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Sigh. Another thought on GW2G and official forums.
Dream_Chaser
Member Posts: 1,043
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/taxonomic-error-hyenas-are-not-t30784.html
So that's another reason, there, why I'm not so fussy over GW2G (which is British slang for saying that I'm not so much of a fan).
The moderators just aren't very good at what they do, and they're kind of out of control. Guide a discussion, sure, but hard lock it? That just makes Kvinna look like an arse. The thing is is she could have said "We would prefer it if you didn't use this site for petititions, but we can set up a poll if you desire to gauge the popularity of this idea. But only comment if you have something to add to the debate." and left it at that.
The thing is is that the post wouldn't even have happened at all on an official forums, since usually they support petitions because it's helpful with discovering which ideas are popular wtih users. It gives each person a chance to thumb up/down an idea and say why. I know GW2G are unnecessarily stricter than that, but I think that they just frequently take their moderation way, way too far. Why shut a thread like this down and not let people talk about it?
I don't understand that.
I think that with the current moderation style of GW2G, if they're the only 'forum for everything' for GW2, then it's going to end in a PR disaster for ArenaNet. I'm genuinely worried about that. I mean, think about it... they're dealing with small numbers now, but if there's no official forums at launch, they're going to lose control, flip a massive shit, and more than a few people there are going to break and run around madly deleting/locking threads. And that's going to be a PR disaster.
I believe, that because of their moderation style, they don't have what it takes to support an open forum of ideas and discussion with that many people involved.
But that's just my opinion.
But I was really depressed to find that that thread was locked for such a stupid reason. I'm interested in both taxonomy and game design myself, and I would have loved to have thrown in my two cents, as would a lot of people. This style of moderation just isn't healthy for a community. I'm sorry, but that's what I think.
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In case the thread gets deleted, here's a copy of the page I saved and uploaded to Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/?ob4b6xgq950o8cx
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I can genuinely understand locking threads for valid reasons: Like, after 20 pages of debate, things are still raging and no one has gotten anywhere, or after a 100 pages of calm talking the thread needs to be locked because otherwise the forum software will fall over. Or duplicated threads, I can understand that, too. There are plenty of real, reasonable reasons to lock a thread. But I find that often GW2G has ridiculous reasons for locking threads, and it continues to nag at the back of my mind.
Comments
I do agree with you I'm not a fan of the policy the issue wasn't really a big deal to me but I imagine it could be to someone else. I would say though the op of said thread could have just gotten a discussion thread on the topic, avoided the word description, and the devolopers could have seen how important it was to people based on how many people engaged in the discusion.
People will sign a petition just to help someone elses cause. But to actually engage in a meaniful discussion on said topic would require a person to have some feeling on the topic at hand for the most part atleast.
I completely agree.
Arenanet have saved themselves the hassle of running a pre-release official forum for GW2, but they really need to consider offering some sort of official forums for release. Even if it was just server specific forums and tech support, it would be better than nothing.
GW2G has it's own wierd agenda. Sometimes I think it all about doing what they think earns them brownie points with Arenanet; other times I think that they have just decided what they want GW2 to be like and they just squash anything that they personally disagree with, so that views contrary to theirs won't be heard or considered by Arenanet; yet other times I think some of the mods there are just filling some void in their lives by going on what ever power trip their moderation powers allow them.
A lot of good players hang out there and do their best to contribute to meaningful discussion, but GW2G seems less concerned about maintaining quality than homogenizing discussions to filter out anything they just don't particularly agree with.
Within their rights to do so, but I expect more from the place that is painted as the defacto "unofficial-official forums" for GW2.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
Nothing new mate. Seen a lot of good and interesting threads going in the garbage for no reason there.
Do we have any official info regarding Anet making an official website ? I think that would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and I can't find a reason why it shouldn't be made after the release of the game. I've heard a lot of comlaints about GWguru and I think that a professional official page is a must for such a big game like GW2.
I think they wont make their forums. Dont know if its to save money or any different reason.
Smaller forums to be sure, but growing rapidly lately and much more laidback atmosphere/moderation.
http://www.guildwars2forum.com/forum.php
EDIT: I agree official forums could be nice, but I typically don't touch guru with a 10-foot pole. That place is full of megalomaniacs with mod tags.
The warnings they hand out are simply ridiculous about 90% of the time.
I had several players come to my defense when I brought up a good point on a topic and the moderator said "does not contribute to discussion" when it clearly did, he just didn't like my answer -_-
/endrant
Well...let me point out that it does very clearly say in GW2G's ToS that petitions aren't allowed. And that post was very clearly a petition. I don't think Kvinna was in the wrong at all when she locked the thread...she was just enforcing the ToS in a very clear manner.
So I think your gripe is not with the moderators gone out of control locking threads, but with the policy itself. I'm not sure why they don't allow petitions but I'm sure they have a reason. Maybe they just clog up the forums by always staying on top because of people signing them. I mean, I have nothing against petitions, but I don't know if a discussion forum is the best place for them. They do kind of hijack discussion.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
WHat I don't like (which is something Mythic did as well) is pawning their forums off on a third party such as this, helping advertise those forums, by more or less exclusively posting there, yet then turn around and take a hands off approach when customers are treated badly on those forums.
When a Company runs their own forum, they are responsible for how their customers are treated, which means they have to take a calculated apporach to silencing bad press.
When instead they give that responsibility to a fan oriented mouth piece, they ensure that silence while they can sit back and say, "sorry guys, it's not in our hands how (insert) runs their services." Excusing themselves of being a part of the problem, there's no accountability with this.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I agree...
Everyone knows that GW2G are the de facto official forums...if not the de jure official forums. The devs post there pretty much exclusively, but sidestep any customer service issues since the forums are run by a third party.
I mean, on one hand, it conserves resources for the devs. But on the other hand, it means we, the customer, typically wind up with worse service.
It's not a huge deal to me, but I do recognize it for what it is.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
There's a whole lot of goosestepping going on over there. It's why I stopped participating.
On a brighter note, I'm pretty confident that there is going to be an official forum soon. Martin Kerstein was asked about it point blank in a Gamebreaker.tv interview and he gave the kind of coy response that pretty much confirms it to me, even though he was officially noncommittal.
I'm curious, how much does making and maintaining the forum cost ? Some people list money as a reason for the lack of an official forum, but I just don't see why should a B2P based game that will probably have a cash shop need to save money in that way. Any info would be welcome.
The original GW didn't have official forums and in turn it allowed for fansites to thrive over the past 6 years. Personally I am glad that ANet won't have official GW2 forums so that it allows Guild Wars 2 fansites and Guild Wars 2 forums such as GW2HQ to thrive as well.
Having run multiple fansites for different games, they all die over time because 99% of the player base is sitting on the official forums...so what's the point of having fansites then? Know what I mean?
Agree wholeheartedly.
I think it should be a bit embarrassing for ArenaNet to be using Guru as, more or less, their official forums, while absolving themselves of any responsibility for the way it's managed.
I imagine that they might well have had plans for their own forums for quite a while but were content to put it on the backburner and just use Guru as a temporary one. It makes sense with development still plowing ahead at full steam. I don't think that's going to fly when release day comes around and paying customers are being treated like trash. It's not an image they can afford to be associated with.
I'm going to go out on a limb here (and may soon be proven wrong), but I think we may see the launch of the official forum along with the start of next beta. Beta forums are a great tool to get feedback from players. If they have those up, they might just put up public ones alongside it. And didn't they just hire Rubi Bayer a few weeks ago? That might possibly be because of a plan to open their forums shortly.
Well, hope springs eternal.
Well, I'd suggest moving on to another less regulated area of conversation (simplistic answer I know). I'm sure there are true fans of the game working on projects that will garner them legitimacy in the eyes of the community.
That particular forum looks like garbage anyway.
If they don't have official forum how do they know what the player base wants or what is (possibly) wrong with the game..AKA how do we communicate with the developers?
Or do they plan to read the unofficial forums instead.
Well they will have support forums (GW already has them).
General forums just turn into bitching forums at any official forum setup anyway. I'm not really a game forum fan. I feel the community should form its own fansite forums to discuss the game. No one will be happy with whatever the decide though.
I can tell, judging by some of the latest posts by the ArenaNet CM, that they aren't enthusiastic about having an official forum. I suppose you can say so what and tell them to suck it up. But I pretty much guarantee that if there are official forums and there is that bitching that you see on forums like SWTOR and WoW that you won't see any developer interaction there. They might close down threads but that's about it.
Devs read and respond on Guru. Personally i can't stand that site, from it's layout to its mods.
Someone hook me up with a better GW2 forum, thanks.
I think the solution is to have the official forums be very focused. No General Forums at all, just very focused subforums. General Discussion is always where the treads come off on the official forums. I've noticed that official forums that exclude them have a lot less negativity and ire than those that do.
With the system of Home Server and the ability to freely visit other servers for PvE, I really want to see official server forums. Official tech support forums and news forums are a given as well. How much more can be added while maintaining a focused, positive atmosphere and with out nixing fan forums? I don't know, but there are some things that certainly should be handled officially.
I fully expect GW2 to sell over 2.5 million copies in the first six months. GW2G can handle thousands of fans, but millions? I don't think so. Hundreds of Server forums? Once again, I don't think so.
With GW2 pushing a game design that looks to teach players to be social again, support of healthy server communities will require a robust system server forums. I'd hate to see the game fall flat in this regard because someone thought it would save some money and some hassle to offload those responsibilities to third party sites.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
^
I would agree with that. Maybe by not having a general forum then a lot of that BS that goes in other game forums won't occur.
A) what Creslin said.
the mod even pointed where the topic should have gone.
Sure it would have been nicer to move the thread or its content, but oh, well. And apparently, none of the signers or the OP felt strongly enough about the issue to create a new thread in the proper place yet.
I don't see what your problem with it is? She said they don't allow petitions and if you want to suggest this put it in the suggestions forum and not the general discussion. I'm all for that as basically this is a suggestion to ANet and not a general discussion topic.
PR disaster not having offical forums? Not really, here's why:
If you don't like what Arenanet produces, then there isn't a convienent outlet to tell them that.
' Buy the box and tough luck if it wasn't what your expecting. We have you as a box sale and besides it's not like you have to pay every month, so why complain? Ypu don't like the game? Oh well put it down to experience, but ask us how many we've sold and 7 odd million sounds very impressive!!'
It's actually pretty clever, there's litterally no offical way of af gauging how a playerbase feels about the game and Arenanet can sit in there bubble and as long as people buy a copy alls good. Personally I think offical forums, for all their problems, are still a useful means to have a two way conversation with a MMOs community. Arenanet have played this card before and it looks like there still going down this road for better or worse...
This looks like a job for....The Riviera Kid!
I agree with the negative comments on GW2G. I registered and spent about a week there browsing the threads, and felt discouraged. Too many arm chair commandos with big egos.
MMORPG.com at least allows for mostly free speech in terms of discussion, and does a pretty good job of filtering out the trash and allowing some heated debates.
I don't think ANet not having an official forum is a PR disaster, but it certainly does seem odd. In this day and age, most games have their own official forums, and people have come to expect that. ANet certainly needs a better median to speak with players directly than GW2G as well.
The moderation on that site is horrible.
I remember shortly after the Sylvari reveal (same day I think), there was a thread discussing and comparing the races. Posts that did not favour the Sylvari or mentioned how they did not like their new design were stealth deleted. I remember a post along the lines of "Norn are the best designed race IMO, not a fan of the new Sylvari" got deleted too. It... amazed me.
Things like that happen on the site quite often. There are far too many mods and some really abuse their position. This isn't generalizing the mods as some of them do their job well. But...
I'd like an official forum only because Guru just isn't fit for the otherwise main forums. It really shouldn't have to be.