What would happen to Guild Wars if Guild Wars Guru was shut down?

(NOTE: This is a purely hypothethical situation, intended to instigate a debate, i.e no flaming. I obviously don't want to see Guru close, but anything's possible (if TV dramas have taught me anything...) )

Since ArenaNet has no official forums for Guild Wars, the Guild Wars communities are forced to foster on fansites.

Guild Wars Guru is undoubtably the largest fansite/forums. (As I write this, Guru has 2500 active members, while GWO has 900). It's the center of discussion and trade, which also must be fostered on forums.

But let's suppose that due to a freak accident (let's just say...internet-annihiliating virus), that the servers which maintained Guild Wars Guru were wiped out. Completely. Including the back-ups. Enough that Guru would need to be completely reassembled.

What would happen then?

Without Guru, there would be less organization for trades, thus the in-game economy would suffer.

Without Guru, the majority of the Guru community would be forced to go to GWO. Anyone who knows that forum can see why that would be a problem.

Just a hypothetical situation.

Well, I suppose life would go on...again, only 2500 active users is barely anything compared to actual GW player base

Well, since GWO is so bad...then people would either have to wait for Guru to come back (there'd be a lot of people wanting to help, I imagine), or, there would have to be a new site for people to go to. GWO isn't really an option, as it's pretty terrible (the people there....ugh)

I would assume people would move to a different site or try to get another guru-ish site up and like fenix said a lot of people would probably be willing to help get it up and running again.

I would stop the doomsday scenario right now as this would never happen as I work on another board bigger than this with a smaller population but with host of downloads.We always back up the database and make sure all links are working fine and my Admin does a good jop of it.The only way this site would come down and that is if Indie decided to take it down.Check my homepage out.

What would happen? In the grand scheme, probably not a darn thing...

There have got to be several hundred thousand players (or more) that don't even know of this forum! I kinda' don't think that they'd miss it.

For those few thousand players that use the services of this forum, it would be a bummer, but life would go on after a few weeks. After all, it's hardly critical to playing the game!

- Grunntar

About 2500 people (Less than that actually, since many of them already have accounts on other forums) would go find another forum.

Um... nothing? People would migrate to a new site within a week or so. You may think their communities suck now, but when all the GWG people migrate over... you wont even notice the old members ;-)

I don't think the game would be affected at all except for trade. Really, most players do not come here; therefore, a mere forum loss would not even register in the grand scheme of things.

That, and everyone would go to another forum. Personally, I can barely stand this one. You can't even search for people's posts the normal way.

Well I'd just have more time on the SA forums. As to what would happen to Guild Wars? Not a whole lot. Trade would probably be the only thing hurt, besides those that are really attached to these forums.

People would migrate to the other online support sites and if GWGuru was able to return even as a shadow of it's former self, then I think the majority would flock back. =)

The impact that 2500 players have on a game the size of GW is like a drop in the ocean, it would not have any effect on the game.
Well perhaps the economy would be helped if the "PC Guru scammers" got shut down, since they manipulate the market to their own intressts.(you know who you are)

Nothing.

With the official wiki, guru is useless.

I'll try and answer your questions with a little less of the sarcasm. I like hypotheticals after all.

Alright, with the given statistics of what we can assume is constant online users we're talking about a change that would affect roughly 0.1% of the entire Guild Wars "community." (As a note, GWG has a registered user number roughly equal to 4% of the GW population.)

Now we can assume a certain amount of "power traders" (those who regularly conduct trades around 100k or more) frequent the forum specifically for the purpose of trades. A greater amount users most likely conduct a larger volume of trade under the ceiling of "power traders."

These volume and power traders would be greatly affected, for as long as it takes for them to migrate and establish themselves on another trading forum. Let's face it, this type of poster is only really concerning themselves with their ability to trade, any forum with a good amount of users suffices.

As far as how this would affect the economy?

The GWG Trade forum has several guides (A congratulations to those overworked few who established them!) that are quoted in-game and the listed prices tend to follow the community supply/demand quite well. This would take a lot of the credibility/standards from the economy, until such a time they could be re-established.

That's the totality of the effect on the economy I see. Supply and Demand is mostly mob-based, not paper (or digital), so that would remain the same. The Trade forum is only a REFLECTION of that, after all, so perhaps there would be a few more lower or higher trades, but other than that, no.

Onto the other features of GWG.

Builds
-With the loss of the builds forum and the lack of them on GuildWiki, I would surmise the other forums would be hit up harder for requests, many players might have to *gasp* think for themselves for a short time also.

Information
-The information I see passed upon the "big four" (Q&A, Sardelic, Riverside, Developers) seems to be largely petitions of late, a lot of complaints, and mostly questions that can be answered with searching.

Somehow... just somehow, I imagine a conspiracy theory bursting into existence about how Guild Wars was behind the sudden disappearance of GWG so they didn't have to listen to everyone "pigeon hole their constant mistakes."

Beyond that, people who want to complain, or voice a problem, will find a medium to do so.

Just about every established question can be answered on GuildWiki, although with the apparent lack of searching ability, I foresee many persons left on the main page unsure how to proceed.

Seriously though...

There would be a lasting impression of "loss" since we've all grown attached to GWG and the work both the Admins and the hard-working posters do (as well as the format). But other than that, people will move on. It may not be GWO, but it will be some site. And it will grow again.

1) Why are you still here?
2) I wasn't aware the official wiki had auctions or a forum.

If Guru was shut down, my graveyard work shifts would go that much slower. At least this gives me something to read/do during slow times at work.

Nothing drastic. A few people would lose their sense of self-importance, there'd be some whining and complaining for a couple of weeks while the userbase shifts itself around and begins to support other fansites. These type of sites would fill the void, whether they improve to cater for the numbers or people create entirely new ones.

At the end of the day it's already been pointed out that the GWGuru population is quite small compared to the overall GW playerbase, so such an event would probably go unnoticed by many.

One a semi-related note, my Firefox browser seems to have gone nuts after posting on this thread. Every time I right click the bolded option at the top of the option box is now "economy." I am not kidding, sadly.

Can't really see it affecting the grand scheme of things. The casual players would keep playing, and the people who quit GW, came back, got angry and quit again, returned to announce the impending doom only to quit again a few days later probably would just discuss things elsewhere.

Yeap. People there are indeed horrible. Especially some geeks there with trillions of posts whose lives apparently revolve around an online forum. And the mods...woooot...Narcissistic Egomaniacs who think talking in big words makes them look better. Just makes them look like fools throwing big words out of context in their posts.

So what would happen if guild wars guru went down? Another forum just like it would come up.