Server forums?

[evevale]

Still waiting.

[Syluar]

Obviously, this is a decision we can re-evaluate as we receive community feedback, but we do encourage you to try out the sub-forums that we currently have to see if they meet your needs and desires for meeting other players. In the future, we may add additional sub-forums for various topics that require more space. We're always reading feedback and evaluating the needs of the community, and will continue to do so, so please do let us know what suggestions you have to improve the Forums!

 

Oh no! Please not even more sub-forums for sub-sub-forums! Why do I need to go 5 different places in hope of finding some information about thing going on on MY server. And even to find out if there is any topic that I'm looking for I need to go through hundreds of threads.

I took the advice to try out the sub-forums. The most important one (besides stupid guild hall) I would think to be server events. This should act well as extracting whats most important about server forums right? So let me tell you what did I find: few cool events that I would not take part in anyway cause they're NOT ON MY SERVER. Other threads are just stupid like "Server name" and responses "hello; nice to meet you; hope we'll get server forum soon" - yeah nice event... and some are just informations about EXTERNAL server forums.

So I imagine there will be sub-forum called ops progression soon where every server will have its own thread and if I want to follow it I will simply have to jump from one freaking subforum to another and look for the thread.

Why oh why can't we have everything that we are interested in about the ONE SERVER we are playing on in ONE PLACE?!

Edited December 23, 2011 by Syluar

[Qwynt]

Oh no! Please not even more sub-forums for sub-sub-forums! Why do I need to go 5 different places in hope of finding some information about thing going on on MY server. And even to find out if there is any topic that I'm looking for I need to go through hundreds of threads.

I took the advice to try out the sub-forums. The most important one (besides stupid guild hall) I would think to be server events. This should act well as extracting whats most important about server forums right? So let me tell you what did I find: few cool events that I would not take part in anyway cause they're NOT ON MY SERVER. Other threads are just stupid like "Server name" and responses "hello; nice to meet you; hope we'll get server forum soon" - yeah nice event... and some are just informations about EXTERNAL server forums.

So I imagine there will be sub-forum called ops progression soon where every server will have its own thread and if I want to follow it I will simply have to jump from one freaking subforum to another and look for the thread.

Why oh why can't we have everything that we are interested in about the ONE SERVER we are playing on in ONE PLACE?!

 

Because, we need to consolidate our ideas into a couple of forums to ease moderation!

[crackyhoss]

server forums are essential in fostering a strong, loyal community. currently there is no way for me to start a thread about any republic or imperial players with whom I had a great shared experience that wouldn't get lost on page 3 in 60 seconds.

 

Server forums are a must have.

[Itukaaj]

The real reason is they don't want to spend the money. This game is a good one but this website genuinely sucks. And, it is all about money and not adequately budgeting and now they are into the mode of defending the indefensible and everyone sees through it.

 

Bioware allocate some money and upgrade. Oh no I did it I said the evil money word. But, this is what it is allAbout. And if you want to be the company that isn't another also ran to that other company everyone is gonna compare you to then you do it with ruthless quality and an platinum customer experience.

 

What BW needs to do is copy and paste that other company's forums and change the artwork. Cause they got it right on ease of use, intuitive browsing and functionality. The game is good this site sadly is kindergarten macaroni shells.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Itukaaj

[Dontoro]

Server Forums are a must.

[chric]

We want server forums. Don't cheap out.

[fungihoujo]

I'm going to be honest- I played WoW for over six years, and I spent maybe 10% of my time on other forums, whether class, PVP or PvE or whatever else- and the other 90% on my server forum.

 

The server is our community, we don't care about other servers, we aren't playing with those people and aren't interested in what happens there. We want to know what's going on on our server- we don't need a guild recruitment forum- we can recruit on our community forum. People looking for a guild aren't usually looking for a server- they have characters on a server, they want to know what's available on our server.

 

Looking at the guild listings, there's maybe two guilds on my server on our first page.

 

Where will we go for crafting info? How do we learn of events that are going on? We can't do that with a global channel, because the 'global' channel, general, that everyone starts with is planet specific.

 

In the end, there is nothing that lets someone new to the game just start speaking with the community as a whole- no forums, no galactic premade chat channel- nothing.

 

That's a problem. In an mmo, making it difficult for people to have a good community is going to hurt, and it'll hurt hard.

 

BW- the money you'll need to spend on moderation is going to be paltry if you let your communities fail- and they will fail, because while some servers will band together to make the community work no matter what- several won't. Consider the fact that needing lots of moderation means you have a lot of customers... you don't want to finally decide to put it in to find you have an easy job because there's nobody left to moderate.

 

Nothing kills a game like poorly handled community.

[Eepinephrine]

Talk about a stupid decision on their part, hopefully they will reconsider.

[Grblackmer]

I'm going to be honest- I played WoW for over six years, and I spent maybe 10% of my time on other forums, whether class, PVP or PvE or whatever else- and the other 90% on my server forum.

 

The server is our community, we don't care about other servers, we aren't playing with those people and aren't interested in what happens there. We want to know what's going on on our server- we don't need a guild recruitment forum- we can recruit on our community forum. People looking for a guild aren't usually looking for a server- they have characters on a server, they want to know what's available on our server.

 

Looking at the guild listings, there's maybe two guilds on my server on our first page.

 

Where will we go for crafting info? How do we learn of events that are going on? We can't do that with a global channel, because the 'global' channel, general, that everyone starts with is planet specific.

 

In the end, there is nothing that lets someone new to the game just start speaking with the community as a whole- no forums, no galactic premade chat channel- nothing.

 

That's a problem. In an mmo, making it difficult for people to have a good community is going to hurt, and it'll hurt hard.

 

BW- the money you'll need to spend on moderation is going to be paltry if you let your communities fail- and they will fail, because while some servers will band together to make the community work no matter what- several won't. Consider the fact that needing lots of moderation means you have a lot of customers... you don't want to finally decide to put it in to find you have an easy job because there's nobody left to moderate.

 

Nothing kills a game like poorly handled community.

I heartily agree! SWG had by the best forums community i have ever encountered, people i knew didnt actually play the game anymore but had a sub would sit on the forums either trolling or just being a helpful know it all. One day far in the future BW it will come down to you decision now. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and we show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

[Schmooster]

http://www.facebook.com/groups/349563738390949/

[Warlocc]

Guild recruitment, global channels, server events, PUG Operation schedules, Flashpoint group schedules, RP events (for RP servers), PvP events/cross faction communication for PvP servers, crafting/trading info... All of these things require specific server forums.

[TylerrDurdenn]

/signed - SWG had this and it was the 1st thing i`d check after a hard days gaming / pvp ing.

[SelinaK]

I really hope they bring official server forums (and hopefully a wiki) here, I have posted a big reply on these issues here:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=67106&page=2

 

- Much better would be less separation between players so there would not be a need to segregate and fragment the community in the first place, but til then yes, official server forums are really needed so people running fansites don't destroy the community by pulling people away!

Edited December 24, 2011 by SelinaK

[Skiveron]

For the Benefit of the community!

 

I am not sure why Bioware is very sensitive to the moderation issue in regards to servers. I am sure even in the presence of trolls and flamers the community can still overall benefit from server forums.

[Syrionus]

Bioware,

 

I am a long time fan and a long time supporter of your games and I absolutely agree that you need Server specific forums. I would ask that you please institute for the reasons already mentioned but more for the ability to communicated with members of the server when outside of the game. I do most of my coordinating of events through server specific forums. Without them, it is nearly impossible to do so. Thank you for your time and attention.

 

An adoring fan,

Syrionus

[Vandrel-Blitz]

Bioware,

 

I am a long time fan and a long time supporter of your games and I absolutely agree that you need Server specific forums. I would ask that you please institute for the reasons already mentioned but more for the ability to communicated with members of the server when outside of the game. I do most of my coordinating of events through server specific forums. Without them, it is nearly impossible to do so. Thank you for your time and attention.

 

An adoring fan,

Syrionus

 

Here's to hoping they read this

 

Thanks for the response

[CHRISGG]

Can anyone please explain how i'm meant to get word out to players on my server about what rare schematics i'm able to craft without server forums? It's pretty much impossible without flooding chat channels.

[Vanith]

Definitely need to implement sever-specific forums. The best way to build a community, which has been a constant theme for Bioware in certain design decisions, is to give players a place to congregate. Server forums are just that.

 

You don't get to know the players on the other side of the fence just by killing them - though we try. Yes, server forums are a bit like the Wild West, but you have to take the good with the bad. The issue I'm sure you devs have seen is there is no centralized community forums outside the official site; a number of various "unofficial-official" forums have popped up. So what do we as players do, visit and register for each one and hope we covered them all? Or do you give us what we're, clearly, clamoring for.

 

Do it. Do it now!

Edited December 24, 2011 by Vanith

[Krovvax]

we definitivly need those server forum for a better social pasrt of the game and community. no one will take the time to read over 100 page of guild recruitement and thing like this to find something they fit on their server. i am a officer of a 500 people guild (sadly the cap is very low) and we are one of the top guild on ours server pve and pvp wise. we want to organise event and things like this trought the community and we dont have the tool for it. if you want your game to feel epic you have to give the people the tool to make it epic.

 

also we need server forum for progression trought pve to keep track of who is ahead in the progression and who is behind. we also need this kind of tool to make rivality with your opposite ennemy and to be able to find ally on your server.

 

you should realy try to listen to the people that will pay every month for this game instead of telling them what they want.

[Brunio]

You know its truly pathetic that the reason we don't have server forums is because of the lack of their ability to moderate them.

 

The game is awesome. Its great.

 

But we need server forums.

 

No one even knows whats going on throughout my server (Jung Ma). We even have it easy with RP-PvP forums being so few, but its still not worth it for most of us. No one is going to use those sub-forums to find a guild. And then there are the server types with a billion different servers. The regular PvE servers are just completely screwed.

 

Why are the forums easier to moderate without server forums and instead having these crappy sub forums? Because hardly anyone is willing to use such a horrible forum system. Instead we will walk around SWTOR castrated and dumb.

 

Honestly, whoever had the idea to not have server forums in swtor needs to play their own damn game and realize that its impossibly hard to get to know a community you have almost no communication with.

 

Go ahead and talk in general. You'll probably run into a pothole of trolls and drown.

[Kagon]

Server forums are a staple of every MMO community.

 

It is currently impossible to interact, network, and conduct server community business under the current format. Everything is lost in a sea of irrelevant posts in seconds. Without them people will eventually abandon this site for facebook or some other site to conduct their affairs. I really don't want to see that happen, it would be much more convenient to keep them here. I would imagine it would be better overall for Bioware for everyone to stay on their site as well.

 

Every MMO out there, even the unsuccessful ones manage to have a staff of moderators capable of patrolling server forms, With this games current player base there should be more than enough monetary resources available to hire a few moderators.

[SelinaK]

If you go to http://www.swtor.com/community/profile.php?do=editoptions you can change to "No email notification" which automatically subscribes (bookmarks) a thread when you reply (there's also an option whenever you reply if you want to do it that way too with emails or whatever, just change either how you want, if you scroll all the way down), after that they appear on http://www.swtor.com/community/subscription.php (the speech bubble icon always at the top of the screen on the forums)

[Underthing]

As far as the argument of not being able to moderate all the different forums, why not allow players to vote posts up and down? You already have the Flag button for inappropriate/abusive posts. Let the community take care of the rest with a voting system.

[Blakefay]

Not having a LFG tool because it may ruin the server community and then not having server forums are counter productive.

 

Besides spamming trade and general for interaction there's not another way to build the server community. Don't even try to say the unofficial forums work because there's like 1 post on the entire 125+ server list.

 

I'd take a non forum mod'ed official forum over no forums at all.