Warhammer Online: Forums, the Good, Bad & Ugly

In recent years, many developers and publishing houses have opted out of the "official" forum business for a variety of reasons. One of the most recent developers to forgo "official" forums is Warhammer Online publisher EA.

Mark Jacobs, GM/VP of EA Mythic, explains why they've opted out of official forums in a classic timeline of love and hate between developers and the fans of the games they make. He did so on the Warhammer Alliance forums:

Folks,

An unofficial timeline for official MMORPG forums:

What follows (for clarity's sake) is the kind of stuff said by players/non-players on these forums.

T minus 180 days till launch

Life is beautiful, the devs are great, the birds are merrily chirping away, oh look, there's a heretic who thinks that the game will suck, stone him, drive him off! The birds are merrily chirping away.

T minus 90 days till launch

Oh man, this game can't launch, it's not ready yet. Yes it is, no, it's not. This game is gonna tank big time. The devs suck! No they don't, things are still fine, the birds are still singing! Yeah, but they're vultures you moron!

Launch Day

This game is going to go down in flames! This game is going to rock! You devs did it! Yeah, you screwed it up! You lied to us, you cut out features! How dare you ban people from your boards, this is against our freedom of speech! Ever hear of the first amendment???? The game was down for one day, I want my money back! Yeah, give me your address and I'll send you a check for 40c if you are so poor.

Launch + 60 days

Hey, this game is great! Woot! No it's not! Stone the heretic, the devs rock! Umm, when are you going to fix the bugs? You said during beta that you were going to have all these features in, where the heck are they?!? I want them and I want them now! Shutup, the game's great, the devs will get to it! I hope you and your son get in a car accident and die this Christmas Eve Mark! You guys suck! WTF? I don't care if your internet thingie was down, I want to play and I want to play now or I want my money back! Why do you have to XXXXXX patch at 3AM EST? I'm playing from XXXX and that's the only time I have to play the game. You obviously either don't give a damn about your customers or you are racist!

Launch + 120 days

We need to start a class action lawsuit! They lied to us! The servers suck, why don't you buy some more hamsters for your server farms! Hey, we love the game! We have a few questions though! Shut up! We're talking serious bizness here! I want my money back! Hey Sanya, you're hot! When the expansion coming out? What? I have to pay for an expansion too! What a ripoff! Hey, I'm all for an expansion, this game rocks! Bring it on!

Launch + forever

See above.

That's why I don't want to have official forums. Whether it was SOE, Blizzard or us, official or semi-official forums are exactly like I described above for every successful MMORPG that I have played or watched from afar (and that is *most* of them). The unsuccessful ones were even worse. The problem is that most people who read the boards are looking for information and a reasonable number of people want to cause trouble, "grief" the forums or simply get their jollies by saying and doing things that they wouldn't do in real life. As usual, a small percentage of people make life more difficult for everyone else. Back when games had hundreds of people playing, well, no big deal. We ban those guys and life returns to normal. With millions of subs for WoW and hopefully lots and lots for WAR, well, it becomes much more complicated, difficult and soul-sucking for the devs and the community people. I wouldn't want anyone to go through what Sanya and I had to go through (and she had it worse since she is a woman and that brought out the worst in some people) in the early days of DAoC. How she and other community managers put up with the kind of name calling, insults, vulgarity, profanity without losing their minds is amazing.

And yes, some of those statements were drawn exactly from what was said to us, Blizzard, etc., no exaggeration at all. And BTW, those weren't the worst things said to us or other devs of these games.

'Nuf said.

Mark

Agree? Disagree? Let us know on OUR Warhammer Online forums. *g*

Permalink

I've witnessed that progression and gotten caught up in similar arguments myself. :p I don't think anyone needs to be subjected to that kind of crap. I feel sorry for whoever has to moderate all that and hope they get a decent salary for it.

They should have something for communication. It's important that they get some proper feedback. They should keep the community small (maybe no more a thousand). Restrict it to alpha/ closed beta people that didn't get in through some subscription to another service. I think you're more likely to find some really serious people that way. After a certain point in population growth, you just get too much of the same ideas and questions. I think that's part of the problem in the forums. Threads get swamped and pushed off the front page so easily. People here the same thing too much and it gets annoying. The devs overload themselves and the CMs with too much to filter.