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Originally Posted by The Hiram Key  Is it the money ? The hastle ? The wounded pride from EQ1 forums ? Fear ? Unable to take responsibility for that which you have birthed ? |
Well, where's the benefit to having them? I really can't see any. Official forums always end up being total cesspits with a s/n ratio so unimaginably askew that finding useful info there is just a waste of time. At the very
best, you just end up with hundreds of pages of the same noob questions repeated over and over, and hell, people are going to flock to community forums anyway. Just consider this: have you ever thought to yourself, "gosh! that was a really refreshing and enjoyable visit to the official WoW forums?"
There are certainly downsides to having your own forums though. It takes a non-insignificant amount of manpower to keep things running smoothly. Can you even imagine the horror of trying to keep something like the WoW forums all spic and span? (especially with a launch like VG's? or anytime something serious goes wrong?) Even if you could do it, do you really want that cesspit on your hands? If you let people bitch too much (and they always do), your game and company look shitty (and your boards turn useless anyway), but if you don't then people start breaking out the tinfoil hats and cry everywhere else about the moderation. Its lose/lose, and all for what?
If devs want to communicate with their players, they don't need a forum to do it. They can just post shit on their site (every decent fansite will have it reposted in minutes anyway). If they want communication from their players, they can look at /bug and /feedback reports and check all of the community forums that they're going to end up having to check anyway.
