General Discussion

No game company is obligated to provid a forum.  There are other forums available that get monitored and in-game tools to provide feedback.  Most forums contain excessive abusive feedback that gets repeated thousands of times.  If you're unhappy with the game you can express your opinion to them directly, the fact that they're not giving you a tool to share it with the rest of the world is fine.

Perhaps when the MMO community matures a little and learns some manners in regards to providing constructive posts and not polls on who's leaving at the end of the month they'll provide official forums.  Till then I can't blame em.

The fact that there are so many posts here saying it's a cop-out to not give you a place to abuse them proves this point.  Otherwise why would it be considered a cop-out?

Originally posted by Moroth

No game company is obligated to provid a forum.  There are other forums available that get monitored and in-game tools to provide feedback.  Most forums contain excessive abusive feedback that gets repeated thousands of times.  If you're unhappy with the game you can express your opinion to them directly, the fact that they're not giving you a tool to share it with the rest of the world is fine.

 

Perhaps when the MMO community matures a little and learns some manners in regards to providing constructive posts and not polls on who's leaving at the end of the month they'll provide official forums.  Till then I can't blame em.

 

The fact that there are so many posts here saying it's a cop-out to not give you a place to abuse them proves this point.  Otherwise why would it be considered a cop-out?

This response is such a joke. We aren't dissatisfied with not having an area to "abuse," we're dissatisfied with not having an "official" area to discuss this game we love with the official development team or PR heads.

There is a lot of garbage on the official WoW forums. But guess what? There's infinitely more positive and productive posts that outweigh the negative ones. Not only that, but there's tons of information about the game centralized into one forum. I don't want to have to shoot to two or three different fan sites for an MMO just to find discussion on my specific class/race selection. The companies who developed and produced the game should to provide the necessary hubs to discuss their creation. Not having that because they fear having "their feelings hurt by some forum trolls" is a complete cop-out. No way around it.

You need official forums because its a place for the community to go and you can't blame official forums for a failure of a game.... like SWG that game failed because of Lucas Arts and SOE ruining it, not the forums because they ignored them.

 

when i first heard that they weren't going to be doing "official" forums a year or two ago i was like "wtf, how can you not have forums". now i honestly don't care all that much, i've dealt with the cesspools of the WOW forums and the Age of Conan forums enough to realize that while there can be some decent info gained from the forums, sometimes it's just not worth it. and as far as the person saying that there is more positive and productive posts than negative ones--that is true, but usually the negative posts get bumped more often and fill up the front pages which makes finding the positive and productive posts a pain in the ass sometimes.

as far as having a place where you can discuss your different classes/races, i've found that it's not uncommon for the forums to not have the information i'm looking for and end up having to go to several different sites anyways. without having an official forum, people are going to migrate to a couple main ones--warhammer alliance will probably one of the big ones and i would expect to get decent class discussions there, just like i would from an official class forum.

honestly, if you provide a forum it's also your job to keep it clean. one of the reasons the wow-forum has such a bad rep is because there is either too much or too less moderation - another example would be the lotro forums: tidy and informative, not the swamp ppl say "official forums always are".

on another note, as CM/CSR/mod you sign up for a job that may require to get dirt thrown at you. if someone can't handle that, sorry - get another job.
this kind of job is usually the only connection between you (the player) and the company, so when players get angry or dissatisfied they point their anger at the only company ppl available (with the whole "internet overreaction", face to face these ppl would behave quite differently ;) ).

ofc, a forum costs money (platform, moderation etc.). they can safe some by just putting up forums without much personal - like blizz - or just scrap it alltogether to safe more. but if you do that you shouldn't expect an objective opinion somewhere else, especially in a FANforum (imagine the hardcore-pve'er posting in a pvp forum.. riiight).

so yeah.. having no offical forum is either stupid arrogance or simple greed. especially if you pay a sub to play, f2p may get away with it.

Originally posted by Stradden

Originally posted by Yunbei

Remarkable that he really compares us, the customers, to a Tyrannosaurus. There is no excuse for the lack of official forums. Period.

 

He's very clearly not describing every customer as a dangerous dinosaur. In the context of what was said, it's clear that he was talking about the specific people who express their frustrations in abusive and threatening ways.

You don't agree with the call, that's fine, but you're taking that statement way out of context.

 

no official forums means that if a dev makes a post somewhere, i have to search and find which forum he posted on and find what he said, or hope that everyone on whatever forums i may read, copies that thread.

no official forums means that when devs make announcements or CUSTOMERS have technical issues, they don't have an easy one-stop reference.

no official forums means that all the players who make guides on classes, questing, rvr'ing, or whatever... have them spread out all over the internet.  can i go hear and find guides on all the different war classes? or do i have to search all over the 'net in order to try and find guides about things?

no official forums means that the gaming company cares THAT little about their customers and their customers' convenience that THEY (the gaming company) can't be bothered to put official forums.

honestly, i'm enjoying war.  but the disrespect inherent to no official forums is appalling, ESPECIALLY with mr. jacobs giving the reason he gave.  if i have to hunt and search to find BASIC gaming information (which isn't covered on the official website, in the book that came with the game, nor is it in the in-game help); and there's not a one-stop official forum to go look and i LITERALLY went to over a dozen fansites in order to find what i thought should be simple instructions... that irks me to no end.

mythic needs to pull their heads out of their asses, put up some official forums so that technical support and guides to everything are easily available to their paying customers.

if they are too chickenshit to do this... i don't see a reason to continue to play and support a game full of devs who are skeered that someone might say something bad about their game.

reminds me too much of the WONDERFUL people who created vanguard.

i can, and am, overlooking a lot of "not quite right" stuff in war (which is NOT their first mmo, so you should expect a quite stunning launch)... lack of official forums is NOT something i plan on overlooking... ever.

Originally posted by Moroth

No game company is obligated to provid a forum.  There are other forums available that get monitored and in-game tools to provide feedback.  Most forums contain excessive abusive feedback that gets repeated thousands of times.  If you're unhappy with the game you can express your opinion to them directly, the fact that they're not giving you a tool to share it with the rest of the world is fine.

 

Perhaps when the MMO community matures a little and learns some manners in regards to providing constructive posts and not polls on who's leaving at the end of the month they'll provide official forums.  Till then I can't blame em.

 

The fact that there are so many posts here saying it's a cop-out to not give you a place to abuse them proves this point.  Otherwise why would it be considered a cop-out?

see my reply below yours someplace...

but... where do you go for those nifty technical problems?  heaven forbid a gaming company have a single place where all the players can go to see how to tweak vista, or what settings on a video card might need to be changed, or a plethora of common problems that not only official people comment on, but also players.  how many different fansites is reasonable for you to be expected to visit?  are these fansites going to have mods that ensure a lot of false information and/or viruses aren't being passed to trusting folks?

wondering about trying a new class and don't want to gimp it from the go and have to pay for multiple respecs because there are things you really just didn't understand?  go find a nifty little class guide.  see a bunch of them for witch hunters right now?  what about squig herders?  heck, the game has been out for nearly a week, between beta testers and hardcore fools, there IS lvl 40 experience out there and i'm sure there's several people already throwing guides online...  where?  could you point me to which fansites EXACTLY have nifty guides about the how's and why's of those two classes?

hey, i'm on such and such server, playing X faction and i'd like to see, at a glance, which guilds are there and what they're saying they are all about... how many fansites, EXACTLY, have a crapton of guilds from all servers and both factions, posting recruiting adds... like guilds would do on official forums?

when devs make posts of interest to the entire community... how many fansites is it reasonable for me to visit in order to see these posts made by the devs of the game i paid for a box and a monthly fee, to be a reasonable number?  is my sense of entitlement so out of whack to think that this and the above reasons are legitimate and far outweigh someone's sense of  "don't say nuffin bad about me cuz i'm skeered"?

these, and more, are reasons why a gaming company, in this day and age, refusing to have official forums, are complete bullshit.

A while ago, official game forums were a big part of the online community, where people exchanged views and generally had fun, also voiced their their frustrations but most of the times in a more or less civilised manners.

Since MMOs went up in numbers, official game forums became a combination of whining and verbal abuse, with some imformative posts.

Good way to get sick of the MMO you enjoy playing is if you strart reading the official forums. The sheer amount of whining and complaining gets to you in a way even if you enjoy the game at that time.

Forums or no forums, I have never seen any MMO developers go forth and communicate with the community on all bigger un-official forums, posting elaborate and informative stuff and not just some run on the mill default answers like most other companies do. I appreciate that much more as a customer than having an official forums. They also tend not to hinde when they screw up something, and generally admit their mistakes and try repairing it and that also goes a long way with me.

All in all Mythic people were more active with the community in terms of quality and quantity of the communication, forum or no forum.