Profile: Tierce
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• • After using AoC's forums, no official forums for WAR seems smart

  • For the people with suspicions that funcom has something to hide so that's why their forums are only open to paying subscribers, I don't think that is the reason.  They have stated to the subscribers, and I believe them, that they want to control the traffic to the forums so that they can guarantee they will be up and running for all the paying customers.  Despite that, the forums have already been down a few times since release, and they were down for most of the early access period.  They just took the common business approach of cutting costs on what were considered non-essential components and under allocated server resources for the forums.  They barely had, or did not have enough resources to keep the forums up for paying subscribers, so they could not afford to have the massive traffic of all the non-subscribers on top of that, or else the forums would not be working for anybody.  They did the same thing with game servers.  Only had the bare minimum for launch and then after those quickly filled up, they opened more so that there would be enough.  Still seeing short queues sometimes though.  I know for a fact that there have been <5 queues from time to time on my server. 

    Since the first few days though, the forums have been up all the time with no problems that I have seen.  I suspect that they will be opening the forums to everybody soon once they are certain they have enough resources to keep them up with the increased traffic. 

  • Posted: 5/28/08 9:01 AM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • After using AoC's forums, no official forums for WAR seems smart

  • Originally posted by altairzq
    

    Yes instead of giving a good forum for your players that have bought your game, turn your back to them and wish them good luck somewhere else with a smile. This is very professional and shows a great care for your community. And some players are even happy with the decission and accept they have no right for an official forum! They will soon accept they are so crappy they have no right for technical support anymore, wow they will be drooling in pleasure!

    I guess I just don't see why there needs to be a right to an official forum and also feel that the perceived right to such a forum has been abused to a point where these forums can no longer serve their intended purpose.  I intially saw this decision by Mythic as you do, turning their back on the community, but now I'm starting to see how they were just doing what would be best for the community by not bogging it down with a heavily trolled official forum that would be too great for them to successfully moderate.  This did not become apparent to me until I tried using the Age of Conan forums.  They are the biggest cluster frack of trolls I have ever seen for a major released MMORPG.  There are just too many that have taken the right to official forums for granted and ruined them for the people who actually used them for their intended purpose.  It's kindof like welfare, although I think official gaming forums had a better original design than the welfare system, but that is a whole other discussion. 

  • Posted: 5/27/08 4:16 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • After using AoC's forums, no official forums for WAR seems smart

  • @Deathstiny - I just don't think players really can share information well on official forums anymore because they are so bogged down with trolls and useless threads, all of which is barely moderated.  It's becoming too hard to find the useful information amongst the junk, and hard to have good discussion with all the trolls.  At this point I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people just posting arguments to argue, whether they agree with what they are posting or not. 

    @Elvenangel - I guess for me the pinnacle of official forums were those for Star Wars Galaxies.  Some things are just too complex to discuss ingame, you need to see it in document form.  It's hard to show a table of information over tells ingame.  I still feel that forums are useful to gaming communities, but when they are given along with your subscription, people feel like it is a right to use them.  When third parties run and moderate them, it is easier to keep a lid on the discussion and keep things neutral and productive. 

  • Posted: 5/27/08 3:00 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • After using AoC's forums, no official forums for WAR seems smart

  • When they first announced that there would be no official forums for Warhammer, I was disappointed with the development team.  However, after experiencing the forums for Age of Conan, I'm starting to think that no official forums might actually be the better way to go.  The AoC forums are full of useless arguments that do not help foster a stronger community nor better gameplay.  It is mostly thread after thread of people arguing about how the game should be designed, or about which playstyle is superior to another, or about how people need to quit QQing and go back to WoW. 

    I think Mythic has picked up on this change in the MMORPG player populace.  I think it started in WoW and has become worse from there.  Official forums are no longer used for players to discuss gameplay, share information, and discuss current ingame events, or current RL events.  Official forums are merely seen as a right to troll and post useless junk on a perceived important place where many will see it.  Many see the forums as more of a game than the actual game. 

    This type of abuse of official forums will continue to increase.  Gaming companies will continue to not be able to adequately moderate their forums in fear of losing customers, or causing more outbreaks of unhappy customers when they see their "rights" taken away.  Unaffiliated private forums will just be able to do the job better.  Look at the WoW forums and then look at the Elitist Jerks forums and its easy to tell which is better. 

    Anyways, not sure if I summed this up to well, but I think anyone else currently trying out Age of Conan will agree that their official forums have hit an all-time low in the quality of official MMORPG gaming forums.  It's literally like falling into the trash compactor on the Death Star and wading through junk while some monster tries to pull you underwater and drown you.  Seems that the overall MMORPG player base has degraded to a point where giving them a "right" to a forum no longer works. 

  • Posted: 5/27/08 1:42 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • The pay to play paradigm - its time has passed

  • Recurring revenues after a game's release is the only way to ensure funding for future development of and additions to the game.  Subscriptions is the best method.  It ensures equality and a fair playing field for players to compete.  The other option is the *cough* evil *cough* cash shop.  The only reason why you are beginning to see some traction in switching from subscription models to F2P is because F2P is really smoke in mirrors for the real demon gaming companies want to unleash in the cash shop.  They have seen that many hardcore players are willing to spend large sums of money to gain advantages in online games.  Even less hardcore players are willing to do the same when the expenses come in small increments.  Gaming companies have also seen the rise of the secondary market for ingame currency and want to take back that piece of the pie. 

    If you want MMOs to turn into whoever is willing to spend the most money wins, then keep pushing F2P over subscriptions.

  • Posted: 5/16/08 11:57 AM
    General Discussion