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Thread: Refocusing the Community work

  1. #161
    Originally posted by Cz
    Jellobiafra, of course such a poll would vote for not doing any changes. A poll about making the game free would get a majority too. So would a poll about implementing all top 100 suggestions within the next week.

    Would that make it doable? No.
    Ok, now you're just being rediculous. Making the game free

    We are not talking about anything so silly. We are talking about ONE decision that has nearly the whole community in an uproar. When do you think that, at some point, FC may actually LISTEN to what we are saying. I know, the feeling is that everyone will scream and yell, and in a couple days, everyone will just have to deal with it. A week or two later, no one will even be talking about it. Everyone will have conformed. And you are probably completely right. However, this is just one more thing that we will be adding to the list of cons when the time comes to decide between games.
    Jellobiafra General of First Order
    First Order-Cleaning clanners since 29210
    Visit our website to join!!

  2. #162
    Originally posted by Cz
    Jellobiafra, of course such a poll would vote for not doing any changes. A poll about making the game free would get a majority too. So would a poll about implementing all top 100 suggestions within the next week.

    Would that make it doable? No.
    are you listing people asking for the bulliten boards to remain the same way as there are now in the same catagory as people asking to have the game free or people wanting everything fixed in the next week?

    i am insulted

    see thats the problem funcom seems to have the feeling that this game would be just great if it wasnt for all the darn end users screwing it all up.

    the perception is being given and has been given in the past tha we your paying customers are nothing more than an anoyance in funcoms big plan.

    and a final thing, somone is now doing what you asked us to do in the future, and that is too email you with concerns and it looks like you have twice now accused that person of soliciting people to spam you with email.

    is this how you will treat people after a patch, and there are problems with somthing whether bug related or not say that they are spamming your inbox?
    Last edited by besheba; Jan 20th, 2003 at 22:42:16.
    "death comes slowly to those who anticipate it and swiftly to the unconcerned" Richard Pyott

    You want a duel?.......Go play chess
    You want honor?......Go serve your country in the military

    First pistol crat to reach Chief.

    Proud follower of the Mexican Hat Band Cult.

  3. #163
    Here's an idea. Put a poll on the login screen. See what your customers have to say.
    --
    Kenlon- Combat Medic, RK1
    "This! Is! My! Boomstick!" Gear.

    Creaky old vet, back for another go-round.

  4. #164
    Jellobiafra, I know we're not talking about making the game free. I used it as an illustration that people voting on a poll vote for what they want to happen, which is not always possible. Maybe we could do a poll if I made a complete run-down of what else would have to go if we kept all the forums.

    An I don't count on people calming down after e.g. a week. I count on it being hard work to prove this is for the better, and even then that might be impossible, as one can always say that "the other thing would be better". (Yes, I know that statement works both ways. )

    besheba, no, I'm not. not at all. Read my explanation for Jellobiafra above, please.

    And there is a big difference between e-mailing me with concerns, and e-mailing me with the identical topic and no content 200 times over.

    Kenlon, see above about the poll option.

    Now, I noticed it wasn't really extremely late, but considering how long it took me to type this post, I guess I'll be heading off anyway. G'night.

  5. #165
    Originally posted by Cz
    Jellobiafra, I know we're not talking about making the game free. I used it as an illustration that people voting on a poll vote for what they want to happen, which is not always possible. Maybe we could do a poll if I made a complete run-down of what else would have to go if we kept all the forums.
    Actually, if it could be kept completely truthfull, that would be a great thing to do. Let us know what we are sacrificing for. Give us the options FC had, and see if we would choose the same way. I really think that you are underestimating just how important these forums are to us.
    Jellobiafra General of First Order
    First Order-Cleaning clanners since 29210
    Visit our website to join!!

  6. #166
    This isn't a complaint about the fan sites, I am sure they are great and that they need their adds.
    However I PAY to play AO, and in that monthly fee includes access to these forums.
    Now Funcom want to push me onto one of your sites to keep in touch with the community and therefore also forcing me to watch your commercials.
    I hate commercials, I canlive with them when they are financing something I get for free, I do not tolerate commercials in a product I am paying for.
    All the ducks are swimming in the water

  7. #167

    My view

    Is that this is _VERY_ bad idea.

    I am not a member of these "fan" site forums for several reason which:

    1)

    Require registration. I hate to register to zillion of sites.

    2)

    Will fragment the community and information to several sites requiring 1) and also half of them are run in servers not up to it or with lines not up to it. Even stratics which is one of the largest multi game "fan" site is DOG SLOW and I just hate it.

    3)

    Are run by people in noway affiliated with FC who can basically do whatever they like with your posts/accounts, etc.

    4)

    Will limit the possibility of official answer/making our views seen by you (yeah you say you read the other forums too but I kinda believe that for every one you read, there are 10 others you dont and I doubt you really want to nominate few sites over others as more official than others)...

    5)

    If you cant hire more people to help you in your burden, the FC financials are even worse than what I feared. The bulletinboard is ESSENTIAL part of every game and should be controlled in the end by the company.

    Summary:

    I hate to log 10 sites every morning and doing "show all unread" when I now can log just one and do that and so doing, keep in touch what is going around in AO.

    I will be very dissatisfied customer if this plan goes through and you better think about that too.

    Overall I give this plan big - sign and vote NO!

    Zarch and da chars

  8. #168
    I try my best on these boards to be calm, helpful, and informative. Well, most of the time, sometimes flames are justified.

    I like to think that I've contributed to understanding of the game for quite a few people, and that I've been able to make suggestions that helped the game.

    I won't be registering for any fan-site forums. Instead, my time will simply continue to shift away from AO and towards other things, other games and real-world things. Probably, this is a good thing.

    But that doesn't mean this is a good change. You said you have moderation handled. Fine. So, you're doing this to be more focused on being able to read what's important, right?

    On each profession board you have two professionals who do that. They sift through all the trash that gets posted to find bugs and issues that you should look at.

    You think you don't have people who would, and could, do that on all your other forums? I'd happily volunteer to sift through Next Patch or Notum Wars, identifying important issues. I think you'd find a lot of people would - I'd place bets that I'd see Jynne, Kenlon, Kuroshio, Thyrra, and others volunteering, because we have both the time to do it and the desire to see a better game.

    This isn't going to make the game better. It's going to drive players away, reduce communication, and generally contribute to a lot of people being unhappy.

    So, in short; I don't like it, I don't think its needed, and I hope you'll reconsider.
    Gunned down the young. Now old, crotchety, and back.

  9. #169
    Here's a quote from Cz. I think you should read it yourself, Cz.

    <Cz> Even if we were blood sucking leeches just craving your last cent off your bank account we would still care for the community, as you're the ones sustaining us. :P

    ~Chris

  10. #170
    Ah... yes this is great!
    /sarcasm off

    Hell no! Don't do it... Don't jump FC, it's not worth it!
    *Watches FC tumble over the edge falling to oblivion*
    *sighs* Aw well ... there went one that would never listen to others...

    Good luck and cya in the Salvation Army's shelter

  11. #171
    It's a shame to see the forums closed down, but I understand the business reasons behind it. The problem most people have is that there simply is not a "good" alternative right now. The other three major boards do not exclude members from receiving junk mail, in fact they reserve the right to do so.

    Why not change the model of the forums entirely, similarly to the IRC server, to entirely player-run? All funcom would have to do is provide a server for the forum, and maybe weekly backup. Is this possible? I'm sure there's a way this could work. A small team of Administers could farm out the moderatation jobs (just to keep the crap off of the boards). Moderators who don't perform adequately would be suspended first, then remove for a second offense.

    I believe it is very important to foster a cohesive player base. Shutting down most of the official forums only serves to fracture its users, and to diminish the sense of community.

    The fan-run web sites would be a good alternative, only if they adhered to a privacy policy that DID NOT allow them to share forum registration info.
    Born on: Wed Jun 27 15:39:10 2001
    Slavor, Soldier, RK1

  12. #172
    Lumin, removing the communication, or the tool for communication? If you mean the former, I'm not sure what you refer to. If you mean the latter, I agree that is't weakened, but at the same time we open other areas, and get the time to actually cover it.
    Somehow I hope FunCom pull the stunt together and actually mange to get out of this situation on the good side.

    But its quite obvious that those who made the decission does not in any way play the game themself on a daily basis.

    In Anarchy Online we have three ways of communicating, we have the offical msg board which is our prime source of information and discussion, as it should be.
    Then we have the in-game chat which mostly contains the following few words "lvl xx xx LFG", "Do you have some spare credz?", "Want to join our team?", "WTB xx item for xx credits" and "WTS xx item for xx credits or higher bids".
    Evry now and then you meet a person that you can discuss in-game and out of game with, they are rare but do exist. thats why people go to the boards as they can much more easily find each other there.
    And the Last, the guild msg board/chat which require two things, that you got a guild and that you feel comfortable chatting away with them (not evryone do that when they are new to the group, even though they know some of the members).

    Now you are planning on crippling the most important way of communicating for us, the offical msg board. this is where we gather, get to know people that share the same toughts as ourself and the ones that we get into heated discussions with.

    Unless your planning on strenghting the in-game communication methods many will simply fade away as they lost one of their main sources for interaction in this game, be it inside or outside, its still all about the game.
    Operation impending doom 2 seems to have started with patch 15.6.5
    12.6 first contact, 14.6 second attempt, 16.6 Invasion of the gabber bots ?
    Old and bitter player, currently playing: Justincase GA4 wearing phix0r
    Originally posted by Cz
    I already saw this thread, but refrained from answering due to the pleasant show of confidence from Lumin.
    Sing a song for FunCom

  13. #173
    I’ve never been much of a poster myself, but these forums have always been my number one source for information. All kinds of information, from technical to RP, from story related (hmm) to organisations...

    Besides the fact that I, as many others, do not intend to register at one of the fan sites –enough reasons have been mentioned- there is no way they will ever be able to create the same “community” feeling that exists on these forums. And it is this feeling of a community that keeps a lot of people on board. Take it away, and you take the base of the community away, the most valuable attribute of any on-line game.

    If this is a question of resources, I suggest to fire those responsible for this idea. It should bring in enough credits to maintain these forums

    I’m afraid there is nothing positive I can say about this...
    Marcos "Yarko" Orender
    co-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Newland City Council
    Advisor of The Independent Rubikans

    Rubi-Ka's neutral news source: The Independent Rubikan http://www.ir-news.org/

  14. #174
    First off, I don't much care about the boards anymore.

    However, I still feel that this is a bad move. In my opinion, it is simple math.

    10,000 people reading information on one forum. (Yes, I know. 10,000 is being very generous.) Assuming maybe half of them will feel like giving their emails away to companies that produce revenue through selling it to others,* that will be 5,000 people spread out amongst....let's say four fan sites.

    *Let's be honest. If you run a forum, what possible reason is there for requiring an email address? Simply none. Yet, it has become the standard to require it because it is about the only way to make money without working online these days. And it doesn't take a genius to understand that 'privacy policies' are written to allow them to do just that. Anyone who's been involved in running sites like this knows it. Either those who claim otherwise are more naive then my 4 year old niece, or adopting the 'if you say it enough they'll believe you' philosophy.

    10,000 people on one site. 5,000 on four. How is this building a stronger community? I must have missed this lesson in grade school.

    Now let's look at this issue with some common sense.

    AO does not have the manpower to keep this board running in its current state.

    AO wishes to spread it out amongst fansites so that others have the job of moderating the many posts by players.

    This leaves us with the simple question of, 'If moderation is all they need, and they are essentially giving it over to volunteers, then why not create an ARK division with the sole purpose of moderation on the AO boards?'

    The cynical mind might think it is because the 'fansites' which are largely based on a network of such sites, ie: ao-stratics is part of the stratics site, do not generate enough traffic to make them a very attractive option for continued running. For example, AO-Warcry was taken down some time ago. The page is still up, despite a long lack of updates. But you can not find it on the Warcry network navigation. You have to know the url. Why did they shutdown? Lack of interest.

    The cynical mind may further deduce that this is much like Funcom's effort for 'shelf space' which they attempted with their booster pack. A pack that you could buy in a box off the shelf of a store....and didn't even need to load the cd. Just type in a registration code.

    Has anyone ever wondered why these 'fansites' do so poorly? Because quite honestly, they are very pathetic compared to this board. Yes, cntrl-c that CZ. I'm going to compliment you. The AO board is one of the best in the industry. If you wish to view one of the worst, I direct you to the Official Asheron's Call 2 Forums. That is the very definition of the boring and stale board.

    Face the truth. Be honest. AO is a small game with a small community. Splintering it between many sites will make it smaller.

    So you have two choices. Use outside help in the form of fansites which, regardless of the intentions of the editors, are merely cogs in their larger parent sites intent on making money off of retailing personal/demographic/etc information...

    ...or

    Develop your ARK program to help you.

    And I lied. You have a third. You could slowly attempt to rebuild a normal level of trust between Funcom and the customer base. Perhaps with a larger paying player base you would be able to hire more then one person for your job.

    As a side note, I would also assume that all the people you told us were helping you moderate in the shadows with no names a month or two ago have either been pulled off or didn't exist in the first place?

    And don't bother with the poll. It doesn't take a savant to see who the only people agreeing with your ideas are Cz. Amazingly they are the ones who can't make a fansite good enough to draw more then 50 hits a day on their own.
    Last edited by Zylina; Jan 20th, 2003 at 23:54:11.

  15. #175

    Thumbs down Bad idea.

    Seems like this is FCs way of closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears and going "lalalalalalalalalalalaala".

    Seen this before when the forums were conviently "corrupted" around 12.6 and had to be totally wiped. Lately the boards here resemble that time, with the lag problems, warping, class issues etc turning the "discusssions" into a napalm fuelled BBQ. While the number of forums could (and probably do need to be reduced), what is proposed seems rather draconian.

    Community communications has never been FCs strong point (nor EQ or AC for that matter ) so this seems like a large step backwards, especially at a time when theres a lot of new MMORPG competition just around the corner. DAOC has been the only game where Ive seen communications done right, shame there was little in the way of game content.

    I can see the excuses now - "we didnt know about that issue because we dont have time to look at all the boards outside of the main AO boards - if only......"

    Be interesting to see how all this fares at the next major game breaking patch.

    Still, its their game, its their company - and if theyre not interested in communicating with their playerbase - their loss.

  16. #176
    Cz, you may not agree with everything below, but I hope you do take it under consideration.

    First off, I think is is just terrible. It is one thing for fan sites to crop up and do what they do as a labor of love... It is another thingy, entirely, to *depend* on them without any particular benefit to them. Basically, you are making them do the work Funcom should do for free.

    While most fan-site maintainers (AO Stratics, AO Basher, Anarchy Mainframe, Anarchy Arcanum, etc.) obviously do what they do because they like doing it. This is not the issue. The issue is that they should not have the burden of solely supporting *essential* services to the player-base of Anarchy Online that Funcom should maintain themselves. A community forum is an ESSENTIAL service that is part of EVERY MMORPG. But, hey...why pay someone on your end to do it when you can coax everyone else to do it for you?

    Take for instance... "Two extremely active forums which we would like to see very good alternatives for before we close them down; the Atlantean and Rimor Exchange forums."

    So...what does that mean? You'll keep it there, because it's an important, essential service that any MMORPG should have. But, you'll be more than happy to slough off if someone puts hours and hours into developing something that you should have developed to begin with?

    It not particularly the facts that bother me, but more the attitude Funcom is displaying. While I can't speak for everyone, most fan site maintainers do what they do for the players, not for Funcom... Because Funcom has not given them anything that they haven't paid for...while fellow players are in the same boat as them. The fact that Funcom thinks it's a good idea to offload essential services to fan sites with no particular benefit to those fan sites (aside from more traffic, and likewise a bigger burden of responsibility) is simply bad policy.

    It feels like that in return for all their hard work...Funcom is taking advantage of the people who put good chunks of their spare time into creating and maintaining these sites.

    Now, I'm most speaking just on principle... Since my "fan site"--if you want to call it that--is not part of this "offloading" process, this issue does not affect me personally. However, it just strikes me as a matter of principle, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth overall.

    Fan sites should not be expected to support the weight of the entire community....that's YOUR job. That's what we pay you for. MMORPGs are basically about one thing: COMMUNITY. People certainly don't play AO for the gameplay. (Sorry if that hurts anyone's feelings...but anyone who's played the game for over 6 months plays it for FRIENDS!)

    If this sounded too harsh, I do apologize. It is just something I feel strongly about, personally.

    I hope the right decision is made, as I would really hate to see AO's community become even more fractured and alienated than it is already.

    -Jayde

  17. #177
    Originally posted by Cz
    Jellobiafra, of course such a poll would vote for not doing any changes. A poll about making the game free would get a majority too. So would a poll about implementing all top 100 suggestions within the next week.

    Would that make it doable? No.

    We're not asking you to change anything. We want it the way it was. You SAY that you are going to improve communication. We as a playerbase are telling you NO, this will not improve communication.

    If you can't listen to us now, then how do you expect to listen to us in the future?

    ~Chris

  18. #178

    Angry ****

    My posts (besides general selling or friendly comments) tend to revolve around the facts that:

    1) There is a complete lack of the promised story, and;
    2) Funcom representatives refused to comment on this.

    To me, shutting down most of the 'major' forums will prevent avid players from speaking their mind to the designers (usually, in a very constructive manner, too!).

    Here's how I see the events taking place:

    * Funcom shuts down most of the forums, promising more quality official posts to the boards in exchange for less moderation.
    * For 1 month or 2, members of the FC staff post like mad-men to the boards.
    * After about 2 months, FC staff stops posting.
    * After another month, Cz comes on the boards and says "Sorry, but..."

    Funcom, I'm really, really, tired of this crap. Live up to your promises, or we WILL go elsewhere!

    Provisioner
    Trader: The trader is the most trade-skill oriented of all professions.

  19. #179
    Don't forget that when fan based sites get tired of AO, they can just close their doors and leave everyone high and dry.

    If FC got tired of AO, it wouldn't matter about the official forums, because with no game, there wouldn't be a need for a forum.

  20. #180
    Refocusing the Community work should perhaps be re-named to Refusing Community work

    I know this sounds a bit harsh, but unless you plan on giving us some info on your new and wonderfull strategy towards better communication other then what you have written in the article you might aswell just re-name it.

    for my part I dont think there is much more to be said.
    im getting a bit tierd of your twists and turns, at first it was interesting as I like changes, but this is close to griefing towards the community you so dearly want to keep close to you.

    I'll stay to see what happends, and as I have said before, I hope you pull it together and get out on the good side.

    Another thing is that 2 days is a bit short notice, though I understand why you dont want to give us 7 days notice or more as that would let us have better time to organize and make a formal protest like what happened when you announced the scope nerf. and that case even got covered in NY Times.
    Operation impending doom 2 seems to have started with patch 15.6.5
    12.6 first contact, 14.6 second attempt, 16.6 Invasion of the gabber bots ?
    Old and bitter player, currently playing: Justincase GA4 wearing phix0r
    Originally posted by Cz
    I already saw this thread, but refrained from answering due to the pleasant show of confidence from Lumin.
    Sing a song for FunCom

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