Posted by Momus in News, Yellow Posts | 15 Comments
Yellow Posts: No Server Forums (For Now)
Happy TOR Launch Eve, everyone. Some might consider it coal, but BioWare gave us something on the day before Launch – Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman’s explanation of why there are no server-specific forums currently.
Hi everyone! We wanted to explain a little more about why there aren’t currently server forums:
While we absolutely agree that there are some useful threads and discussions that come from server forums, we have decided to not include them in our launch Forums lineup. Partially, this is because we do not feel we could currently provide the high standard of moderation, oversight, and maintenance in each of them that we aim to provide across the Forums.
Another factor is that, after observing server forums for other games, we feel that we can provide places on the Forums for the constructive content that typically comes from them while working to eliminate the extreme negativity of player callouts and other undesirable forum activity that can occur in them.
We now have several areas for guild recruitment and community discussion and organization, which we feel are excellent things that typically end up in server-specific forums. We encourage you to make use of all the Community Forums (especially the Server Event and Check-ins forums) as well as our expanded Guild Hall forums. Though the search feature is currently disabled, once it is restored it will be easy to search for guilds recruiting on your server (and we apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime).
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!
Obviously, this could be a hot topic for many community members – how do you all feel about this? Is BioWare making the right decision?
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The only problem is since there are no cross server instance finders…server forums help create a place to form groups if you can’t find anything in game.
It also helps form guild groups and find guilds on your server
Personally, i’m fine with it. Server forums could be useful in the long term, but right now i don’t think they are necessary.
I also feel that the frustration people are showing due to queues would be even worse in a server forum. Imagine the folks on the servers with 8-9 hours queues due to Oceanic or other regional players. Those servers would turn into absolute battlefields as people blame each other and turn nasty over the queues.
All in all, i think right now they are better off just avoiding them. The tools in place are certainly not ideal, but should be effective enough for launch.
I cannot say how impressed I have been with early access and customer service related sissues so far, it has been outstanding.
I think you ar spot on aobut crying and whining with server queues in these types of forums. Great decision IMO.
Side note, are gold sellers usually in game during early access? I have not seen one yet. Curious if Bioware has a plan to deal with them, I suspect they will have the most effective strategy in any current AAA MMO, but time will tell.
Bioware does have a plan, but they are not going to share it with us. Basically, the less they say, the more difficult it is for gold sellers to get around whatever tools they put in place. I know from a few posts on the official forums that they have a zero tolerance policy on advertising credit selling. Someone did it as a joke, not even mentioning a real website, and their account was banned. So Bioware is NOT messing around.
I imagine there may be some IP banning going on as well. I’ve seen a few posts from people with issues trying to play the game in areas like China. Sucks for someone overseas, but the reality of it is that a great deal of these issues do come from that region. Hell, China forces political prisoners to farm gold in WoW for selling online. At that point, I don’t blame an MMO for IP banning the region. It’s unfair, but institutionalized gold farming is not conducive to a healthy game environment or economy.
I received a gold seller whisper about 30 min before the severs went down for launch. I’m hoping that’s the only one I get. I can dream right??
cant believe its less than 10 hours till TOR’s out.
Wrong choice. Server forums made me feel like I was part of a community in SWG, instead of some random “tank LFG.” Making a character banner, and just chatting about the goings on… they make me feel sentimental.
I will also say, I’m guild master of a small guild with some friends… but they aren’t as active as me, especially outside the game and within the gaming community.
I want if the Fansites will fill the possible need in the mean time
Great idea.
If only 1 forum is given to the community, they should at least work for a server transfer service. I won’t reroll only to join a new guild on a different server.
And this kind of service doesn’t worth 25 bucks by the way. (I truly hope a BW dev well read this)
Server transfers are not needed yet. It would probably just make things worse. It takes more than one week for population on an MMO to spread out and naturally settle a bit. That’s why BW hasn’t really done that much about queues yet. Anything they do right now would just be a kneejerk reaction; the community needs to spread out a bit, then they can address remaining issues.
If queues on your server are that bad, talk to your whole guild about re-rolling. No one will lose anything more than one week’s worth of time. In a game you could be playing for years to come, that’s not a big deal.
My guild and I re-rolled in WoW after one month of playing. We were back to where we were on the previous server in 1-2 weeks. It’s amazing how much faster it is when you’ve done it already. Never looked back.
I’m also the guild leader of a rather small guild, but I also enjoy being part of a close-knit server community. I fear that both for recruiting and also for cross-guild collaboration with events and such, this is not a great move. I understand it sounds like a logistics issue, which well – not much you can do there til they can hire new community mods. But I’d never want to advertise on any sort of “guild recruitment” forums because oh my stars and garters, just way too huge of an audience.
I agree. Sorting through 1 huge guild recruitment forum (1 for each faction) to find a guild on your server will be a major pain. Seems like a waist of time for guilds to even post there.
I definitely think that server forums are something they’re going to need in the long run. I’m on server A, I don’t really need to know what’s going on with server B, C, or D because I can’t set up events or guilds or anything with them anyway. I want to interact with the rest of the community on server A. Everything has pros and cons and nothing is perfect, but I think the pros from server forums definitely outweighs the cons.