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Monday, September 17, 2007
Community - Does it matter?
Keen from Keen and Graev worries about Warhammer Online community management. Apparently Warhammer Online doesn't have official forums, only the WAR Herald to announce stuff. And the new WAR community managers aren't very visible on the various WAR fan sites. Which leads us to the question of whether a game *should* have official forums, or, if not, community managers *should* post a lot on fansites. How much does the fabled "community" matter?
In no way would I want to imply that community managers aren't useful or aren't doing a great job in many cases. Grimwell would kill me if I suggested that. :) But fact is that the so-called "community" is only a small part of the player base. A great many players, especially casual players, can play a game for months or even years without visiting the forums even once. And of those who do stumble into the forums and ask a honest newbie question, the typical response of a gaming forum (ridicule, flaming, derailing the thread, anything but a helpful response) leaves most scarred for life and they don't come back.
*Warning: I'm now going to cite a politically incorrect joke. My apologies to the handicapped community!* I once read a forum post stating that winning an argument on a forum was like winning the special olympics; you won, but you're still a retard. And while that is an extreme and nasty way to express it, jokes are only funny if they contain a kernel of truth. Do we really need a place for people to post "nerf warlocks!" threads on? Or are the kind of people who whine in a language that only faintly resembles English about minute details of the game to be considered as borderline obsessed and should better be ignored?
What games need is a community manager who keeps people informed about what is going on, especially when something went wrong. I remember when EQ2 had a 48-hour breakdown shortly after release, and the community manager posted an update every hour, just to say that the servers were still down, and they didn't know when they would be up. And that was the best community service I've ever encountered, most games fare much worse. World of Warcraft has the unique problem that when the servers are down, so many people check the server status page and forums that they add up to an involuntary denial-of-service attack, making it impossible to reach the server status page. Not that this page is very useful, because when there is a problem with the login servers, the server status page shows all servers as up, only that nobody can reach them. Having a dedicated low-bandwidth announcement page where in case of any sort of server problem the situation is described, including what sort of error message you are likely to see, and updated every hour, would be a great improvement for all MMORPGs.
I'm less convinced that community managers should argue details of game design with a few diehards on a game's official forums. I'm all for devs making public their reasoning for certain features of game design, especially when they change features. But that could better be done on some sort of developer blog, or a "Herald" site, or even in interviews. The "blue post" on page 17 of a thread on the official forums is not visible enough; why take time to explain something to so few people and leave the rest in the dark? There is a reason why some fans started "blue tracker" websites, extracting the dev posts from the surrounding mess.
I'm not even sure community managers or developers should *read* forums, official or otherwise. The people who post there tend to be a vocal minority, and tuning the game to follow the demands of that minority isn't in the best interest of the game. And it isn't even possible to please that minority; for every person demanding a change, you'll get two persons to complain about it if you actually change it. One key experience I had back in the days of Everquest 1 was when the devs after years of complaints finally made the underpowered hybrid classes more powerful, and then some paladins started complaining that they had leveled all the way up to the level cap under the old hard rules, and it wasn't fair that new paladins would have it much easier. And nothing drives a forum community into a frenzy like a dev saying "I read this idea here on the forums and I implemented it". Then everybody comes out of the woodwork to demand that their ideas are implemented too, and complain that whatever the change was about was less important than their pet peeve. Community managers are better employed as silent observers of many sources of feedback, without appearing to give preference to one. And they have to filter what they read through a reality check, and make sure it isn't just the opinion of a few crackheads.
So I'm not convinced the situation for Warhammer Online is that bad. If they want to have no official forums, and communicate very little on fansites, but instead concentrate on the WAR Herald, that might actually be a good idea. The game isn't even released yet, discussing too much of it's design already would probably not be wise. We are already fed enough information via newsletters and video podcasts.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:31 AM Permanent Link
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Agreed, I feel forums are a waste 90% of the time and rarely contains usefull information.
On the otherhand places where players can discuss the game and can be alerted of server downtime is always gr8.
PS never nerf locks, i love mine...
On the otherhand places where players can discuss the game and can be alerted of server downtime is always gr8.
PS never nerf locks, i love mine...
# posted by 
: 17/9/07 13:33
: 17/9/07 13:33
Limit subscribers (customers) to two post per day and most problems would go away.
But don't do away with official boards - even though I rarely read the wow forums, I still felt they provided some benefit.
But don't do away with official boards - even though I rarely read the wow forums, I still felt they provided some benefit.
# posted by : 17/9/07 15:22
: 17/9/07 15:22
EA/Mythic reads and responds (with game changes) to the posts on the IGN boards.
# posted by : 17/9/07 16:52
: 17/9/07 16:52
Occasionally there's a need to correct something in a forum thread for PR reasons--for example, a forum troll posts something terrible as the gospel truth, and everyone starts believing it and freaking out, blogging about it, writing to newspapers (I'm exaggerating with that last one, but it could happen)--and it needs to be nipped in the bud with a quick post containing correct information. I don't think CMs should be completely silent or stop reading forums, therefore, but I agree that CM as "forum warrior" is an undesirable quagmire.
Turbine is doing a pretty good job (compared to Blizzard) but then they have a smaller community to manage.
Yes as far as feedback goes, the best method has always been Usability Testing which usually involves bringing someone in and sitting behind them observing them as they play (or go through some semi-scripted instructions to make sure to hit certain areas) - this is for any software. If you can afford this it's probably the best way to gather feedback. The problem with forums is similar to the problem with surveys: many of which Tobold mentioned.
I mainly use forums for the stickied posts and read threads where people actually answer questions, but the signal to noise is just way too high in any unmoderated forum on the internet to learn much more.
Yes as far as feedback goes, the best method has always been Usability Testing which usually involves bringing someone in and sitting behind them observing them as they play (or go through some semi-scripted instructions to make sure to hit certain areas) - this is for any software. If you can afford this it's probably the best way to gather feedback. The problem with forums is similar to the problem with surveys: many of which Tobold mentioned.
I mainly use forums for the stickied posts and read threads where people actually answer questions, but the signal to noise is just way too high in any unmoderated forum on the internet to learn much more.
# posted by : 17/9/07 17:57
: 17/9/07 17:57
Personally I don't think it's a good idea to skip forums altogether. While it's certainly true that there's like 95% (Or perhaps more) unuseful information or hostility there it can also be an excellent channel of information back and forth between devs and players.
Also the community that wants to gather up becomes shattered to different sites. Want to organize an event? Well visit 10 different sites and post the info. Then visit the same 10 different sites and gather up responses.
Want to find devs posts? Visit those 10 different sites and compare notes.
Nah, as much as I hate much of the activity that can happen on official forums in my opinion it's worse without them.
Also the community that wants to gather up becomes shattered to different sites. Want to organize an event? Well visit 10 different sites and post the info. Then visit the same 10 different sites and gather up responses.
Want to find devs posts? Visit those 10 different sites and compare notes.
Nah, as much as I hate much of the activity that can happen on official forums in my opinion it's worse without them.
# posted by : 17/9/07 18:01
: 17/9/07 18:01
I used to feel games needed official boards. However, with all the garbage on wow forums I dont really feel that is true. I do read warhammeralliance forums sometimes but they are pretty full of ridiculous posts as well by uninformed whinners complaining about 2 secs of a vid they say from beta. Its all a waste of time. I'm really learning towards totally changing the way I play my next mmo. No longer will I be in a raid guild and #1 on server with content completion, but instead I'll be guildless to max level and beyone as well as I'll never visit the forums unless I have a technical issue. It should be an interesting experiment.
# posted by : 17/9/07 23:46
: 17/9/07 23:46
Considering the cess pool most MMORPG forums become I don't think the lack thereof would be any great loss.
Despite having official forums Blizzard does an absolutely terrible job of keeping the playerbase informed. I would much rather see a small group of 'community managers' whose job consists of shooting out e-mails to the game's community with service outage announcements, upcoming game changes, etc.
Leave the player feedback to fansites, that's what they're for.
Despite having official forums Blizzard does an absolutely terrible job of keeping the playerbase informed. I would much rather see a small group of 'community managers' whose job consists of shooting out e-mails to the game's community with service outage announcements, upcoming game changes, etc.
Leave the player feedback to fansites, that's what they're for.
# posted by : 18/9/07 01:21
: 18/9/07 01:21
Community as such makes the game alive: the game forums which are held by the companies should only be for the informative function.
It was earlier seen in the text based/browser based MMO's that even a good game with a poor community couldn't survive. Those games which succeed, succeed only because of the community.
It's sad that the community aspect hasn't been enhanced in the current MMO's. I can only speak of WoW, as it's the only I'm playing myself, but I think the chat and communication is very poor in there. The Guild's don't have any other means in communicating but to resort to off-game forums and/or friendships outside game. The guilds could have instanced guild halls for example, with the trophies of their former conquests to start with.
There is a reason for the forums by the game companies, but there should be tighter control over them. Too much democracy and will of the loudest ruins (read: has ruined) the official WoW forums, instead of strengthening the community.
I just applied to a guild I think suits me, after scanning several. I hate the idea of guild hopping, and I resent the players who switch the guilds out of whim and personal gains. This could be something for the game companies to think over: would it be reasonable to merit the players who stay faithfull to the guilds/communities within the game?
This is in direct connection to the 'new-MMO' post by Tobold, as the community aspect (social interaction) part comes up in there, too.
Guild raids could be enhanced to wars between guilds of the opposing factions. Guild could be given the possibility to conduct 'player quests', and/or even the ownership of a dungeon/instance for a period of time.
Like I said in the beginning, community makes the game succeed. As soon as people start to realise that MMO's aren't games in which there are winners and losers (ie games in general sense), but are more an entertainment aiming to entertain vast groups of people in different ways, then we are going to see the evolution of a 'social gamer' in MMO.
And then, when the need to 'win' the MMO has been negated, we can see the real evolution of MMO's to the direction of player interaction, social bonding and roleplaying which comes naturally out of this all.
NOTE: this seems to come closer to the discussion which is still going on about role-playing games in general. I think that the pen and paper/live roleplayers have evolved a bit to that direction that they understand that it's not for the winning, but for the enjoyment. Computer MMO's are so new that this kind of evolution hasn't yet implemented itself into the game design.
Enough for now.
Copra
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It was earlier seen in the text based/browser based MMO's that even a good game with a poor community couldn't survive. Those games which succeed, succeed only because of the community.
It's sad that the community aspect hasn't been enhanced in the current MMO's. I can only speak of WoW, as it's the only I'm playing myself, but I think the chat and communication is very poor in there. The Guild's don't have any other means in communicating but to resort to off-game forums and/or friendships outside game. The guilds could have instanced guild halls for example, with the trophies of their former conquests to start with.
There is a reason for the forums by the game companies, but there should be tighter control over them. Too much democracy and will of the loudest ruins (read: has ruined) the official WoW forums, instead of strengthening the community.
I just applied to a guild I think suits me, after scanning several. I hate the idea of guild hopping, and I resent the players who switch the guilds out of whim and personal gains. This could be something for the game companies to think over: would it be reasonable to merit the players who stay faithfull to the guilds/communities within the game?
This is in direct connection to the 'new-MMO' post by Tobold, as the community aspect (social interaction) part comes up in there, too.
Guild raids could be enhanced to wars between guilds of the opposing factions. Guild could be given the possibility to conduct 'player quests', and/or even the ownership of a dungeon/instance for a period of time.
Like I said in the beginning, community makes the game succeed. As soon as people start to realise that MMO's aren't games in which there are winners and losers (ie games in general sense), but are more an entertainment aiming to entertain vast groups of people in different ways, then we are going to see the evolution of a 'social gamer' in MMO.
And then, when the need to 'win' the MMO has been negated, we can see the real evolution of MMO's to the direction of player interaction, social bonding and roleplaying which comes naturally out of this all.
NOTE: this seems to come closer to the discussion which is still going on about role-playing games in general. I think that the pen and paper/live roleplayers have evolved a bit to that direction that they understand that it's not for the winning, but for the enjoyment. Computer MMO's are so new that this kind of evolution hasn't yet implemented itself into the game design.
Enough for now.
Copra
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