What resource are they denying people that isn't already offered somewhere else? We have tons of forums, tons of community, and they told us where we can directly contact them.
Same argument the Vanguard fanbois and McQuaid said when defending Vanguard not having them ( not calling you a fanboi, but the Vanguard ones, hoo boy ). And what happened? The fans got spread out so far on different sites, that noone had the correct info all at the same time, if ever. Then McQuaid decided one particular "fansite" would be the devs official posting place and others could get their info from them, which then allowed that "special" fansite to control what information was released to anyone outside of their members, as well as only info McQuaid approved. So those who knew where there were discrepancies, and called them out, were immediately banned. Any negative viewpoint was silenced so as to keep their "special" status. This was also the same thing that happened with PE making STO.net their official fansite for Star Trek: Online.
An official forum exists so that there can be an immediate place for the playerbase to communicate with the devs as well as the other players in regards to issues, questions, problems, whatever; instead of having to track down which site has the most recent info.
And like I said again, you can interact with the same players in game, or on your forum of choosing. You can interact with the devs right through the warhammeronline site. You lose nothing by not having an official forum. How many times has somebody made a complaint on the AoC forums and been banned or suspended? Now their only choice is to wait until the suspension is over to get back to the forums. They can moderate those forums as tough as they want because you have to follow a certain post etiquette on there.
Official forums are NOT needed, nor does the majority of the big named mmos community visit them. You lose out on nothing. Do you think a thread on mmorpg.com is going to make them create an official forum when they didn't have one for DAoC, and told us two years ago that there would not be on for WAR?
Nothing is going to change, and you don't miss out on anything.
I go to the official forums of any game for the following reasons; pretty much in that order:
1- I need information about the game. A good website can inform the players. You just need to ORGANISE this information in an intuitive way.
2- To feedback/suggest something. (positive) They can figure that by themselves or find other way to get it.
3- To explain/whine about something not acceptable in the game. (negative)
Do I care if a game has an official forum? Not really. Do I care if the website is not informative enought and there is no forum? It may make me quit the game.
So really, they need to developp a webpage...and a GOOD one. Much better than what they have for DAoC (laggy and not intuitive); althought not for me, since they don't want "real" PvE players atm. Prolly should have a database on their website with a search button, kinda like google for their game (think of the civilization game, the encyclopedia, but much better and more developped). Such a webpage would take at the very least a few months to do. :P
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
First off...I have to say I only made it through the first 2 pages of this.
All I have to say on the subject is that Mythic in my experience has always been good about getting information out and keeping the public informed, and the fansite forums, vn boards etc. have worked well enough for DAOC.
I'd much rather see the company spend its time and money on creating and maintaining the game rather than spend the time and resources to maintain and moderate a forum properly.
I agree with you Arkane_A in the fact that you can get some information from guildies, friends, 3rd party sites, etc. And no, I do not think WAR will change their mind because of a thread on MMORPG.com. However, my main point being that they are not going far out of their way to have something as simple as an official forum, it is not that much to ask for, its like getting a computer with no support manual, sure you can ask around for help but at least you know you have that manual that you can go back to incase you cant find the information you need, and you know in that manual will be support, contact information, etc. You may be able to get much information from friends, and other sources, but you still need that official forum that you can always count on. I believe a games website quality represents a lot about its game, the more professional, intact, detailed and fine tuned, the more likely you are going to be playing a quality game. However when you look at a lot of F2P websites its a joke and it looks abandoned.
EA has its own Support Website they always have and now that Mythic has joined with EA.. they'll have use of those forums for Technical support there's really no need to hire on extra staff to set up a website, maintain it, and moderate it. It just sounds like excess spending when its already available to them.
I'm not sure you've been following WAR very wel Dvsclarity. You actualy said they don't care what we say when that has not ever been the case. If it hadn't of been from vocal community concerns and then beta tester concerns we'd still be stuck with NO Keeps and a heavy focus on Instance PvP. Now we have keeps and Open PvP is more important than Instance PvP.
They've held countless events, question sessions, contests and the like through various fan sites that are actually directly linked from their own website. They care about the community and instead of forcing everyone into a box so the messages get lost they are letting the community build itself so there's many boxes and many voices and they're easily looked through.
Personally I've never found a reason for Official Forums. I played UO never used the official forum. Played EQ1 never used the official forum infact the Best most informative information about the game was always on other sites like Allakazam and EQCrafters. EQ2...I peeked at their official forums and it took FOREVER to find anything. WoW...same thing but about 5 times worse since you have to go through countless unnecssary cries for nerfing, buffing, changes etc etc that often made no sense. The few that did usually ended up getting deleted.
To me official forums is not a concern there is always a way to contact a company if there's a techincal concern. Forums are probably the worst place to do it. Phone, Email, or Chat are the two best methods...of course if your any sort of real gamer you rarely if ever need techincal help (unless its a complete fubar on the Dev's part).
Who gets support manuals with computers? I built mine...if I need support for a part there's usually a number somewhere but....honestly ... who the hell buys a computer out of a box these days?!
What resource are they denying people that isn't already offered somewhere else? We have tons of forums, tons of community, and they told us where we can directly contact them.
Same argument the Vanguard fanbois and McQuaid said when defending Vanguard not having them ( not calling you a fanboi, but the Vanguard ones, hoo boy ). And what happened? The fans got spread out so far on different sites, that noone had the correct info all at the same time, if ever. Then McQuaid decided one particular "fansite" would be the devs official posting place and others could get their info from them, which then allowed that "special" fansite to control what information was released to anyone outside of their members, as well as only info McQuaid approved. So those who knew where there were discrepancies, and called them out, were immediately banned. Any negative viewpoint was silenced so as to keep their "special" status. This was also the same thing that happened with PE making STO.net their official fansite for Star Trek: Online.
An official forum exists so that there can be an immediate place for the playerbase to communicate with the devs as well as the other players in regards to issues, questions, problems, whatever; instead of having to track down which site has the most recent info.
Zorvan, you and I are agreeing on way too many things lately. You're exactly right on why official forums exist. While official forums do have their problems, handing things over to fan sites are bad and have been proven so just like the examples you provided. I guess some companies don't learn from the mistakes of others.
I'm not sure how you can compare Sigil and Mythic....its sort of apples to oranges. Sigil was a completely new company being run by someone who was a 'Designer' but not a businessman in any sense of the word. Mythic on the other hand is being run by people who actually know what they're doing and have a rather well loved title under their name.
Most of all Sigil couldn't even properly communicate with its own staff the idea they could properly communicate with say their audience is laughable. If you can't talk to the people working for you and in the same building then you certaintly don't know how to talk to your customer base. Mythic on the other hand has been using this method for years without showing any overt favoritism to anyone. Though they do frequant Warhammer Alliance more than other sites for physical postings it doesn't seem to matter. The moment anything shows up there its on all the other fan sites. Many of the biggest WAR sites are all jointly working together but bringing their own unique flavor to the topic. Unless there's a catastrophic break down within Mythic such as Sigil's break down...I still consider this not a serious issue.
Though personally I plan to be playing the game..and if there's a problem with the game why bother whining to anyone when I can send a customer complaint through EA's Tech support forums or call them on the phone which is far more efficent then possibly waiting several hours or more for any sort of decent help that doesn't requirement constantly posting.
I'm not sure how you can compare Sigil and Mythic....its sort of apples to oranges. Sigil was a completely new company being run by someone who was a 'Designer' but not a businessman in any sense of the word. Mythic on the other hand is being run by people who actually know what they're doing and have a rather well loved title under their name. Most of all Sigil couldn't even properly communicate with its own staff the idea they could properly communicate with say their audience is laughable. If you can't talk to the people working for you and in the same building then you certaintly don't know how to talk to your customer base. Mythic on the other hand has been using this method for years without showing any overt favoritism to anyone. Though they do frequant Warhammer Alliance more than other sites for physical postings it doesn't seem to matter. The moment anything shows up there its on all the other fan sites. Many of the biggest WAR sites are all jointly working together but bringing their own unique flavor to the topic. Unless there's a catastrophic break down within Mythic such as Sigil's break down...I still consider this not a serious issue. Though personally I plan to be playing the game..and if there's a problem with the game why bother whining to anyone when I can send a customer complaint through EA's Tech support forums or call them on the phone which is far more efficent then possibly waiting several hours or more for any sort of decent help that doesn't requirement constantly posting.
Have you ever dealt with EA's customer support? Goodness knows I have and it's one of, if not the worst in the industry. I'm not saying EA/Mythic is going to be bad, but EA overall is horrid company when it comes to customer service.
So I was on warhammeralliance.com and was doing a bit of catching up when I came across this post by Mark Jacobs.. McQuaid Flashbacks anyone? Be prepared. Quote:
Folks,
The age we are living in is definitely a different one. I've gone from moderating forums with hundreds of people to seeing forums that are supposed to support games with millions of people. I wish it was as simple as set a few rules, apply them fairly, be honest with the players and then everything will be all right. It just isn't that way, no matter how much we would like it to be. Heck, even on our own beta forums we have people who refuse the follow the rules, break NDAs, ignore stickies, etc. and we do all the right things. No matter how well-intentioned the mods, unless a company is ready, willing and able to devote a ton of staff to the forums (24x7 mods, ruthless enforcement, limited topic creation ability, large staff), there are simply too many people to handle unless you have either an incredibly thick skin or so few available posting venues (as opposed to reading venues) to make it less than worthwhile. Scale is a wonderful and terrible thing and I'm sorry but you can't compare a game(s) that are small to games like WoW or even what we hope WAR will be in terms of number of subscribers. Also, the type of game has a direct effect on the style of the community. Let's face it, in a game like WAR or DAoC in which conflict between the races, sides, etc. is a main selling point, the forums for these games will be rather, hmm, enthusiastic. Lots of screaming and yelling, lots of false reports and tons of exaggeration. Whether it is WAR, WoW, DAoC or any other game in which RvR or PvP plays a major role, all these games share a very similar community. And I've seen more than enough from DAoC and WoW alone, to tell me that I am indeed right in my assessment. And I am happy to make a prediction here, when AoC launches, if they have official forums (I don't know their stance on it), they will have the same kind of behavior that the aforementioned games have had, count on it. If I'm wrong, I'll be also happy to admit it.
From my perspective, I'm not as concerned with the cost in terms of dollars (but the players should be) but rather what I will have to put my people through to run those forums. If WAR is as successful as we hope, we will have more users than any other MMORPG other than WoW. If that is true, we will be flooded by good users and bad. When things turn ugly, and they always do, my people will be insulted, yelled at, cursed at, threatened and told the vilest things possible. When we launched DAoC, one of my rules for our Customer Service Reps was that they didn't have to sit still and be abused by customers. I believe it is every customers' right to complain about the service but I also do not believe it is every customers' right to treat other human beings as people that they can dump on and treat in a manner that I know they wouldn't want to be treated themselves. I've said this before but unless you have worked the backend for one of these games, you do not really understand how ugly players can get when dealing with CMs/CSRs. I've seen more than my fair share of this ugliness directly and no amount of wishful thinking will make it otherwise. I care greatly about providing my customers with a great game but I also care deeply about my people, whether developer or CSR, and I don't want them to have to go through what I've seen happen both in other games as well as our own. While the percentage of people that are truly abusive is small, when you get to the kind of numbers we hope to have with WAR and given the type of game we are, that small percentage can suck up a lot of time and energy if you want to run forums properly. Just so you know, I would never want to have official forums that we ignore just so we could say we have official forums. That is, quite frankly, BS. As I've told our CM people when we talked about this issue, if we are going to do it, we would have to do it right.
Now, this doesn't mean we won't communicate to the community directly. Our Herald system was the best in the industry when we launched it for DAoC and we want to take it to the next level with WAR. We will have internal tester forums and we might have what we had with DAoC in terms of outside, specifically focused forums to help the players as well as to get additional feedback for us. However, even those had their share of false reports, exaggerations, etc. which diminish their usefulness and cost us time and money. We will also continue to post in places like these and make ourselves available to the community where we can. I want to reiterate that both official forums and internal forums, we have misspent a fair amount of time based on what users have sworn said happened, they saw, etc. At least with internal forums (and they can get heated at time), we know that the people there actually want to be there and help and not just post something to waste our time. And we've had our time wasted so often that it is ridiculous (even with QA sometimes you have to pass things on to devs quickly if it is potentially serious enough).
However, if you are looking for Mythic to provide wide-open official forums where people can threaten, curse, vent, etc., we have no intention of doing that now or in the future. There might be a hybrid solution but for now, I'm choosing to err on the side of caution.
Oh, BTW, I've said this before as well, I also post as myself, never an alias. I do this so people know who they are talking to and what I stand for, even if they think/know I'm wrong. I do believe if people posted under their own names the Internet would be a lot more polite. Anonymity is a very good thing at times but when it comes to issues like these, it isn't. It certainly is not true for everybody but it couldn't be much worse than it is and has become over the years. Twenty years of dealing with online communities has taught me many lessons, one of which is that most people (not all) will say things under an alias that they would never do under their real name or in person. I've lost track of the number of people I've met who on the boards/Internet were angry, vicious, unreasonable and nasty but in real-life, the exact opposite. Heck, even some people say that I'm a lot nicer in RL than I might appear to be at times here.
In closing, I do wish I believed that having official forums would be a great move for WAR. Even with the jerks/griefers/flamers/etc., I love online communities, I just cannot be convinced that in 2008, the right way to launch an MMORPG like WAR is with wide-open official forums.
Mark
This shows to me that Mythic dont care, its a Service Industry, they just don't care for the consumer. Obviously Jacobs felt the need to mouth off, again. I know we have gone over the official forum thing a few times, but this is new news, a new post addressing yet again negative connotations ~ rumblings in the public. What I want to know are: Why do developers expect that 3rd party communities will be more successful with no professional community managers, less official clout and overall less resources than the developers did? Fans will flock and give more credence to whatever fansite forums that they perceive gets the most of Mythic's staffs attention. What will Mythic do to balance this? Financial reasons why WAR will not have official forums of the type that other MMOs have - why is that now they sport the EA badge?, its different now to the Daoc times. There should be official forums because it is unfair to foist all the work onto the community. Why should the fans be made to carry that burden with little more than a 'thank you' from the Devs and the Community. Voluntarily labour is as exhausting as forced. So what happens when a server goes down?? anyone? ok, i'll answer. You post on the forums and then if the company is nice enough the community manager or someone will pop on and post a "sorry its going to be down a while" - thats cool now I know where I stand for the rest of the day. Having no offfical forums = me trapsing around the i-net for info, and then the developers / community representatives (who mark wants to wrap up in cotton wool) needs to find where a problem is... "If WAR is as successful as we hope, we will have more users than any other MMORPG other than WoW. If that is true, we will be flooded by good users and bad. When things turn ugly, and they always do, my people will be insulted, yelled at, cursed at, threatened and told the vilest things possible" - poor little baby, should you not explain in the contract of employment "welcome to the industry this is what will happen" or are "your people" socially inadequate and lack training? Is it me or cant the man take crititism? just like on the VN boards... Official forums give the customer a chance to voice their opinion formally to the company. I don't really see how much less work it would be to have to shift through a variety of different community unofficial forums to get a sense of what players want or think about the product. Maybe EAMythic just doesn't care about consumer opinions or wants but we'll have to see how well this decision plays out I guess. Forums and the internet is serious business but if you’re in the MMORPG business you have to take the good with the bad and that would be maintaining some sort of official forum on the flip side though, the Camelot Herald was pretty cool, I expect the War one to be too. The herald can deliever good amount of info, but the direction is all one way. Or I am lost in a sea of people wanting their own question asked in a 'grab bag' even today Camelot Herald still puts out noob info. These things could be covered just as well in one spot on official forums and then we as the community might feel we are contributing to it. Mythic has done an incredible job in providing information, especially podcasts, I just wonder though. Game launch comes, the masses will be lost. I still think the playerbase will want more interaction with the devs as opposed to a form submission. Don't forums really equate to customer service? When your customers have questions you want them to find the relevent information quickly. Does Walmart want their customers going to Target for customer service questions? Sure eventually sites like Thottbot and such will be up and running, but I still think relying on others to help your customers is lame. As is the excuse I'm worried about my staff having their feelings hurt by morons on the forums. Official forums are a non-issue as long as the game works out of the box on all computers, never has any bugs, and we have a community of players that don't mind helping each other. But Jacobs thinks that the game is going to get massive numbers, and it might just get them, but he is also scared of that population having the ability to speak to the company he works for. Because Mythic's Herald system works in DAoC (a very mature game) doesn't mean today it is still the best model. Lets also assume for a minute or two that Warhammer wont be the same size as DAoC. If this game stays the same size as DAoC then perhaps that system is fine. I guess. Example, when I bought a game and I installed it - the graphics were whacked. I posted my spec's on the support forum and said what my problem was. 5 mins later there was a post telling me the issue was with my vid card and linked a fix for it. Sorry, but a knowledge base won't help me there. And some filling out some form for something a K.B. doesnt have could mean waiting a long time. Well there wont be an official forum, lets hope it turns out ok then for all our sakes. Just my opinion, based on this latest post - there are good and bad points mark puts around but on the whole I think its a bad thing.
Of course they're in it for the money. How many times did Paul say in his podcasts that "[he] doesn't care, as long as we get loads of subscribers and make a lot of money!"...
This is the difference between DAOC and WAR.. which is why WAR is turning out to be a loser, unfortunately.
I agree with the poster, a mmo needs a offical forum source it's just a thing a game should have. If people took his rant to heart no offical forums at all would exist!!!! pure ridiculousness...
think about it Adobe; no you guys just complain on our forums by by...
microsoft; bye bye...
haha what a joke of cource offical forums is needed to get in contact and give a word on how you presive the game this is for the good of the game. Offical forums is a must.
That was one extremly good, wellspoken and informative letter. Loved it from start to finish. Forums take time, forums take resources, forums cost money and the people working there are forced to take tons upon tons of abuse just for doing thier job. Constant, 24/7 abuse, threats and piles of junk just for tyring to keep a forum civil, and what you can pick out of there that is even remotelly worth something, pure unbiased clear and correct information is like the famous needle in the haystack.
Now I understand a lot of people get aggravated over this. having worked with costumers myself, I know that for every two civil and nice costumers, there is one that thinks he is always right no matter how wrong he is, because he is a COSTUMER and that gives him the right to behave however he wish without anyone being allowed to stop him. In normal life this is normally a 50-70 year old bitter geezer without a real life to care about. On the internet, its normally a 12-30 year old bitter geezer without a real life to care about. And seriously... If there is ANY way to stop these junkmouths in the door, nothing but good can come out of it.
I applaud the frankness which he use when he post this message, I applaud the honesty in explaning the situation had how it affects them, and the strenght to take the hard decisions when needed. It will hurt them in some groups, they will loose the bitter geezers, or these COSTUMERS will find other venues to spread their posion about how their bitter opinion is soooooooo important, no matter how incorrect, biased and made up it really is.
As I said in DAOC and I say now... Good work Mythic. you will do a better job in a creative environment than a destructive one. And few things are more destructive than open forums.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force"
No official forums means that there will be unoffical forums.
And if Mythic thought offical forums are bad - then wait till they can't control any discussion about the game. Many players will be looking around to hear what other players are saying about the game before they buy it. No official forums means players will read more destructive posts about the game and less chance players buy it.
Mythic ppl are cowards. THey obviously don't have good enough game to even keep the beta testers not fuming on the Forums. And if so then it obviously is a real junk at this moment in time.
I will defently not buy this one right away. To many bad things have already been said and more will be added with no offical forums to build up mature talk about the game.
you're totally wrong - I find the unofficial WAR forums much more casual, newb-friendly and positive towards the game than ANY official game forum that I've seen so far. These "unofficial-official" forums are a great boon for the game's PR because they're much more mature and positive about the game than any "pressure-cooker" overcrowded zoo of an official forum.
reply to OP:
I strongly disagree with your view that Mythic is turning it's back on its customers.
The "unofficial" WAR forum that I frequent gets regular visits from the devs and it is so common that when MBJ (the lead designer, hey!) drops into a thread and joins a discussion no one really gets excited about it...
These "unofficial-official" threads are great for the dev-player relations because they're much more casual than official threads where for some reason the players feel that the devs are obliged to somehow "serve them" - demanding answers and being generally rude. This casual atmosphere gives you a much better communication between devs and players since they're basically equal in the eyes of the site - it is a neutral ground.
I'm really impressed with the level on communication on these sites as opposed to some official boards of some other games to be released soon. These official boards are overcrowded and usually ruled by the oldest or the loudest posters. To me they resemble overcrowded prisons with some inmates taking upon themselves to police them because hey, the prison is too small and there aren't enough guards. Also, there is nowhere to run to...
Unoficial boards give you variety and choice. If you don't like the atmosphere or the crowd on some board then fine - just look around and find a board that's more to your taste.
Imo MBJ has some good points and he's not BSing anybody. The system where you have a bunch of "sanctioned" but essentially independent boards works much much better in RL than this one huge official board everybody hates but cannot escape. This looked like a cop-out to me as well when I first heard about "no-official-board" policy but I changed my opinion 180 degrees through direct experience of how this system works.
Official info and tech support on the official site + links to and good relations info-wise with "unofficial-official" boards is all you really need.
As stated previous times before, and yet people not seeming to understand it, Mythic has left many venues open for communication to them. Their hope for WAR is that it will be bigger than any other MMO currently out. Basically, they are hoping to be the next big MMO, becoming the 2nd most populated, and overtime maybe even the most populated. As someone who used forums for all of the games I played, starting at launch until after I quit the game, official forums without active 24/7 CM/CSR supervision usually turn into a cesspool. The except to this were the less used forums.
One of the servers I played on in WoW was called Cenarius. The server had a lot of problems, and the forum for it barely had 100 Active Forum Posters. That means, people who post once a week regularly, if not more. So out of over 18,000 characters on the server, 100 were active on the forums. Out of those numbers, I'd say about 5 were just there to be rude. Others posted negative things as it came up. I do not claim to be above that, sense even I can be dragged down into an argumentative state in which I have called people idiot or another similar term for their lack of knowledge or understanding. As a whole though, the posters were close knit and usually friendly to eachothers, and to people who had questions (although not server transfers; queue times weren't fun).
Now, if you switched over to a class forum, general forums, or the public test forum, you were in for a lot of rude people, who posted things just to get attention, or to ask things which were completely pointless. There was a total lack of attention from the customers about even the most common things such as stickies.
Overall, I don't really care that there is not an official forum. There are the above stated avenues to get into contact with Mythic which have been proven to be effective. I will miss the sense of community within my realm that I had in WoW, but I can easily talk to people I meet via characters. Also, I'm one of those WoW people who seem to have a DAoC mindset, from what I've been told. I believe in showing respect even to the people who killed me as long as they show it. For instance, if it's a clean fight (they wait until I kill a mob, or vise versa on a pvp server), do the normal emotes (bow/beckon/etc), and then respect the resurrection aspect of the game (get back to full life and mana for a rematch), then I have absolutely no problem switching over to talk to them, and maybe even roll a character in their guild as an alt because I know they are a player with integrity.
In closing, to the OP:
Why do 90% (guessing) of your posts seem to be complaining, down-talking, browbeating, and just general whining about WAR?
Originally posted by forthelulz no forums just means that they know there will be reasons for player bitching shortly after launch and they don't want to hear it. no money from me.
So because you can't sync your complaining in with other people, on an official forum, you're not going to play a game? That is so say, in the off chance that you are actually unhappy about the game? So you're prejudging what the game will be like, before actually playing it.
Personally, you, and the other people like minded to you, just seem to be the typical petty bunch of forum posters who are usually the cause of companies not wanting an official forum. Mythic has stated, time and time again, that if you have a suggestion/comment/etc to the game that you have multiple ways of getting that statement to them. You directly telling someone at mythic you don't like their game isn't constructive, helpful, nor even worth the time to listen to. That is not to say that you are a useless, and lack importance as a person, but that your opinion in no way helps the company of that game.
Therefore, what is the point of adding something which is useless at the cost of the customer's money, when that money can be better spent fixing known issues submitted by helpful people in order to increase the games potential?
no forums just means that they know there will be reasons for player bitching shortly after launch and they don't want to hear it. no money from me.
I'm glad you'll be bitching some other game then.
Every game has reasons to "bitch" about. Some people just seem to like it more than others and just love to have other people forced to listen to them "bitch". That's why all the official forums I know sooner-or-later degenerate into asylums for egomaniacs and whiners.
So because you can't sync your complaining in with other people, on an official forum, you're not going to play a game? That is so say, in the off chance that you are actually unhappy about the game? So you're prejudging what the game will be like, before actually playing it. Personally, you, and the other people like minded to you, just seem to be the typical petty bunch of forum posters who are usually the cause of companies not wanting an official forum. Mythic has stated, time and time again, that if you have a suggestion/comment/etc to the game that you have multiple ways of getting that statement to them. You directly telling someone at mythic you don't like their game isn't constructive, helpful, nor even worth the time to listen to. That is not to say that you are a useless, and lack importance as a person, but that your opinion in no way helps the company of that game. Therefore, what is the point of adding something which is useless at the cost of the customer's money, when that money can be better spent fixing known issues submitted by helpful people in order to increase the games potential?
good way to tow the line! support a company that takes your money and makes certain you cannot complain about problems with the product!
any game good enough to play deserves a forum! so what if people complain? that isn't the problem. the problem is when they are mismanaged or the devs actually take design notes from crackpot posters.
besides in the article they say it has to do with the cost...because a game where nearly 1 million tried to get in beta will have money problems...
So much fuzz about nothing. Official forums is where people go when they want to vent their immaturities because they are temporarily bored of the game
$OE lies list http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0 " And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Simply put, no official forums = none of my money on this WoW clone.
I don't get it. Why would I want an official forum? I was never on any official forum for EQ, EQ2, DAoC, CoH, Shadowbane, etc.
Why would I want one for WAR? If the game is any good you don't spend much time, if any, on forums, you just play the game.
Forums with walk throughs for quests, or advice on character builds are good, but other than that I'm spending time on the forums if the game is good. Who wants to read a bunch of bitching about "my class was nerfed, that class is over powered, etc." ?
So because you can't sync your complaining in with other people, on an official forum, you're not going to play a game? That is so say, in the off chance that you are actually unhappy about the game? So you're prejudging what the game will be like, before actually playing it. Personally, you, and the other people like minded to you, just seem to be the typical petty bunch of forum posters who are usually the cause of companies not wanting an official forum. Mythic has stated, time and time again, that if you have a suggestion/comment/etc to the game that you have multiple ways of getting that statement to them. You directly telling someone at mythic you don't like their game isn't constructive, helpful, nor even worth the time to listen to. That is not to say that you are a useless, and lack importance as a person, but that your opinion in no way helps the company of that game. Therefore, what is the point of adding something which is useless at the cost of the customer's money, when that money can be better spent fixing known issues submitted by helpful people in order to increase the games potential?
good way to tow the line! support a company that takes your money and makes certain you cannot complain about problems with the product!
any game good enough to play deserves a forum! so what if people complain? that isn't the problem. the problem is when they are mismanaged or the devs actually take design notes from crackpot posters.
besides in the article they say it has to do with the cost...because a game where nearly 1 million tried to get in beta will have money problems...
"working as intended" for EA !
meh, if the game sucks then lack of official forums won't not stop this from being known...
Mythic is a game development company and they don't want to deal with forum moderation so they're relegating it to third parties.... The other option is to have EA do it. This is something which you, being an EA-hater and all, will have to agree isn't such a good idea if you want good relations with your customers.
So, Mythic chose the middle path - a bunch of volunteer semi-official self-moderated forums. This seems much more democratic than "police states" some of the official forums have become.
The model worked very well for DAoC and I don't see how this in any way restricted customers from expressing their negative opinions and making them widely known.
Remember, you can't argue with the boss - if it's the same party moderating the forum as well as being the other side of the argument then there is no space for any kind of real discussion. Reliance on third-party forums gives Mythic an opportunity to meet their players on an even ground rather than playing the overbearing "you can say whatever you like... as long as I like it" which is the usual fare on the majority of official forums.
Not having Official forums will actually be good, then I won't stop by realize how retarded and fucked up the community is, and then not want to play for fear I might catch their stupid. Also with the Activision/Blizzard merger you can pretty much bet the official forums will eithier go by the wayside or become heavily moderated.
Comments
An official forum exists so that there can be an immediate place for the playerbase to communicate with the devs as well as the other players in regards to issues, questions, problems, whatever; instead of having to track down which site has the most recent info.
And like I said again, you can interact with the same players in game, or on your forum of choosing. You can interact with the devs right through the warhammeronline site. You lose nothing by not having an official forum. How many times has somebody made a complaint on the AoC forums and been banned or suspended? Now their only choice is to wait until the suspension is over to get back to the forums. They can moderate those forums as tough as they want because you have to follow a certain post etiquette on there.
Official forums are NOT needed, nor does the majority of the big named mmos community visit them. You lose out on nothing. Do you think a thread on mmorpg.com is going to make them create an official forum when they didn't have one for DAoC, and told us two years ago that there would not be on for WAR?
Nothing is going to change, and you don't miss out on anything.
I go to the official forums of any game for the following reasons; pretty much in that order:
1- I need information about the game. A good website can inform the players. You just need to ORGANISE this information in an intuitive way.
2- To feedback/suggest something. (positive) They can figure that by themselves or find other way to get it.
3- To explain/whine about something not acceptable in the game. (negative)
Do I care if a game has an official forum? Not really. Do I care if the website is not informative enought and there is no forum? It may make me quit the game.
So really, they need to developp a webpage...and a GOOD one. Much better than what they have for DAoC (laggy and not intuitive); althought not for me, since they don't want "real" PvE players atm. Prolly should have a database on their website with a search button, kinda like google for their game (think of the civilization game, the encyclopedia, but much better and more developped). Such a webpage would take at the very least a few months to do. :P
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
First off...I have to say I only made it through the first 2 pages of this.
All I have to say on the subject is that Mythic in my experience has always been good about getting information out and keeping the public informed, and the fansite forums, vn boards etc. have worked well enough for DAOC.
I'd much rather see the company spend its time and money on creating and maintaining the game rather than spend the time and resources to maintain and moderate a forum properly.
I agree with you Arkane_A in the fact that you can get some information from guildies, friends, 3rd party sites, etc. And no, I do not think WAR will change their mind because of a thread on MMORPG.com. However, my main point being that they are not going far out of their way to have something as simple as an official forum, it is not that much to ask for, its like getting a computer with no support manual, sure you can ask around for help but at least you know you have that manual that you can go back to incase you cant find the information you need, and you know in that manual will be support, contact information, etc. You may be able to get much information from friends, and other sources, but you still need that official forum that you can always count on. I believe a games website quality represents a lot about its game, the more professional, intact, detailed and fine tuned, the more likely you are going to be playing a quality game. However when you look at a lot of F2P websites its a joke and it looks abandoned.
EA has its own Support Website they always have and now that Mythic has joined with EA.. they'll have use of those forums for Technical support there's really no need to hire on extra staff to set up a website, maintain it, and moderate it. It just sounds like excess spending when its already available to them.
I'm not sure you've been following WAR very wel Dvsclarity. You actualy said they don't care what we say when that has not ever been the case. If it hadn't of been from vocal community concerns and then beta tester concerns we'd still be stuck with NO Keeps and a heavy focus on Instance PvP. Now we have keeps and Open PvP is more important than Instance PvP.
They've held countless events, question sessions, contests and the like through various fan sites that are actually directly linked from their own website. They care about the community and instead of forcing everyone into a box so the messages get lost they are letting the community build itself so there's many boxes and many voices and they're easily looked through.
Personally I've never found a reason for Official Forums. I played UO never used the official forum. Played EQ1 never used the official forum infact the Best most informative information about the game was always on other sites like Allakazam and EQCrafters. EQ2...I peeked at their official forums and it took FOREVER to find anything. WoW...same thing but about 5 times worse since you have to go through countless unnecssary cries for nerfing, buffing, changes etc etc that often made no sense. The few that did usually ended up getting deleted.
To me official forums is not a concern there is always a way to contact a company if there's a techincal concern. Forums are probably the worst place to do it. Phone, Email, or Chat are the two best methods...of course if your any sort of real gamer you rarely if ever need techincal help (unless its a complete fubar on the Dev's part).
Who gets support manuals with computers? I built mine...if I need support for a part there's usually a number somewhere but....honestly ... who the hell buys a computer out of a box these days?!
An official forum exists so that there can be an immediate place for the playerbase to communicate with the devs as well as the other players in regards to issues, questions, problems, whatever; instead of having to track down which site has the most recent info.
Zorvan, you and I are agreeing on way too many things lately. You're exactly right on why official forums exist. While official forums do have their problems, handing things over to fan sites are bad and have been proven so just like the examples you provided. I guess some companies don't learn from the mistakes of others.
I'm not sure how you can compare Sigil and Mythic....its sort of apples to oranges. Sigil was a completely new company being run by someone who was a 'Designer' but not a businessman in any sense of the word. Mythic on the other hand is being run by people who actually know what they're doing and have a rather well loved title under their name.
Most of all Sigil couldn't even properly communicate with its own staff the idea they could properly communicate with say their audience is laughable. If you can't talk to the people working for you and in the same building then you certaintly don't know how to talk to your customer base. Mythic on the other hand has been using this method for years without showing any overt favoritism to anyone. Though they do frequant Warhammer Alliance more than other sites for physical postings it doesn't seem to matter. The moment anything shows up there its on all the other fan sites. Many of the biggest WAR sites are all jointly working together but bringing their own unique flavor to the topic. Unless there's a catastrophic break down within Mythic such as Sigil's break down...I still consider this not a serious issue.
Though personally I plan to be playing the game..and if there's a problem with the game why bother whining to anyone when I can send a customer complaint through EA's Tech support forums or call them on the phone which is far more efficent then possibly waiting several hours or more for any sort of decent help that doesn't requirement constantly posting.
But we still get the drama.
Have you ever dealt with EA's customer support? Goodness knows I have and it's one of, if not the worst in the industry. I'm not saying EA/Mythic is going to be bad, but EA overall is horrid company when it comes to customer service.
Of course they're in it for the money. How many times did Paul say in his podcasts that "[he] doesn't care, as long as we get loads of subscribers and make a lot of money!"...
This is the difference between DAOC and WAR.. which is why WAR is turning out to be a loser, unfortunately.
I agree with the poster, a mmo needs a offical forum source it's just a thing a game should have. If people took his rant to heart no offical forums at all would exist!!!! pure ridiculousness...
think about it Adobe; no you guys just complain on our forums by by...
microsoft; bye bye...
haha what a joke of cource offical forums is needed to get in contact and give a word on how you presive the game this is for the good of the game. Offical forums is a must.
That was one extremly good, wellspoken and informative letter. Loved it from start to finish. Forums take time, forums take resources, forums cost money and the people working there are forced to take tons upon tons of abuse just for doing thier job. Constant, 24/7 abuse, threats and piles of junk just for tyring to keep a forum civil, and what you can pick out of there that is even remotelly worth something, pure unbiased clear and correct information is like the famous needle in the haystack.
Now I understand a lot of people get aggravated over this. having worked with costumers myself, I know that for every two civil and nice costumers, there is one that thinks he is always right no matter how wrong he is, because he is a COSTUMER and that gives him the right to behave however he wish without anyone being allowed to stop him. In normal life this is normally a 50-70 year old bitter geezer without a real life to care about. On the internet, its normally a 12-30 year old bitter geezer without a real life to care about. And seriously... If there is ANY way to stop these junkmouths in the door, nothing but good can come out of it.
I applaud the frankness which he use when he post this message, I applaud the honesty in explaning the situation had how it affects them, and the strenght to take the hard decisions when needed. It will hurt them in some groups, they will loose the bitter geezers, or these COSTUMERS will find other venues to spread their posion about how their bitter opinion is soooooooo important, no matter how incorrect, biased and made up it really is.
As I said in DAOC and I say now... Good work Mythic. you will do a better job in a creative environment than a destructive one. And few things are more destructive than open forums.
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
No official forums means that there will be unoffical forums.
And if Mythic thought offical forums are bad - then wait till they can't control any discussion about the game. Many players will be looking around to hear what other players are saying about the game before they buy it. No official forums means players will read more destructive posts about the game and less chance players buy it.
Mythic ppl are cowards. THey obviously don't have good enough game to even keep the beta testers not fuming on the Forums. And if so then it obviously is a real junk at this moment in time.
I will defently not buy this one right away. To many bad things have already been said and more will be added with no offical forums to build up mature talk about the game.
to the above poster:
you're totally wrong - I find the unofficial WAR forums much more casual, newb-friendly and positive towards the game than ANY official game forum that I've seen so far. These "unofficial-official" forums are a great boon for the game's PR because they're much more mature and positive about the game than any "pressure-cooker" overcrowded zoo of an official forum.
reply to OP:
I strongly disagree with your view that Mythic is turning it's back on its customers.
The "unofficial" WAR forum that I frequent gets regular visits from the devs and it is so common that when MBJ (the lead designer, hey!) drops into a thread and joins a discussion no one really gets excited about it...
These "unofficial-official" threads are great for the dev-player relations because they're much more casual than official threads where for some reason the players feel that the devs are obliged to somehow "serve them" - demanding answers and being generally rude. This casual atmosphere gives you a much better communication between devs and players since they're basically equal in the eyes of the site - it is a neutral ground.
I'm really impressed with the level on communication on these sites as opposed to some official boards of some other games to be released soon. These official boards are overcrowded and usually ruled by the oldest or the loudest posters. To me they resemble overcrowded prisons with some inmates taking upon themselves to police them because hey, the prison is too small and there aren't enough guards. Also, there is nowhere to run to...
Unoficial boards give you variety and choice. If you don't like the atmosphere or the crowd on some board then fine - just look around and find a board that's more to your taste.
Imo MBJ has some good points and he's not BSing anybody. The system where you have a bunch of "sanctioned" but essentially independent boards works much much better in RL than this one huge official board everybody hates but cannot escape. This looked like a cop-out to me as well when I first heard about "no-official-board" policy but I changed my opinion 180 degrees through direct experience of how this system works.
Official info and tech support on the official site + links to and good relations info-wise with "unofficial-official" boards is all you really need.
As stated previous times before, and yet people not seeming to understand it, Mythic has left many venues open for communication to them. Their hope for WAR is that it will be bigger than any other MMO currently out. Basically, they are hoping to be the next big MMO, becoming the 2nd most populated, and overtime maybe even the most populated. As someone who used forums for all of the games I played, starting at launch until after I quit the game, official forums without active 24/7 CM/CSR supervision usually turn into a cesspool. The except to this were the less used forums.
One of the servers I played on in WoW was called Cenarius. The server had a lot of problems, and the forum for it barely had 100 Active Forum Posters. That means, people who post once a week regularly, if not more. So out of over 18,000 characters on the server, 100 were active on the forums. Out of those numbers, I'd say about 5 were just there to be rude. Others posted negative things as it came up. I do not claim to be above that, sense even I can be dragged down into an argumentative state in which I have called people idiot or another similar term for their lack of knowledge or understanding. As a whole though, the posters were close knit and usually friendly to eachothers, and to people who had questions (although not server transfers; queue times weren't fun).
Now, if you switched over to a class forum, general forums, or the public test forum, you were in for a lot of rude people, who posted things just to get attention, or to ask things which were completely pointless. There was a total lack of attention from the customers about even the most common things such as stickies.
Overall, I don't really care that there is not an official forum. There are the above stated avenues to get into contact with Mythic which have been proven to be effective. I will miss the sense of community within my realm that I had in WoW, but I can easily talk to people I meet via characters. Also, I'm one of those WoW people who seem to have a DAoC mindset, from what I've been told. I believe in showing respect even to the people who killed me as long as they show it. For instance, if it's a clean fight (they wait until I kill a mob, or vise versa on a pvp server), do the normal emotes (bow/beckon/etc), and then respect the resurrection aspect of the game (get back to full life and mana for a rematch), then I have absolutely no problem switching over to talk to them, and maybe even roll a character in their guild as an alt because I know they are a player with integrity.
In closing, to the OP:
Why do 90% (guessing) of your posts seem to be complaining, down-talking, browbeating, and just general whining about WAR?
no forums just means that they know there will be reasons for player bitching shortly after launch and they don't want to hear it. no money from me.
http://www.soesucks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=10
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Waiting for: GW2
*thumbs up*: GW, Eve(, WoW)
*thumbs down*: MO, GA, FE
So because you can't sync your complaining in with other people, on an official forum, you're not going to play a game? That is so say, in the off chance that you are actually unhappy about the game? So you're prejudging what the game will be like, before actually playing it.
Personally, you, and the other people like minded to you, just seem to be the typical petty bunch of forum posters who are usually the cause of companies not wanting an official forum. Mythic has stated, time and time again, that if you have a suggestion/comment/etc to the game that you have multiple ways of getting that statement to them. You directly telling someone at mythic you don't like their game isn't constructive, helpful, nor even worth the time to listen to. That is not to say that you are a useless, and lack importance as a person, but that your opinion in no way helps the company of that game.
Therefore, what is the point of adding something which is useless at the cost of the customer's money, when that money can be better spent fixing known issues submitted by helpful people in order to increase the games potential?
I'm glad you'll be bitching some other game then.
Every game has reasons to "bitch" about. Some people just seem to like it more than others and just love to have other people forced to listen to them "bitch". That's why all the official forums I know sooner-or-later degenerate into asylums for egomaniacs and whiners.
any game good enough to play deserves a forum! so what if people complain? that isn't the problem. the problem is when they are mismanaged or the devs actually take design notes from crackpot posters.
besides in the article they say it has to do with the cost...because a game where nearly 1 million tried to get in beta will have money problems...
"working as intended" for EA !
http://www.soesucks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=10
So much fuzz about nothing. Official forums is where people go when they want to vent their immaturities because they are temporarily bored of the game
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
I don't get it. Why would I want an official forum? I was never on any official forum for EQ, EQ2, DAoC, CoH, Shadowbane, etc.
Why would I want one for WAR? If the game is any good you don't spend much time, if any, on forums, you just play the game.
Forums with walk throughs for quests, or advice on character builds are good, but other than that I'm spending time on the forums if the game is good. Who wants to read a bunch of bitching about "my class was nerfed, that class is over powered, etc." ?
good way to tow the line! support a company that takes your money and makes certain you cannot complain about problems with the product!any game good enough to play deserves a forum! so what if people complain? that isn't the problem. the problem is when they are mismanaged or the devs actually take design notes from crackpot posters.
besides in the article they say it has to do with the cost...because a game where nearly 1 million tried to get in beta will have money problems...
"working as intended" for EA !
meh, if the game sucks then lack of official forums won't not stop this from being known...
Mythic is a game development company and they don't want to deal with forum moderation so they're relegating it to third parties.... The other option is to have EA do it. This is something which you, being an EA-hater and all, will have to agree isn't such a good idea if you want good relations with your customers.
So, Mythic chose the middle path - a bunch of volunteer semi-official self-moderated forums. This seems much more democratic than "police states" some of the official forums have become.
The model worked very well for DAoC and I don't see how this in any way restricted customers from expressing their negative opinions and making them widely known.
Remember, you can't argue with the boss - if it's the same party moderating the forum as well as being the other side of the argument then there is no space for any kind of real discussion. Reliance on third-party forums gives Mythic an opportunity to meet their players on an even ground rather than playing the overbearing "you can say whatever you like... as long as I like it" which is the usual fare on the majority of official forums.
Not having Official forums will actually be good, then I won't stop by realize how retarded and fucked up the community is, and then not want to play for fear I might catch their stupid. Also with the Activision/Blizzard merger you can pretty much bet the official forums will eithier go by the wayside or become heavily moderated.
Forums hurt more than help any game.