it is to make diplomacy function and be fun, would probably also be directly given the questions about HIS/HER department?
no, i see no possible way in the known universe that this could be more effective than dozens of fansites who, at best, take random guesses at what is wrong, or just ignore the question altogether and where a dev might post once on a board someplace in reply to a problem and that solution never be communicated to the other two dozen sites.
nope, i don't see how anyone, anywhere, at any time, could possibly think that official forums would be better.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
edited to add: i just want to point out that the op DID state he finally found a dev post on the issue. so, what aspect of this game are you more of an expert on than one of the game's devs? you seem to think that random people ingame, and yourself on this board, would know more and give a better answer than one of the game's devs?
seriously?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
And that is regardless of the question which was related to diplomacy that not everyone does,etc,etc,etc.
Exactly, Some people like being self reliant in the sense they try to look up the answers themselves instead of appearing helpless ingame.
There is no legitimate excuse for not hosting official forums. The reason they chose not to is to avoid the massive complaints they knew were coming because of releasing an incomplete buggy product.