so I guess there will be an OFFICIAL forum after all...

[Mbj]

Originally Posted by ---Brad---

Quote:
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"As long as an 'official' forum is willing to field constructive criticism, then go."
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Based on their actions on the Test Forums, criticism of any kind will be modded away and the poster will be banned.

That's just not true at all. Reading through the boards there is plenty of pro/con discussions and criticism. The difference is that we will quickly and happily ban people who refuse to follow the very simple rules that we lay out for our PTS forums just as we did during beta. If people cannot follow those rules, posts will be modded and people will be banned. The PTS boards are not for "This sucks, the end is here, you killed my class, Epic FAIL!, you [Insert most hated class] are a bunch of *&*&*&*&*" posts. We want to have discussion and feedback but it is not too much to ask that people stay on topic, don't continue to post the same thing again and again, refrain from personal attacks on other players or on Mythic.

And BTW, we're perma-banned a total of 8 people so far, that's all including a number of people who post and flame us here as well. Sorry, but I don't consider 8 perma-bans to be excessive at all considering what we want is a place where people can have an adult discussion without worrying about being flamed, yelled at and have that discussion in a place without having to deal with the drama so often seen around any MMORPG discussion on just about any forum.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by Rommie10-284

Don't say that MJ didn't tell you up front how they intend to moderate a <still rumored> official forum.

LOL. We're running the PTS the same way we did the Beta forums other than I haven't banned anybody myself yet. I'm all for hearing suggestions/criticism but when it gets rude, disruptive, mean, repetitive, non-constructive I'm also all for ending it. That sort of stuff isn't any help whatsoever.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by gervaise1

My view has always been that official forums are beneficial.
Nor do they stunt the growth of other community forums and they certainly won'y stop guild forums.

Communication has - and continues - to evolve however. And in the last 20 years the need for corporate communication has increased many fold.

MJ's view, as he said, has always been that official forums are not as good. A consistent view. Either MJ has changed his mind or someone has taken a different position.

Nope, no change in my viewpoint. I still think broad and lightly moderated OFs usually do more harm than good, need lots and lots of maintenance and are full of the same "Epic Fail, Class Action Lawsuit INCOMING!, Nerf every class but mine!" stuff that non-OFs are full of before, at and after launch the biggest difference being that if a company has OFs, it's paying for the privilege of seeing that stuff on its own forums. Since I started posting/reading here again, I've seen many posters/responses that have been great, extremely helpful, quite useful and, for the most part, I enjoy being here. If we could avoid all the useless, rude and insulting posting, it would be even better. And yes, I do think as always that epic fail, insulting, lying, rude and overly dramatic posts don't do anybody (except possibly the OP) any good whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's how some people feel the need to express themselves and their opinions. And as is the case in open forums, everybody has to wade through them to get to the good posts and that's a shame. The only time in my 20+ years of making online games that forums haven't had so many of these types of posts are when the forums are heavily moderated or when back in the early days of online, the clock was ticking in terms of per-minute charges for posting. I certainly don't miss the later but I do wish that people would simply be more polite both to us and to each other but as always, that's the problem with the anonymity/safety of the Internet and the fact that accounts/access are free.

Oh and in terms of anyone (EA!) changing my mind and imposing OF on us, etc. no chance of that. This sort of stuff is left totally up to us and in this case, any decision against/for OFs is my call. If we stay with what we are doing now or have OFs or some hybrid, it won't be because someone forced us to do that. The guys above me in the company have a lot more important things to do with their time than decide whether we are going to have OFs or not, like running the Games Label or even running the entire company. Frankly, running OFs costs more money, time and effort and doesn't have an easily calculated ROI so it's a safe assumption that would be a harder, not an easier sell to have OFs than do what we have done with DAoC and WAR.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by Arycan

And yes, I do think as always that epic fail, insulting, lying, rude and overly dramatic posts don't do anybody (except possibly the OP) any good whatsoever.


I disagree. They're good for +1's.

LOL, true.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by Hotwar

It's a jab at Mark and Mythic; if you played DaoC, and I'm sure you did, then you are surely familiar with the fact that no matter how reasonable the feed back is Mythic and Mark are go to do what they want to do. I'm under the impression that Matt Frior? was the genius behind DaoC's success and maybe he didn't leave Warhammer to try something new. Somebody at Mythic has a lot of influence and is completely clueless and maybe it's Mark. This game feels like it's a bunch of post-it note ideas crammed together.

Just so you know the facts, DAoC was my concept right from the get-go just about every other Mythic game. However, DAoC like WAR is the result of many people's input, ideas and guidance and was the result of lots of hard work and effort from a lot of people including Matt as well a whole lot of other people. No one person is responsible for what made DAoC great or for its issues just as in WAR. One of the things that works really well (most of the time) is that people have a lot of freedom to create, give input and guide parts of large-scale projects like WAR. Sometimes it works really, really well and sometimes it doesn't work out so well. When it doesn't work out so well, we try to correct it. That's one of the reasons why Mythic had so few people leave it prior to the EA acquisition and why almost all of the senior leadership has been at Mythic since before DAoC launched.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by fredbsd

Mark,

I agree w/ your sentiments to a certain extent. But I have to disagree w/ the little ROI aspect of official forums.

You may not be able to quantify bottom line (or top line for that matter) revenue from having official forums. Yes, they cost more money. However, as the history of this game clearly dictates, having official tech forums will help regardless and probably will go a long way helping folk (meaning they stay subbed longer).

Case in point: when the game was released, the WHA forums were littered with tech issues that the community itself tried to help with (it was extremely frustrating quite frankly as it's hard for us to say to another user their machine is borked). People simply gave up and didn't try anymore (you saw all the 'zomg the engine isn't optimized' posts).

If there were Mythic/EA tech forums...at least their would be red letter posters offering suggestions/diagnosing problems rather than us (the players) effectively providing free tech support. Burned me out quite frankly and I finally just gave up.

My rig ran WH just fine. I know full well if I had an afternoon with someones rig I could get it to work (provided their hardware wasn't defective and it met sys reqs). But, to be fair, it wasn't our responsibility to do this. The amount of horsepoop tossed our way (being labeled 'fanboi' and called all sorts of names after trying to help) was something that I really grew to resent. Here we were trying to help on basically a volunteer basis and we'd get pooped on by our fellow players. Sure, it's just the interwebz and I took none to heart. But that sort of resentment spilled over in game as well.

Short version: you need offficial tech support folk on Mythic/EA forums for this. It was needed day 1 and with x-mas coming, it will be needed again. Not having these folk out in the front line was bad PR. Which, of course, will spill over to the part that counts...revenue.

Sorry to be so blunt and please don't take it negatively. It just the way it was in September/Oct.

-Fred

I agree but my point wasn't that there wasn't an ROI but rather, that quantifying that ROI is quite difficult if you are trying to explain that to execs/accountants/etc. As far as you being blunt, LOL, no worries at all. If I had it to do over again, I would have official tech forums right from the get go. My usual antipathy to most OFs have nothing to do with TFs and I really thought that between Mythic's tech support via the Herald (Knowledge Base, email, etc.) and through places like this it would be enough to handle the issues. Was it? Probably not but in a lot of cases, people didn't take advantage of the Mythic resources that were available even when we directed them to the right places. Other times, we probably didn't have all the answers either. There were other issues involved as well so it was a bit more complicated than simply saying "I wanted no forums at all and therefore there were no forums."

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by Methodman-EQ2

so mark since you are posting here when is the daoc/war combo subscription coming to US?

I've specifically avoided this question for a number of reasons. First, because it's EA's income stream and not Mythic's income stream since (obviously) we are an EA studio. So, *if* we were going to have a plan like GOA's, we would have to make sure that EA is on board with it. Unfortunately though, when you look at the economics, it's not as simple as it seems. We need to make a strong financial case for it and show that it will not result in making less money from DAoC (which is possible if too few users return to play it) than it is already making. Second, GOA made that decision on their own. Third, I'm not going to comment on something like this (pro or con) until we know exactly what we are going to do. I know that the players would be for it (no reason to be against it) but I don't want to want to say anything more unless I'm sure that it will/won't happen.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by Ashmodai9

You didn't address the rumor, though, Mark - I am certain that was intentional, but it's interesting that you are addressing all sorts of other points (for which I will give you alot of praise, actually, your responses to the questions are thorough, in particular the one about the dual subscription since it deals with money and usually dev studios are pretty tight lipped about such things ) and not the topic of the thread!

So, official forums or no? For what it's worth, whatever your qualms with having them are (and yes, they are often a pain, and littered with crap), I believe it's beneficial for the game as a whole to have a place where customers can "officially" interact with the developers, rather than having to trawl several random forums and fan sites, some of which most people had never heard of before, like f13, on the off chance that a developer (usually you, in the case of WAR) decides to take part in a discussion with players there.

Really, all I use the official forums for in games that have them (which is almost every MMO) is the "dev tracker", and most players I know use that feature as well. We do want to know what devs have to say, we do care about the game and it's direction, and we want to keep up with news pertaining to said game. This is really hard when having to trawl multiple random internet boards, some having very little to do with Warhammer.

I agree with just about everything you said and you're right, I'm not commenting on OFs on purpose but that's all I can say.

Unfortunately, most OFs for major MMOs don't have much in the way of true developer <-> community interaction. You might have great Community Team <-> community interaction but usually not from the devs. There are a host of reasons for it of course and I've always said that if we were ever going to have our own OFs for any game, I'd want to find a way that we could have great interaction with all the involved groups. I've always been involved with the community even back to the MUD days and I would want to find a way for myself and others to do that if we ever set up our own forums. I also wouldn't want to repeat the mistakes other games have made nor would I want to repeat our own mistakes so any decision to have OFs is a quite complicated one. As always, I have ideas on how to run a great OF but that doesn't mean the ideas are the right or practicable.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Originally Posted by Ashmodai9

...
So yeah, if you can have a good, productive set of Official Forums, a place where there can be good communication between you and us, that would be nothing but good. Even if it doesn't turn out that way, I still believe for the reasons I wrote above that having "average" MMO official forums is still better than none, simply by virtue of the customer having an easy way of figuring out at a glance the direction in which the game is headed and what the developers are saying if anything.

And those words in bold represent my problem with most OFs. Good communication is a two-way street. If the development team is willing to talk to the players and treat them politely, professionally and courteously, I believe that the players have the same obligation on them. A subscription grants the player a license to play the game, it doesn't give the player a license to be rude, nasty and insulting to the team and/or other individuals. My team has never been asked to lie to the players nor would I ever intentionally lie to the players but some (a minority to be sure) players feel like it is fine to lie to us or to other players in places like this. We've chased down more false leads than I care to remember and its amazing how stories that are told on the Internet or even told to our CSRs turn out to be rather more complicated when the truth comes out. This is not to say we are perfect either, we're not, but it's never been because anybody was directed by me (or EA) to mislead, cheat or exploit the players.

I expect people to be human and make mistakes whether at work or even in places like this yet in most OFs, many people treat the devs like they need to be perfect or they are failures. Worse, that failure is often accompanied by the kind of venom/bile that is both wildly inappropriate in proportion to the failure and also quite cruel at times. Who would want to read that stuff again and again in real life especially when you are working crazy days/hours at the same time? And yet it seems when a developer complains about it or simply bypasses the opportunity to partake in such fun and frolic, then the developer is ridiculed again. All of this causes the developers to get both thick skin but also a thick skull when it comes to player feedback. It's one reason why so many teams and individuals have ignored player feedback over the decades. Again, this is not to excuse developers but as I started this post off, it is a two-way street, at least where I live.

As always, I think the vast majority of players are simply looking to play a game and have fun. I also think the vast majority of people who roam the forums simply want to get information. However, just as in the game, there is a small number of posters who are simply looking to grief the forums just as they is a small number of players who look to truly grief (ruin theiur experience by being jerks as opposed to killing them under the rules) other players. The trick with both the game and any OF is to figure out how to prevent them from doing so and so allow the majority to enjoy their game and their forums.

And with this note, night all.

Mark

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[Mbj]

Folks,

Just a few quick points:

1) I'm not a big fan of in-game bans for board misbehavior and never have been for a commercial game (as opposed to during the beta process). While I think it can be justified at times for particularly nasty behavior (threats), I'd rather simply suspend their board privileges.

2) It's not like I woke up one day and decided to have OFs or not to have OFs. A lot of thought went into the decision-making and it was/is a long process.

3) I've always said that if we do have OFs, I want to have them be an example of how to do things right. The last thing I'd want to do is simply create an OF and then leave it alone. I've seen enough game companies who say they have official forums but when you go there, there is no real official presence (especially developer presence) and there are few, if any, official posts.

4) ***-kissing on our forums is not what I want and not what I wanted in our beta forums. What I do want is constructive and honest criticism/praise/feedback and posters who simply follow the rules. I suspended/banned a number of people during Beta but I didn't ban a single person for simply being critical. I did ban them for posting on the wrong forums on purpose ("I know I shouldn't post here but ..."), reposting the same thing again and again (after they were asked to stop), trolling, hijacking threads, lying, drama to the extreme and being rude/insulting to us or other players. If we did have OFs, the same thing would be true.

So, that's some quick thoughts. Please continue to let me know how you think an OF should be run.

Mark

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