Official MMORPG Forums: Yea or Nay?

This week, Vice President and General Manager of EA Mythic, Mark Jacobs, told us how he really felt about official MMO forums: they're a breeding ground for obnoxious trolls and toxic flame wars. Not surprisingly, Mythic is forgoing this option for their upcoming Warhammer: Age of Reckoning, but is this the right decision? For this week's discussion, we want to know:

Do official MMORPG forums help or hurt the communities they serve?

Having spent too many hours lurking on the WoW forums, I think I understand where Mythic is coming from. How about you?

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Wow, thats a big, "screw community" right there. Sure it may be a place of flames... but I believe with the proper community team forums can be a productive and informative place.

Though I may be biased, I was a Community Manager myself.

I don't know. I've watched the Bioware forums for years and the timeline that Jacobs offered is right on. Talk about a manic-depressive community, one which seems pretty wide spread in the gaming world.

Developers all over need to take a look at Arena Net's community programs. While the value of "official" forums is known, at least on one level, I think that the Arena Net people have the right idea and model for successful community relationships. By frequently visiting the biggest fan forums and making announcements on different ones at different times, they, at least in my humble opinion, make the community feel MORE important. You know, that the devs deigned to visit OUR little corner of the world sort of thing. Then, if it gets too hot (*waves at the Guild Hall crowd*), devs and community managers aren't obligated to "visit" it again for awhile as they have other places to go in the rotation. I think it works VERY well. :)

I agree with the idea of visiting the fan forums. I've visited a several, over the years. I think they're generally more civil. A lot of them deal with only one class in a game. I believe that eliminates a fair amount of conflict, right there. I wish I could link some forums gone bad for examples, but all that stuff gets wiped. There have been some good examples of that same trend of flames and rants.

Every single MMORPG I have ever played had official forums, the trolls had their own page which was heavily modded, and the rest had pages where they could give direct feedback to the devs. This worked, to an extent, sometimes the folk over the devs (Smed for example) disregarded both the community and the devs and ended up with poo on his hands (SWG anyone?). The flip side is the likes of Tabula Rasa, no official sites, no direct feedback, and sinking fast! An evil worth having if you are attempting to compete at an level with WoW.