I might just be a cranky old MMORPG player but I swear to the FSM that somehow game specific public forums are getting worse. I’m not sure there is any other place on this planet where you can go and find more people who are misinformed and will turn anything anyone says or does into a huge negativity storm. To be honest I’m truly at a loss at how we got to this point. When did we stop taking things in stride and start acting like the cast of a reality TV show any time anything happens? Perhaps my memory is fuzzy but I know forums used to be more useful than harmful.
I’ve had this problem for a while now. I just can’t invest any time on a game’s forum anymore because I see no value in it. I used to love to go there and interact! A lot of times you could find some great information and have good exchanges with other people like yourself. You’d find more than just community relations managers doing damage control. I miss that! I feel like I’m being a jerk for not participating in the Rift forums but I know I’m not actually missing anything!
I swung through there today to see what was going on and all I found were people who were so upset by the alpha patch notes that they couldn’t be consoled. They KNEW exactly how everything was going to go down and were expressing their displeasure. I even made the mistake of going into the cleric forum! Do you know what I learned? Every cleric soul is terrible. None of them do any melee DPS. All of them heal worse than a chloromancer and I’m pretty sure someone suggested that the warden was retroactively responsible for Hilter’s genocide. The best part about it was that all of this was based on literally nothing! I saw zero data! Just assertions as fact from random people. In the EQ1 days if you said something sucked you had better have weeks worth of parses and comparisons. Otherwise we’d just ship you right off. What happened to raw data and the scientific method?
Please know that I’m not picking on Rift alone here. I had this same problem with EverQuest II, Warhammer, World of Warcraft and any other MMO you can name. All of the forums were so depressing I just couldn’t handle going there anymore. So I think it is time to slightly amend my previous opinions. I’ve said you always need a public forum for an MMORPG. I still think you do so that players can easily get messages and provide feedback about things they do and don’t like. Despite that I think we need some fascist moderators and a new definition of what a public forum is. I think it is time that someone stands up and starts punishing people for acting like fools and being rude. If you can’t say something constructively and can’t be bothered to support it with any known data or facts I literally want your post either deleted. If not deleted I want a system where players can rate bad posts. Once they go below a threshold they disappear! If you have so many posts disappear you disappear!
In the long run I’m pretty confident that the positive gain for holding people more accountable to what they say and how they say it will far out weigh the negative of “censoring.” We have too much Keyboard Courage these days and it is time we stop suffering these fools. How many good posts actually get deleted? Ltes be honest. Has anyone ever thought to asks, “How was that deleted post presented and how did the conversation follow?” I’ve never seen a well written and non-inflamitory negative post removed from existence. I suspect it has happened because some companies will try to hide a misdeed but that isn’t the norm. I can say that because I’ve made plenty of negative posts in my day. I am hard to please after all!
We as MMO players talk about the loss of our community and I think forums are a big part of it. Think of all the new MMORPG players that come to a game and are excited about playing it only to be torn down when they find these kinds of posts in mass quantity. They strip the wonder and magic right out of a person. Not to mention that if you ask for help you’re normally just called a noob or made fun of. It just isn’t good for the community as a whole. Posting needs to be a privilege! I just don’t believe anymore that because you pay the subscription fee that you get to sling whatever vile thing you want on the public forum! It is time we made some sort of attempt to take back our forums. If any of you MMO companies need a vicious moderator you let me know! I have an overly aggressive sense of judgement and a lot of free time lately. I’ll fix those trolls for you!
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Can I just say AMEN?? I haven’t been on public forums in years. It is a really sad state of affairs right now. You can’t get to good helpful posts without navigating through a bunch of vile. It has been said before, MMO players feel too entitled these days and will go rage about any little thing. I feel really bad for community managers. And I know the team at Rift really does read all this and has to report back to devs. Unfortunately they’re getting the vocal minority. I think in game feedback or surveys are the only way to go.
well said! I agree about the forums being full of uninformed idiots who twist every single change to a game as a major nerf bat that will end the games existence as they know it. It’s really the main reason why I’ve never read forums unle…ss i am searching for something very specific. I enjoy my games because the false knowledge does not pollute my opinion before the change is even live. I take all changes in stride and just because 1 person says “OMG this is going to kill the game, we’ll never be able to accomplish XYZ” doesn’t mean i will believe it until i actually see it with my own eyes.
RealID might be solve the problem?
Something like RealID might work but I still feel it is pretty dangerous to put too much of your information out there.
I have to be honest. It scares the heck out of me having my name out because of my book. I’m thinking I would have been better served with a pen-name.
Learn to ignore morons better.
It isn’t even about ignoring them. When there are 1000 posts like this to every one decent one I just don’t feel like mining for that decent one!
So censorship to alleviate your dislike of these people and their opinions is acceptable?
Should we start burning books soon?
Some of those have some pretty heinous content.
I agree with you on content, I just don’t like your solution.
I prefer the ignore button that comes on most forums these days. Makes most forums quite readable after an initial investment of time.
Ah my rat friend jumping to the censorship is fascism immediately. Which would be true if the opinions were only shared on that forum or were removed by the company because they hurt the “state.” I prefer the group method though. If enough people vote your particular post down as having zero value I don’t see a danger. It is basic a big group ignore.
The key here is that this is one place. There is nothing to stop someone who feels they are actually being censored from going to a private blog or forum. Their voice cannot be silenced, just moved to a more appropriate place.
I like the “ignore this player” button.
I’m not particularly fond of ignoring one post at a time. Once I make up my mind that a guy is a moron, I ‘m done with all his crap.
Leaving the choice of what to include and what to exclude to even the most well intentioned of companies, is begging to get shafted at some point.
I’m not sure I buy your “This is one place” argument – I think not letting people have their say on an official forum, where they believe they have a chance of being heard and their issue rectified is just wrong.
If you believe strongly in the cause of a censored forum and only high quality posts, then you’re of course free to create that forum and wait for the hordes of the equally minded to come flocking in.
It might even be possible to create a subsection of the official forum where strong censorship is the stated purpose of said subsection, and that might be the best of both worlds.
Very good post, I’ve come to a similar conclusion after years of following game forums on lunch breaks and at weekends. The WoW forums have been a cesspit a long time, but I watched the old DDO eu forums descend into chaos and see similar patterns in other game forums. I guess a lot if more moderate forumites are bloggers or blog-readers thesedays? Let’s hope the community team at Trion and other game companies take in the blogosphere as well for more considered feedback…
Just found this blog and have been enjoying reading the articles and the comments. They are very unlike the horrible forums you mention, and I feel like I’ve been to the all (and subsequently driven away).
I completely agree with you and have all but given up on the forums myself. I used to frequent the EQ2 forums regularly, and when I went to RIFT I was shocked at how nasty they were. It was like EQ2 flames for nastiness but without the useful nuggets that keep you coming back with your protective eyewear on. I tried numerous times to add to the discussion or to post an idea to help, only to have the first few comments appears trashing it, me, or denying the existence of whatever issue I brought up. A few minutes on that forum and you start to realize why wars happen.
I wish I knew the answer but I don’t. I do hope things change. I also remember the “good old days” and I can attest that they were, in fact, genuine. How? Well, for starters, I did an independent study in college on the topic of “how forums influence video game development,” using Age of Wonders II as my primary example (blast from the past, eh?). In that game, devs and players interacted regularly, and long, well-thought out debates would continue for pages and pages. And know what else? A big debate at the time was the influence of multiplayer mode on the single-player experience. Oh, the innocence of youth! (as applied to games, anyway)
That sounds like a really interesting project. Any chance you still have something like that around? I can pretty much guarantee some people would be interested in reading it! At least I would be.