No “Official” Forums for WAR? EA Mythic… I Salute You!
February 1, 2008 – 8:18 pm
Tobold has an interesting article over on his blog discussing the steaming, stinking, cesspool of stupidity that is the official WoW forums. How’s that for alliteration? Ka-ching! I wanted to write an in-depth, thought-provoking reply on his site, but that reply would have been at least three times the size of his original post. Instead, I’ll reply over here, and ping his blog over there! This is also inspired by a recent forum thread over at Ryan Shwayder’s Nerfbat!
In a number of interviews, grab bags, newsletters, and “unofficial” forum posts, EA Mythic reps have stated that they will not support official forums for Warhammer Online. This has left a number of people frustrated and angry, yet conversely, people of my persuasion are very happy about the decision. Why? Oh, I’m glad you asked… let me count the ways! This one will be lengthy folks…
Official Forums and Why I Hate ‘Em!
The official forum (OF) stamp automatically generates a perceived impression that, “This forum is the authority on everything related to the game.” This attracts a number of, shall we say, morons, who are drawn to positions of authority and jump at any chance to spout their opinions as fact. Sure, we see this on a number of unofficial forums as well, but the ratio is usually smaller because of a number of key factors explained in detail below…
Obviously, the official forums are going to boast the largest volume of members because of the authority factor. Not just morons will be attracted to OFs, but also “normal” players seeking information and discussion. If you have official forums, they will be the best marketed forums for your game (linked right off your official game site). What sorts of problems can overpopulation cause? How about a drastically increased reply rate for interesting topics? How can you have intelligent discussion on something interesting when you can’t read a tenth as fast as people are replying. You want to quote and reply to someone? By the time you’ve gotten to it, your reply will appear 5 pages later. I’ve seen interesting threads have reply rates of one every five seconds during prime time on the WoW boards.
Because of theis, people have adapted their replies to simple one-liners like “QFT” (quote for truth) or “UR A MORON!” They want to get their replies in as fast as possible and don’t back them up with any thought. I’ll admit that I’m loathe to see a seven-paragraph reply to a topic–I likely won’t read it–but there must be some happy balance of long-winded replies and short, non-sensical pieces of rubbish. Perhaps organizing one’s thoughts into clear and concise messages is the way to go. Fortunately, some people are great at this, but again, due to the overly large population of OFs, they are few and far between.
If you post a new thread that isn’t instantly accepted by people on the board at that very moment, you will end up getting buried faster than you can type a “WTF!? U R A MORON!” response on someone else’s post. I’ve had it happen to me before on the WoW boards and seen it done too many times to count (to others). Post something. People don’t immediately respond. Due to the massive amounts of people logged in to the site posting their own new threads, mine (and others) gets buried to page three within five minutes. Yeah… that’s cool.
Board moderation is another issue on official forums. Because the mods are employees of the game company, they are less likely to sternly punish the morons. Continually modding a customer for being an idiot, while fair and balanced in my opinion, is probably not the best way to keep his subscription. Also, due to the mass amounts of discussion going on in an OF, it’s nearly impossible for them to keep track of everything unless the community department has a bloated enough budget and can afford to hire dozens of mods on a 24-7 basis.
“Hey Blue… Bluuuuuuuuuuuuuue! I’m over here, ya git. Lookit me, BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUE!” Blue is the colour of a WoW game developer forum member and some people just crave attention from them. Actually, it’s more like they demand it! On an OF, people expect the devs to interact with the community and get touchy if they don’t. They want answers to their burning questions and damn everyone else until they get a blue response. They get spammy. They get flamey. They get downright childish and throw tantrums. Couple this with the lack of good moderation and you have a recipe for spammy, flamey, and downright childish threads and replies and threads plaguing your forums. Do the devs owe you a response? Many people think so when posting on an authoritative, OF.
Trolls. Trolls can be different than “morons” as described above, but they can also be the same. What is the sole purpose of a troll? To piss on you, piss on the mods, and piss on everything they can before they get removed. Trolls are much harder to manage when you have such a volume of members on your site and they sometimes get lost in the noise. Sneaky trolls can get away with flaming you without breaking any official rules, and are technically allowed to go about their business. Trolls are the griefers, corpse-campers, and cheaters of the forum world and they come to the official sites because they crave your attention… and it’s the best place to find it.
Finally, let’s discuss searchability. When your forums contain hundreds and thousands of pages of forum topics (each containing 20-50 threads), searchability becomes a issue. Most search functions for forums are inadequate in helping you find exactly what you’re looking for without a massive amount of time dedicated to sorting through all the mess. As a result, people post without even researching, which is kind of understandable, and it just adds to the problem of clutter through duplication and repeat discussion. It’s a conundrum, because the official forums are supposed to be the ultimate resource for game discussion, yet the volume of content hinders it from actually being useful for anyone.
How to Run Proper Official Forums
I think Ryan Shwayder said it best, so I’ll reiterate his proposed list of boards within a game’s official forum list:
- Test Server: Test server players only.
- Developer Roundtable: Devs can post topics, players can respond.
- New Players: Only players who are in their first 30 days or are Trial users can post topics, others can answer.
Major Game Components: One forum for each major game component, like Combat, Crafting, etc.- Links: Prominent links to approved fansite forums.
Personally, I would remove the Major Game Components forum from this list because it is just asking for spammers and whiners to come and give their opinions on how things should be run. The trolls will come along and flame-bait everyone, and things will eventually degrade into a steaming, stinking, cesspool of stupidity all over again. You know… I should trademark that phrase and turn it into an official acronym!
OF mods need to grow a pair, write up a strict list of forum rules and regs, and punish people with temporary and permanent bans for failure to comply. The drawback here is that people will complain that an official forum is their right, not privilege to participate in, and will likely cause a stink. If you pay for the game, are you not paying also for the forums? That’s a loaded question, so feel free to discuss it in the comments!
My Conclusions
Game companies shouldn’t even bother with official forums because they’re just not worth the headache. Games have survived without OFs before and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think lacking them has ever been a game-killer. I would much rather see 10 fan-driven forums dividing up the volume of players into manageable chunks, providing for more manageable, thought-provoking, and intelligent discussion. Fansites are able to rule their own forums with an iron fist, and that’s not always a bad thing. If you feel as though you’re being treated unfairly, move somewhere else. If you feel as though ALL the fan forums are treating you unfairly, then maybe you need to take a look at yourself, where the problem may actually reside.
Nothing is stopping you from creating your own, right?
4 Responses to “No “Official” Forums for WAR? EA Mythic… I Salute You!”
I kind of like the server forums. I didn’t visit them often, but it was sort of cool to know that there is a set place to go to ask a question or learn more about your specific server. Guilds can recruit on there, “friendly” competition (though rare), etc.
Its not a huge loss, though.
By Travis on Feb 1, 2008
Although kind of sad, the screen-shot you provided is morbidly funny as well. I’d like to think the guy who died has a good enough sense of humor to laugh at it as well. lol Yeah, OFs are really a pain for the MMO circuit. With games like Halo it’s not so bad because there isn’t really anything to hag about. You don’t have skills to mess with…only boom-sticks. Granted, you can argue all day about which weapons are the best, it pales in comparison to the flaming, baiting, and idiotic comments that stem from the dreaded “skill tree” discussions on OFs
By Pipoca on Feb 2, 2008
I am sorry but that is not funny at all…some punk looking for attention that his/her parents failed to give; is the real tradegy here.
Anways awesome article Snaf:)
By josewales on Feb 2, 2008
Not having official forums actually helps the community hosted forums (such as yours truly) especially since the devs at EA Mythic are kind enough to give us props and attention. When is the last time you saw the folks at Blizzard say something positive about a fan site or community forum? Bah I say! Bah!
By Ted on Feb 4, 2008