VG to eschew official forums post launch.

[Fammaden]

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/sh...415#post643415

Originally Posted by Glip the Gnome

We’ll have forums post-release, but it will likely just be tech support-ish stuff.

The current plan is to push the central focus of the community away from our forums and to the affiliate fan sites. We want to hear what everyone has to say, but with the entire player base sitting in one spot all talking at the same time, we’re not going to be able to do that.

Instead, we’re helping to create smaller, more focused communities revolving around the fan sites. That way its much easier for players to make themselves heard as we visit each site – and we will be visiting and interacting with the sites, just as much as we visit our own forums now.

What does this mean for the average forum users? Well, we’re not expecting you to stay on top of a dozen different fan sites – if you do, more power to you – but by no means will it be a requirement. But try to read at least one, and voice your opinion on it – we’ll see it.

This is kind of new stuff, so if the results aren’t up to our expectations we can always rework the plan but we’ve got high hopes

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/sh...0&pagenumber=3

Originally Posted by Abigale Seashadow

Ok, folks… let me step in here. I will do my best to explain what we are planning and why we have made these decisions. This plan has been being discussed for quite some time and is not something we have taken lightly. I was hired as the Community Manager for Sigil 3 years ago to build and develop this community. So let me assure you, its health and welfare are at the top of my priority list.

One of the factors in this decision is resources. As we have entered Beta and approach release, you have all seen the changes that have occurred here on these forums. Nick and I monitor the boards as much as humanly possible… but between the two of us, we can barely keep up anymore. Can you imagine what these forums would be like after release? We could hire several more moderators and we could spend a huge amount of our time moderating these boards. Or, we can support the communities that are already forming and growing around the fan sites. All of us agree here that we would prefer to spend our time and money making Vanguard the best it can be.

So let me explain a little bit about how this will work. As we stated in the other thread, we will still have a Tech Support Forum. News and official announcements will still be readily available on the Vanguard site. Server issues, patch messages and other information that you will find necessary will always be easily found here. But your comments, questions and interacting with your fellow players are what will be migrated to the Affiliates.

When our boards are shut down, we will instead visit our Affiliates' forums on a regular basis. All of our team members that you see posting regularly here will be posting on those forums instead. In addition to moderating the forums, the sites will also be giving us regular feedback about posts and threads that may need attention. For example, if a site admin sees that there is a huge thread complaining that a quest is broken, they will contact me and I will see that the appropriate designer is informed and responds to the concerns.

Obviously, saving time and resources is an important factor. But it will also simplify things for us. We believe that it will be easier to sort through and read several moderated forums and address the most prominent questions and concerns of each one than to hire several moderators to sift through hundreds of thousands of posts to find the ones that really need our attention.

I would like for you to also keep in mind that as this plan has been in the works for some time, we have developed the Affiliate program with it in mind. This is one of the reasons that we ask that Affiliates go through a somewhat lengthy process to be accepted. We get to know these folks well. We have met many of them personally and talk on the phone and online with them regularly. These sites have proven that they are committed to providing for the community and they have demonstrated to us that they are trustworthy. We monitor them closely. And if they do not meet the standards we set for our community, they are dropped from the program. So please don’t assume that just any Vanguard site will be trusted with this task.

We are making this move because we believe it will benefit and strengthen our community in the long run. I know some of you are unhappy about it and some of you will downright hate it. And you know what? It might not work out the way we hope. And if that happens, we’ll reopen the forums again. But please try to have an open mind and see how it works out.

Honestly, I am sad to see this happen myself. It’s been wonderful getting to know so many of you and it’s been quite a fun ride so far. You guys are great and I enjoy these forums as much (if not more!) than any of the rest of you. But I truly believe that in the long run, this is the right move to make to be able to keep our communication flowing and to hear as much of what you have to say as possible.

So, I assume the general consensus will either be "good move, it will let them focus more on the game than on whiny forum rats who are never satisfied" or "cop out, any presence on the fansites will be cursory and infrequent."

Should be interesting to observe. I know many of us probably expect to see continued post release interaction from Aradune with this particular "fansite" given the way we seem to have been courted so far.

[Metranon]

im happy with this philosophy, biggest problem with vanguard for me seems to be the fact you will need a computer that costs roughly $2000 at time of release to play it at a decent framerate.

[FanBuss]

official boards always have been and always will be cess pools of idiocy. good riddance.

[Mist]

DAoC did the same thing and it was a good game for almost 3 years. Rather than having one central site and a bunch of forum babysitters, they can rely on market forces to choose the 2-3 big fansites and just cruise those.

[oknedark]

Brad and some of the others seem to really love this game, and just love talking about the genre in general. As such, I think correspondence with the community will occur through the fansites without prompting or bitching.

At the most optimistic, this could serve as a sort of filter, bother seperating and consolidating opinions to the different boards and giving a more realistic picture to who thinks what, as well as better review of the input.

Conversely, instead of having one place where everyone bitches there are many. My MMO experience extends only to Eq, AC, and WoW, and the official boards for all those games are/were horrendous, so points for trying something new.

Edit: I dunno Fogel, some of the unofficial class boards were good but the SoE boards were.... SK.org for instance, was one of my favorite boards period.

[Fogel]

Could be a good move if done right. Would be nice to avoid the mess the wow boards are. Make a post and in 10 minutes its already on page 3, and 99% of every post is pure drivel. I remember in Eq the class boards were a good place to get info and stuff. The class boards on wow are either "our class sucks" or "Your class is over powered"

[beepbeepbeep]

Great move in my opinion.

[orcmauler]

Horrible move. Using the DAOC example check the IGN boards for the shit that gets posted there, it can make bnet kiddies look like rocket scientists.

Either way it becomes a way to ignore players, period. Yes dumbasses (myself included) tend to come to a board after a major fuckup and vent, but for the most part the old whineplay boards were better than anything else out there.

[Laek]

DAOC did this and seemed to work fine. IGN became the main forum site for the game and didn't seem to have a 1/10th of the crap the WoW forums do. It works good cause all the retards don't find the most popular sites for awhile.

[WillzZz]

IGN was NOT a good example. The only reason it didn't seem to have 1/10th of the crap from the WoW boards, is because it had 1/10th amount of people. It was the same level of crap that the WoW boards are today.

To be honest, I think they're looking back to EQ days, where rangers glade, steel warrior, safehouse were big discussion sites, and if they had a ton of specific sites like those it could make the jobs a little easier for the respective class devs.

And of course, I think we're all a little biased, because we know Brad shows his face here and will listen to our opinions. I can see why the average gamer would feel like their opinion disappeared. Or rather, the average LAZY gamer, since posting on a forum doesn't really take a lot of effort.

[Agraza]

They mentioned their intention to do this a long time ago. When they first spoke on this subject they said the transition would probably occur near the end of beta. They've been really decent to their "affiliates" thus far, so I don't think we'll have an exact parellel of DAOC. They want to make this work positively, not just dump the load of board moderation on someone else.

Private moderators are generally more harsh on their communities than the company is, and I think that creates a better environment for players and designers.

[Samus Aran]

It's a good move, in my opinion. Having watched the development of several game communities through developer-run forums, I've become convinced that they don't turn out as well when the game is released. Leave the community formation to the community, and the game design to the developers.

This also needs to be joined with KEEP YOUR GAME A FUCKING SECRET SO THAT IT'S NEW WHEN THE MAIN PLAYER BASE GETS IT! I think a majority wants game info kept from them until they get a chance to experience it for themselves.

[Linus]

If my job was to read the massive number of rambling theses about game design and philosophy that every doofus posts on the Vanguard boards hoping to get a beta spot or a PM from Brad saying "Great Idea! Do you want to be a Dev?" -- I'd push all that stuff out to the community as well.

At least this way the devs / community managers can make alternate/alias accounts and say "Hey, you're really fucking retarded, just stop talking." where they probably couldn't do that on their own boards.

[Suineg]

Try not to use 'eschew' in the title of a post it makes me use dictionary.com and that annoys me. kidding... no seriously I am kidding...

Yeah I think it is a good idea. Your snr = 0 if you have no n

[Thalndiz]

SK.org was one of the best class boards and game communities ever. If they pay attention to sites like that, that will be a solid decision.