Guild Wars 2 News Timeline

Official forums are not exclusive, not even the invention of MMOs. A lot of stand alone games offer them.

Related to costs, this forum is run by volunteers? How much does this forum cost? How much more expensive could it really get to maintain an official domain?

Last, if your trust in the GW franchise is such that you don't even think they made enough money to maintain a forum... ... what more is there to say? And is it really in your grasp to judge the financial capabilities of ANet?

actually its NOT run by volunteers, most fan forums cost the money of the server, any software needed and the larger ones are part of company structures/networks like the Guru Network

The moderators and most of the admins are volunteers.

Exactly. So GW Guru can afford it, but ANet wouldn't be able. Hmmm.

Please allow me to maintain my position that is it not a financial decision, but rather a conscious lack of attention/interest/however you want to put it... they chose to treat the community with.

Ok as Katsumi said they are volunteers here, but the difference is that the guru network is NOT a games dev company, its built for just websites and forums and thats what it does

BUT, the point is, sure ANet CAN afford it, but wouldn't you rather the cost spent on the forum be spent on development of a better game?

One could argue that a decently run forum with decent moderation to filter the noise from the good input, would actually lead to the development of a better game.

But then again i do remember some ocassions where Anet did listen to player input, but then proceeded to simply ignore said input.

I think we finally made a profit last year too. A whole $27 if I recall correctly.

I was talking in general, not specific to Guild Wars. I'm not entirely certain ArenaNet isn't considering official forums.

Don't be ridiculous. Managing an official forum of that scale would be way too much responsibility for volounteer mods, and Guru would simply not be viable if Inde had to pay staff.

School boy tactics. Nobody is saying ArenaNet can't afford to. We are saying they might simply have a better use for that large chunk of money elsewhere.

More than it is within your grasp to judge whether or not ArenaNet will or should have an official forum.

and the few times they listened to player input, did it exactly that ay and the utter shitstorm that followed cos it was BAD!!!


and thats over the whole guru network right?

but thats the part about the fansite thing, we don't (most of us) do it to make money, we do it to build a community of like minded people that we want to spend time with enjoying similar things and each builds a different segment of a greater whole

ok fair point, but I still stand by what I said

Not sure about the whole network. Inde didn't specify as to whether she was talking about this site or the whole network. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the whole network though.

Yes I would. And this is where we come down to:

I believe "a better" game has first class community support.

While unofficial fan sites are very important as well, this does not justify the lack of an official community site.

So I can only conclude that ANet is not willing to give the attention its great community deserves. Which may be due to the fact that they didn't expect themselves to create such a big community around their game, or be as successful and now they're in denial about the existence of the community.

And until that perception does not change in the minds of whoever takes decisions at ANet, things won't change. State of information of GW2 will remain the same. Lack of an official community site will perpetuate even after GW2. Regina, Martin and us will still surf the web to find some concept art on some art contest blog, some information about a book on some obscure bookseller site, some ideas people have about the game and post in some corner of the web, etc.

And you do realize only very hard core fans are willing to go through so much trouble to find their "game community" and information about it, don't you?

I, for one, know community management could be better. And *for me* at least, it's clear as day what ANet's lack of interest in supporting an official community means.

It would benefit the community and Anet to have an official forum.

The playerbase would have a central location to gather without being spread thin amongst dozens of smaller sites, and anet would not need to monitor all those sites to communicate with the community, it would be done in one place.

The board could have sections for feeback and suggestions, again so this information is not scattered all over the internet and given directly to them.

As with other games companies, developers could directly interact with fans through an official forum instead of simply having the CMs do it.

It would also fix the problem the wiki has, in that people use it like discussion forum and to post suggestions, which is not what its for. It should be simply about documenting the games, information related to it and being a resource for players not a hangout for the sycophants.

Oh dear [deity of choice], NO. The average intelligence, maturity, and age level would plummet. [Joke about how can we possibly go lower than now.]

Apparently some of you haven't visited "official" forums. ArenaNet has made a choice to only have 2 community managers to post on a forum. This has nothing to do with "official" or "non-official" but a company decision. They are branching out just a bit on the wiki but there's no reason this would change with an official forum.

Second, please... seriously, visit some of the official mmo gaming forums. There's a part of me that laughs that some of you think they are better. Trust me, allllll the same qq'ers, whiners, complainers, walls-of-text, suggestions, complaints, discussions, flames and more are the same. The tone doesn't change. (Though I'm sure someone will now point me in a direction of a shining beacon of example for a small game that has 1,000 followers). This is a 4 year old game and any older game is going to have pretty much the same community that Guru does now of this size.

I guess, doing this for as long as I have, please tell me WHY having an official forum is better. If it's all the same posts, the same people, the same devs posting as they do on the fansites then what is the benefit? Do you think it would be more closely moderated or less? (And this is a highly debatable point no matter which side you choose.) Do you think your suggestion would be seen more or less under the weight of 3 times the amount of people that post here? Do you think the noise ratio would go down or up? (That was rhetorical, of course the noise would go up). Do you think the # of complainers would somehow lessen? Since Anet has made the decision to only have the CM's post this wouldn't change for an official forum... sorry.

Newsflash: no news about GW and here's why:

ArenaNet has to weigh whether withholding information gives them more money, or giving information. It's that simple.

The main reason why ArenaNet is not giving you info about GW2, none at all, is because they don't want you to think about GW2. At all. With constant news about GW2 everyone will "prepare" for GW2 that's "almost there". But this actually decreases the profit ArenaNet can make. The best approach they can have is maintain a picture of GW1 as still lively active place worth *buying*.

Buy bonus mission pack.
Buy EotN and other campaigns.
Buy makeup.
Buy character slots.

Etc.

The truth is, GW1 is still a quality game, it's still relatively active although it shifted more to alliance and guild based game and not pug game.

When ArenaNet is giving you info on GW2, ArenaNet isn't making money. But when you buy bonus mission pack - they are making money.


I like capitalism, but there are many different forms of it. Companies don't lose playerbase because of whiny players. You see, in capitalism, the most important thing is to sell. It's not the happiness of people who buy products. It's sale. As long as ArenaNet can sell GW1 GW2 GW99 and keep selling it, they can have billions of whiny players. They still earn money.

Btw, 39% of people who are voted "I'm whiny" in this poll, are not people who won't buy GW2. They only voted for "Yes, I'm whiny". It should be noted that Guild Wars sold a lot of copies to people who never played online-only game before. I'm one of them. This is my only MMO (or quasi-MMO as you wish) - I simply don't like others (paying monthly fee isn't a problem). Many of these casual players will buy GW2, even if 20 forum members here won't because ArenaNet didn't have Tweeter

- You control all of the announcements and news directly, so you can keep the message on point and consistent.

- You set the tone and the level of moderation, so it is attractive to potential members.

- You can make sure it's a well structured and fully functional forum.

- Official forums allow you to do cool stuff like tie in game account data directly to the forum profile.

- You can pay to make sure there is full moderator coverage of every section around the clock.

- You can task paid mods with additional responsibility, such as writing weekly reports on problems or issues of note, calling you directly if there is a problem, or submitting bug reports.

Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more and possibly better reasons to have an official forum. Not that I'm arguing for an official forum, but I'm not arguing against it either.

I did not imply an official community site would mean "better". But if you want to discuss advantages:

- it's official and people will know so

- it's easily *discoverable* and people will go there, it could be even linked from ingame

- it helps with segmentation of the community

- it *provides* a default place to go for *official* information instead of searching like crazy around the web for bits and pieces here and there

- it provides a default place for players to give insight about the game and throw ideas about improvements (why should i post my idea on guru vs any other side? will I get more chances to be heard on unofficial site x or y? - most of the people would give up their idea before they get to answer these questions, as it's not really worth trying to find the right answer)

- again it's official so at least it gives players the impression they would be read/heard

- also importantly even developers might keep an eye on it. Why would developers ever need to acknowledge there is a community out there since they themselves don't know of the existence of any official forum that they might go read if they get bored in the lunch break. Will they read guru? Maybe, but chances are much smaller.

- and it will send a clear sign that ANet acknowledges there is a community out there and *wants* to provide tools to help that community keep going and grow. Right now they don't even have an official builds repository which is the core of their game (!?).

- did I say it already: it's official. And official has both ways implications: it's official for ANet they have a community and they have to take care of it they can't just ignore it or put it on mute as easily as they can pretend Guild Wars Guru doesn't exist, and it's official from our perspective as players too. Did they ever gather any stats about how active their players are on the web, did they ever measured the buzz they generate with one thing or announcement? This can prove to be vital information for any online business that of course they can ignore.

Right now... unless I knew where to search for (which is asking quite a lot) I would have no clue there is any sort of community for GW and ANet shows no interest to help or even acknowledge one exists.

Test, quick question though, what about the whatever% of the community from ANY game that just plays the game and never goes anywhere near a forum for that game?

EDIT: ok, no number but the point is fact

JR, stop being an antagonist. Test me, I agree with your last bullet point. All the others, you kind of started supporting my argument in the first place. More people just means take any problem on Guru and multiply it. And Lone, you are just throwing out random #'s.

I don't see how Regina or Martin commenting on threads here is any less official than them commenting on an official forum.

Fansites could be linked to from ingame if ArenaNet wanted to do that. How discoverable fansites are is entirely up to ArenaNet. They could link Guru from the front page of GuildWars.com if they wanted to.

I assume you mean it helps avoid segmentation?

Segmentation of huge MMO community is a GOOD thing. Separating people into like-minded groups improves the signal/noise ratio by reducing friction between factions of the playerbase.

GuildWars.com could be a default place to go for *official* information if it was actually well maintained.

Again, terrible signal/noise of an official forum trumps that arguement.

Your suggestion posted a fansite may or may not be immediately noticed by a developer, but neither will it be buried under hundreds of other QQ threads. There is no reason why a thread posted on Guru (the biggest Guild Wars fan community) would have less attention paid to it than one on an official forum.

Same point as above; same answer.

Again, signal/noise ratio. Why would they read a forum that is 90% 12 year old kids crying about their class being underpowered.

It would be a really great start if Anet would acknowledge that THIS community exists. Learn to walk before you can run, and all that.

That's no arguement for an official forum, that's a problem with Anets current practices.

For the argument of an "official" forum, probably a good example of it not really being worth doing is the current player base and the official wiki. How many players use it (percentage wise) I wonder, certainly many I have met on my travels in GW raise the eyebrows when I say "Wiki is your friend, use the in-built search function" as they have no idea what I am talking about. And tbh, I think this would the same for an official forum.

Looking at other games (MMOs and others), usually fan-based ones tend to be better as its controlled by, supported by and, in essence, loved by the player base in-game. I am currently out of GW and playing Perfect World (no giggling please!) and it has the same thing - fan based forums have more depth, content and control over the information supplied. The "official forum" is, well, pants. Any revenue generated is better spent on the game than supporting a forum (thus paying indivuduals time and salaries unless it could be done on a volunteer basis, unlikely though). The majority of companies will more than likely do this, since the attitude will be "the tools are there, let the fans do it if they need it".

ANet have always played their cards close to their chests on everything they have done. And I don't see this changing now or even when GW2 is out in the wilderness.

Let me summarize this long discussion:

Lack of an official community support site for over 4 years now suggests lack of acknowledgment of either the existence or the importance of the community for this game. Which may be a strong indicator as of why things are as they are today related to community status, GW2 information and other.

And we need to keep that in mind when we're trying to overly analyze ANet's intentions, reactions, financial motivations, etc. And we need to come to terms with the fact that ANet just doesn't consider its community all that important as we tend to believe (on guru and the like sites).

We have a couple of CMs that have no say in any decision and usually can't say or do anything to influence the internal decision making at ANet (from what I get). That is all ANet has given its community. Once we adjust our expectancies from ANet by acknowledging this, we can have more realistic discussions.

Until that happens we'd just be a bunch of whiners believing that if we whine enough they will actually pay us some attention and care. No, they won't.

Not in the slightest. Not having an official forum for the community is an approach many games have used before, and quite a few noteable Community Managers have said it is the most beneficial option for the developer and for a community of this type. By no means does it automatically imply they care less about the community.

That part I'll agree with.

Whenever I’m interested in a new MMORPG I take a look at the official site and then look at their forum, be it for signing up for beta or learning anything of interest, rarely do I go to a fan site forum first if they have an official forum.

Guru and the other leading fan forums are great but Guild Wars without an official forum to me just looks unprofessional and lazy.

Another downside of not having an official forum is being bombarded with ads from fan forums of competing games that may grab the viewers attention.

I know it's the geek/fan in me talking, but I would have loved more transparency from Anet via the CMs. I know fully well that there are commercial reasons justifying the approach they take, yet the dev updates were a really good step in the right direction. But getting words from the designers, dev and the whole team once a month in 2000 words doesn't answer some of the questions we have (see the thread on game redesign for a tiny example).

Oh and, as you said, multiplying the channels of communication doesn't help us understand exactly what's happening. We've got the official wiki and guildwars.com, plus just started now FB and twitter (Flickr and youtube are more specialised). But maybe it's just me (like many others) being too curious .

Fansites have been pushed aside, whereas they used to "feel" part of the "community strategy". I know that Regina and Martin are professionals, and Regina knows how to use social medias, yet I feel there's a huge, enormous untapped potential in fansites. I guess there'll be a "clean slate" from this point of view when GW2 and we'll have to make the transition whichever way we see fit, FB, twit, fansite, forum.

P.S.: regarding transparency, if even Microsoft now submits source code to the Linux Kernel, everything is possible!!

Calaval, very good points. Even about the ads. Unfortunately, unless everyone wants to *ahem* start handing over $49.99 for GURU: THE FORUM GAME we needs ads to support our servers.

And Fril, I think you've summed up my exact thoughts very nicely.

Official forums are garbage. First, they need to hire and pay staff to run them. They can't have volunteers because if someone like JR deletes or locks a topic for whatever reason, and that reason was a bad reason, now Anet looks bad and people yell at Anet, even though JR was a volunteer. So Anet needs to waste my money (the money I used to buy GW) on buying a forum, a server to run that forum, and to pay a bunch of people to moderate that forum. And for what? What do I owe the pleasure of all this wasted money? A forum that is no better than a public forum.

Official forums also kill any chance of un-official fansites and forums ever really taking off. There are a few extreme exceptions to this rule, such as if your game is really popular like WoW, or really small, like say 1,000 players total. In those extreme cases, official forums and un-official forums can co-exist quite well.

Guild Wars took the right approach when it came to fansites and forums. Instead of wasting money running a fansite with information, and an official forum that needs to be staffed, they instead spent that money on other areas that would actually improve the overall game experience.

This is a good article about forums. You may remember this developer as Citan from Asheron's Call 2 (Turbine).

http://www.eldergame.com/2008/06/30/...e-forum-tiger/

Not really Gigashadow. Eric Heimburg isn't exactly a neutral guy on forums and community interaction. He suffered through his first experience dealing with a community on a failed game that he was the Live Team Producer over. There was actually and legitimately a reason for all the "this game sucks and is dying" screams that the fans gave for AC2 which eventually shut down. He's probably a bit defensive about it and will be for the rest of his career.

So, is the moral of this story is that the 10% of your user base that posts on forums do matter?

That is a bit naive from a business perspective.

How much trust do you have in a software product produced by a company that does not have a web site?

To put that question into context for GW: what does it mean for an online community based game not to have any official community?

We are in the era of social sites and social X and Y and GW is precisely that: an online social game. Not putting your money where your mouth is (community in the case of GW) is a big mistake. I bet online community/social support will get better and better for MMOs and whoever will get it right and at the right level of integration with the game itself will definitively be the winner.

And btw take a good look at the site of GW on different browsers. It's more than crap. An online software company in 2009 unable to build a decent official site. Shameful.

Untrue. Plenty of evidence to contradict that statement out there.

Again, more speculation on subjects we have no clue. What qualifies you to make such statements about the financial state of ANet? Would that be expensive compared to the costs of maintaining the game server data centers for GW1?

And consider this: any online game company that cannot afford an official forum is probably not going to be around for long most probably.

He doesn't have actual #'s. People like to make that up as they go along, changing it to support whatever point they want to make.

But, it was an official forum, right? So, how hard would it be to get the actual numbers?

He knows the number of people playing his game.

He says he cross-referenced forum users to actual players (not sure how hard this would be to do... if you had a lot of people on your forum, that would be a full-time job!

In any case, it was amusing to me that he uses a "10%" number, and then goes on to argue why this small minority can kill a game. I just don't see it, I guess.

Mordakai, I've read the comments on that post and there's a lot of them that are right. I respect Eric, I'm a big fan. But those who played AC2 didn't use their official forums. Why? Because they kept switching them out, the forum software was terrible. All of their developers and even their executive producer at the time used the fan forums to communicate. Why Eric is ignoring and denying that fact is beyond me. Their fan forums, despite what he is saying, were significantly larger then their official sites. Which means that a large portion of their game population indeed didn't bother with the official forums.

So his perspective is skewed on this. As I said though, a lot of people like to make up #'s to prove their point. On certain games you see a large percentage of the population use forums. On other games, not so much. It also depends on how the developers want to LOOK at their community.

Small example. Guild Wars has sold 6 million units. You see Guru's forum have almost 200,000 people signed up for them. Are either of these numbers in any way, shape or form accurate as to the # of people there actually is? Of course not. But what's going to prove the better point? If I'm talking to a shareholder, I'm going to proclaim and announce that 6 million number. When in reality when you take away all the dead accounts, the banned bots, those who bought multiple accounts, those who purchased more then 1 chapter... the # just starts to dwindle away. Same thing applies on Guru.

Developers guard their number of active accounts fiercely. This information is not given up. It's an industry matter, not related to the fans I would say. A developer is not going to go tossing around these numbers freely. Which makes Eric's statements even more suspect because his time with other gaming studio's has been limited. So he's drawing these percentages from a game where the majority of those who used forums, didn't use the official ones. His 10% remark is also quite funny when you consider they only had 5k forum posters. I can make an educated guess how many people viewed those forums every day and if that number is indeed correct... 10% of his player base used the forums... then Asheron's Call 2 was an even bigger failure then I thought in terms of # of players.

The big problem with an official forum is that it IS a marketing tool.

In my view, the moderators here can sometimes be a little heavy-handed in editing to keep things sunny side up. I know why you do this, and it's not that I don't respect what you do. (If you want to experience GW anarchy, look at QQ forums. Awful.) Let's face it, though: the CMs have conditioned you well by ignoring the negative and rewarding the positive.

Official forums always end up taking the censorship a large step further. Since it's a marketing tool, the game company prefers to blunt criticism as much as possible without looking disingenuous. They don't want to censor like the Chinese government, but they don't want Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition to have a strong voice either.

With an unofficial forum such as this one, I can say what needs to be said and have confidence that it will stick 95% of the time. That just never happens on an official forum, and the result is that a lot of players never hear a lot of views. And that's just the way the company likes it.

Ahh, thank you, that is most informative.

The Team Quitter forums are full of quality threads.

Love the sarcasm.

Truth is, there's good information over there. But there's hardly a thread that wouldn't be improved by quality moderation, and these days 90% of the posts are either banal, terse insults, pictures or simply devoid of meaningful content.

The result is that other than classic stickied posts, you have to sort through a mountain of dreck to get anything useful.

Sounds like the internets.

Right, but at least the internets comes equipped with search engines.

At the end of the day, the purpose of the moderator is to make the site usable, much like the search engine. Both filter useless data.