Dev Post EricMusco Posted September 12, 2014 Dev Post Share Posted September 12, 2014 Hey folks, I wanted to let you know about some changes coming to the Class forums. First, what is happening. We are collapsing all of the individual Class forums (such as Jedi Knight, Sith Warrior, etc) into the the Class forum. There will no longer be subforums for each individual Class.We are also going to collapse each of the mirrored Advanced Classes together. Example, the Sentinel and Marauder will now share the same subforum. What this means is that when you are on the forums, if you click into the Class forum, it will be a general discussion of all things pertaining to Classes. Inside of the Class forum, there will now be 8 subforums, one for each set of Advanced Class mirrors. We are doing this for a few reasons: The Class forums do not contain a large amount of traffic by themselves, by collapsing them we allow one more populated place for players to discuss Classes!A lot of the conversation in the Class forums also revolves around the Class stories. These topics are better suited to the Story and Lore forum and so those discussions can now occur there. (Reminder: Please use spoiler tags )The collapse of the Advanced Class subforums is for the purpose of allowing us to both gather feedback, and to respond to each AC mirror more easily. Often we will see folks copy and pasting their thoughts or questions in both forums, and we often will do the same when posting comments in them. This way it allows us to create one place for those ACs to look. In order for all of this to happen, we are going to be temporarily closing the Class forums. You will notice shortly after this post that the forum will be unreachable as we work to move things around. Due to the volume of threads we will be moving it will take a bit to get everything moved over. It is my expectation that we will bring the new Class forum and subforums up by Friday of next week. Note that if you have any of those forums bookmarked you will need to update them once we go live. Thanks everyone! -eric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Essence_of_Light Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Sounds good to me. Thanks for the update, Eric. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOHboy Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Makes perfect sense IMO. Having to double up with responses just to change the names of abilities (even though both names are often used) seem like excess effort. Should make communication on both sides easier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeyboardNinja Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 (edited) While I think this is a good idea, I will note that a week is a lot of downtime. The class forums are basically the only seriously useful element to the official forums (almost everything else is superfluous discussion). Aside from catching up my DPS leaderboard thread, I basically have zero reason to even load swtor.com until next Friday. This is made even worse by the fact that several classes have changed recently (most notably Sentinels/Marauders) and there is a lot of very active discussion right now attempting to discover new optima. That discussion is significantly disrupted, perhaps even ended entirely by the timing of this change. So a really good idea, and I think a long time coming, but the timing and the length of the downtime is onerous. --- Oh, I hope you're planning on keeping the role-based subforums (e.g. Tanking/Healing/DPS). The Healing and DPS subforums aren't very active, but the Tanking subforum is. There's quite a bit of information there (most notably, my tank gearing guide) which doesn't belong in any of the specific advanced classes or in the top-level forum. I also have a class-agnostic generalized healing guide that I'm planning on writing in the near future. Such a guide would have no place in any specific class subforum. Edited September 12, 2014 by KeyboardNinja Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dev Post EricMusco Posted September 12, 2014 Author Dev Post Share Posted September 12, 2014 (edited) While I think this is a good idea, I will note that a week is a lot of downtime. The class forums are basically the only seriously useful element to the official forums (almost everything else is superfluous discussion). Aside from catching up my DPS leaderboard thread, I basically have zero reason to even load swtor.com until next Friday. This is made even worse by the fact that several classes have changed recently (most notably Sentinels/Marauders) and there is a lot of very active discussion right now attempting to discover new optima. That discussion is significantly disrupted, perhaps even ended entirely by the timing of this change. So a really good idea, and I think a long time coming, but the timing and the length of the downtime is onerous. --- Oh, I hope you're planning on keeping the role-based subforums (e.g. Tanking/Healing/DPS). The Healing and DPS subforums aren't very active, but the Tanking subforum is. There's quite a bit of information there (most notably, my tank gearing guide) which doesn't belong in any of the specific advanced classes or in the top-level forum. All really good points KBN. I am going to work to get them up as soon as I can. I am just putting Friday as a "by the latest" marker on the calendar. -eric Edited September 12, 2014 by EricMusco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeyboardNinja Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 All really good points KBN. I am going to work to get them up as soon as I can. I am just putting Friday as a "by the latest" marker on the calendar. Fair enough. :-) Maintenance takes time, and upper bounds are better than lower bounds. Just wanted to vent some concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stridentzephon Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Its a trap! We are going to have to join forces to stop the new threat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasen Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 And today marked the day the Class Forums fell... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ashesunei Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 I hope you have the folks at vBulletin on speed dial. I've seen attempts like this on larger forums kill and munge the backend due to unplanned php/mysql issues. Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raansu Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Hey folks, I wanted to let you know about some changes coming to the Class forums. First, what is happening. We are collapsing all of the individual Class forums (such as Jedi Knight, Sith Warrior, etc) into the the Class forum. There will no longer be subforums for each individual Class.We are also going to collapse each of the mirrored Advanced Classes together. Example, the Sentinel and Marauder will now share the same subforum. What this means is that when you are on the forums, if you click into the Class forum, it will be a general discussion of all things pertaining to Classes. Inside of the Class forum, there will now be 8 subforums, one for each set of Advanced Class mirrors. We are doing this for a few reasons: The Class forums do not contain a large amount of traffic by themselves, by collapsing them we allow one more populated place for players to discuss Classes!A lot of the conversation in the Class forums also revolves around the Class stories. These topics are better suited to the Story and Lore forum and so those discussions can now occur there. (Reminder: Please use spoiler tags )The collapse of the Advanced Class subforums is for the purpose of allowing us to both gather feedback, and to respond to each AC mirror more easily. Often we will see folks copy and pasting their thoughts or questions in both forums, and we often will do the same when posting comments in them. This way it allows us to create one place for those ACs to look. In order for all of this to happen, we are going to be temporarily closing the Class forums. You will notice shortly after this post that the forum will be unreachable as we work to move things around. Due to the volume of threads we will be moving it will take a bit to get everything moved over. It is my expectation that we will bring the new Class forum and subforums up by Friday of next week. Note that if you have any of those forums bookmarked you will need to update them once we go live. Thanks everyone! -eric I always wondered why it wasn't like this to begin with. The current forum setup is kind of silly when you really think about it since all classes are basically mirrors of each other. Only problem is ability names can confusing if you've never played the mirror version (like me with shadow as I played assassin lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
venomlash Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Sounds good. *shrug* While you're at it, please add a subforum for the Sarlacc Enforcer. It's the only class BW has announced that doesn't have its own class forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DomiSotto Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Sounds great. Can we get a sticky in each forum that will have all the mirror abilities side by side with names and pics? WIll make things that much easier! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raansu Posted September 12, 2014 Share Posted September 12, 2014 Sounds great. Can we get a sticky in each forum that will have all the mirror abilities side by side with names and pics? WIll make things that much easier! It would, but that would take more work than they are willing to pay the mods to do (do they even pay the mods?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hunterraaze Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Ever since using the forums I have been wanting this to happen. This is a great change. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhyn Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Sounds great. Can we get a sticky in each forum that will have all the mirror abilities side by side with names and pics? WIll make things that much easier! This needs to happen to make the forum easier to use with the combined classes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthDymond Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Sounds great. Can we get a sticky in each forum that will have all the mirror abilities side by side with names and pics? WIll make things that much easier! As others have said, this would be an excellent idea, especially with the merged mirror class forums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emperor-Norton Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 While I think this is a good idea, I will note that a week is a lot of downtime. The class forums are basically the only seriously useful element to the official forums (almost everything else is superfluous discussion). Aside from catching up my DPS leaderboard thread, I basically have zero reason to even load swtor.com until next Friday. You can still access the Class Forums with it's direct link. The only think missing is the image with the Hyperlink on the main page. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TACeMossie Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 You can still access the Class Forums with it's direct link. The only think missing is the image with the Hyperlink on the main page. Yeah, but they are currently read-only, so while you can see what you almost got to, you can't post there anymore. Only edit stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Emperor-Norton Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Yeah, but they are currently read-only, so while you can see what you almost got to, you can't post there anymore. Only edit stuff I can post. http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7669955&postcount=56 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TACeMossie Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I can post. http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=7669955&postcount=56 Oh lol, its only the class subsection itself thats locked, you can still post in the subsections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerba Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Since in the German and French forums, the class forum is still visible, will this change only apply to the English forums? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Letsjet Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 (edited) I misread after taking a break from the game. Edited September 14, 2014 by Letsjet I misread after taking a break from the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raansu Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 I have been playing high end MMO's since May 1999 with EQ1's launch. At times, I was in top 10 guilds for the particular game I played. One time, our guild was world wide #1 for 5 months in a AAA MMO where I was guild leader. This forum change is the 1st time I've seen this in a AAA title. This is a horrible idea. This will become a trolling, "nerf the other guy!" mess. This was an incompetent decision that will further weaken the most expensive MMO that ever was (or will be,) created. I would reprimand the person who oversaw those who made and implemented this decision, and I would return the pvp and pve class forums to their pre-altered state. Richard Thigpen Experienced MMO Player and Leader Avid SWTOR Defender. Wut??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tatile Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 Wut??? I don't think he understands how mirrored classes work. You can't nerf Marauders without nerfing Sentinels, yeah? If anything this just reduces the number of question you can ask to the PvP balance devs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raansu Posted September 13, 2014 Share Posted September 13, 2014 (edited) I don't think he understands how mirrored classes work. You can't nerf Marauders without nerfing Sentinels, yeah? If anything this just reduces the number of question you can ask to the PvP balance devs. I just cant tell if he's trolling or if he legitimately does not understand what is going on....I've always felt that splitting the forums the way there were was kind of silly considering the classes are mirrored....So I'm just extremely confused on what he actually has a problem with especially since he mentions pvp and pve class forums....that never existed..... so I want to assume he's just trolling. Edited September 13, 2014 by Raansu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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