Does GW2 need official forums?

[blackweb]

I have been watching the GW2 website for the opening of their official forums

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum

The website says "Forums Closed".

I lead a guild on Northern Shiverpeaks and I have found the lack of official forums and the inevitable trolling, doom and gloom, comparisons to wow etc to be a blessing. Me and my guild members just focus on playing the game, building our guild and having fun.

This begs the qeustion, does GW2 even need official forums?

We all know what is going to happen the day they open, they will be invaded by the usual "please add x, y and z wow feature", ragequitting, endless doom and gloom etc that we have all seen in other games.

I can see it now...

• Why doesnt GW2 have flying mounts?
• GW2 needs an arena.
• GW2 needs more end game.
• Im 80 and I am already bored.
• GW2 sucks because _insert_troll_topic_here_.
• Elementalists need polymorph and blink.
• Warriors need charge.
• I want a taunt.
• Why cant I spec healing?
• Why cant my gaurdian hold aggro?
• The group finder sucks.
• Why cant we form raids and go pew-pew raid bosses?
• GW2 needs resilience.

I could go on and on. Obviously, most of the above list is crap but just wait, the forums will be filled with inane posts with topics like the ones above. As a guild leader, when I go to a games official forums, I am usually there for a reason. If the forums are cluttered with the usual garbage, it just makes my job difficult. Even worse, I have to explain to my guild members that all of those doom and gloom posts are a bunch of BS. So for now, I think the lack of official forums is a good thing but that's just me.

Edit: If ArenaNet does open the forums, I hope that they are heavily moderated. I would recommend the MMO-champion mods. In fact, I recommend that they just let MMO-champion be their official forums. The last thing I want to see is another game destroyed by trolls and phony doom and gloom.

[SirRobin]

I actually hope they never open the forums. They can be a huge headache to manage and why even bother when there are often fansites more than willing to take the traffic?

[Tradewind]

Official forums would be nice if there's some involvement from the devs as to technical problems. But yeah, they do open up a lot of potential problems.

As a side note, I apologize on behalf of Henge for slamming it in dry to Shiverpeaks and blackgate for the past week.

[Deleted]

I think that forums are a great method of communication and feedback. I hope that Arena net will be considering the feedback from players, and in that respect I do think that eventually opening the forums is an important way of them keeping in touch with the playerbase. I know that they use social media a lot more than many companies as well as being registered on several gaming boards, but there is plenty of constructive discussion that can be had which can actually really help developers.

Yes, you'll get a lot of complaints and silly threads when they open the forums but I really do believe that ultimately they will get feedback, good ideas and constructive criticism that will help them to improve the game.

I understand 100% why they're waiting at the moment though, there are far more important things to address than their forums and they will undoubtedly need to assign customer support to moderating the forums which right now is not a great use of resources, and it would probably be spammed with repeated bug reports and complaints. But I do hope in coming months that they open up discussion.

[blackweb]

I actually hope they never open the forums. They can be a huge headache to manage and why even bother when there are often fansites more than willing to take the traffic?

If ArenaNet does open the forums, I hope that they are heavily moderated. I would recommend the MMO-champion mods. In fact, I recommend that they just let MMO-champion be their official forums. The last thing I want to see is another game destroyed by trolls and phony doom and gloom.

[barackopala]

Actually they're getting a lot of feedback from reddit. Not a good place to be but, it's something .-.!

[SirRobin]

If ArenaNet does open the forums, I hope that they are heavily moderated. I would recommend the MMO-champion mods. In fact, I recommend that they just let MMO-champion be their official forums. The last thing I want to see is another game destroyed by trolls and phony doom and gloom.

Official forums can be a great way of getting the word out but with facebook's and twitter's rise, they are just not vital anymore. Not to mention that they can quickly turn into toxic cesspools. Anyone else remember how bad WoW's got? Save the headaches, save the budget, let the third-party sites and fansites deal with it. Its a win-win as Arena Net saves money from not having to staff mods for it, and the sites get more traffic to show off to advertisers.

[Contravene]

mmo-champions is my official forums for all mmo.. If Anet had a forum I would frequent it just to stay informed but I really don't want 2 forums to check. All my stuff is right here for whatever game I play.

[Deleted]

Why doesnt GW2 have flying mounts?
GW2 needs an arena.
GW2 needs more end game.
Im 80 and I am already bored.
GW2 sucks because _insert_troll_topic_here_.
Elementalists need polymorph and blink.
Warriors need charge.
I want a taunt.
Why cant I spec healing?
Why cant my gaurdian hold aggro?
The group finder sucks.
Why cant we form raids and go pew-pew raid bosses?
GW2 needs resilience.

Haha yes, I think their "technical reasons" for keeping the forums down are really more like "we can do without 1000 daft threads a day right now".

The gw2guru general forum is a cesspool of people whining about incredibly minor things and trolls already.

[Deleted]

I think it was wise of them to leave the official forums for later, once the opening shitstorm has calmed down.

I think it will be fine, whatever happens. Sure, there will be the regular balance QQ but sometimes it has so merrit. Despite its reputation even the official WoW forums had quite a few insightful posts and meaningful discussions going on.

I don't see how it would be much worse than here or GW2 guru.

[Edge-]

Yes, they absolutely do need one.

The fact that it's still not up is actually pretty embarrassing IMO. Yes, official forums are usually pretty bad and filled with a lot of nonsense, but they're actually quite important. Nobody FORCES you to go there and deal with whatever nastiness may await. They're doubly necessary on launch when people are having a lot of issues, the community is great at helping others out so it can actually cut down on a lot of potential support tickets as people have simple problems answered by the community.

I'm looking forward to when they bring them back up; bad posts, trolling, doomsaying, mindless QQ and all.

[Kagasumi]

I trust MMO Champion to not do bad things with my login info. However just in case they get hacked, I didn't use my game email address to sign up here.

I suspect that some people that get hacked in online games have signed up for a forum that is less than honest or secure, and they used their same email address and login for the game.

It also seems well modded here, so there you have it.

[madethisfor1post]

As a side note, I apologize on behalf of Henge for slamming it in dry to Shiverpeaks and blackgate for the past week.

I like them buffs so keep on slamming.

[Deleted]

I want a forum especially for mesmers which is my main. Interesting to have discussions about that and develop stuff.
All the official forum would need is: general, tech sup, wvwvw, spvp, a forum for each crafting profession, a forum for each classes and it would be sweet

[insmek]

They don't necessarily need official forums, but they do need a single official channel for feedback from the development team. Right now I've seen game status updates spread between Facebook, Twitter, and the Official Wiki, but there doesn't seem to be a single easy repository for them. A simple Wordpress blog integrated into the main site would even serve the purpose admirably.

[Vantheus]

no point to waste the resources on a F2P game thats already on it's way out so no

Let's not post flamebait. Infracted. -Edge

[Deleted]

no point to waste the resources on a F2P game thats already on it's way out so no

It's their game, and how did you end up in this forum?=)

[Deleted]

If ArenaNet does open the forums, I hope that they are heavily moderated. I would recommend the MMO-champion mods. In fact, I recommend that they just let MMO-champion be their official forums. The last thing I want to see is another game destroyed by trolls and phony doom and gloom.

Just not the GW2 forum mods from here please.....

I dont think they are necessary, they would be nice, but they would involve alot of effort to keep constructive. Maybe mod them well and link forum bans to game time bans, maybe that way people would stay constructive.

[Kiry]

They just opened their forums, currently support only. I'm sure with time, the rest will open up.

[Edge-]

They just opened their forums, currently support only. I'm sure with time, the rest will open up.

Nice! At least they got the most important section up and running, hopefully it will help cut-down on the number of support tickets needed as people can find answers to a lot of basic problems there.