A Funny Thing Happened...

Since I really have nothing to say today or rather, if I'm going to be strictly accurate, plenty to say but no energy left to say it, I thought I'd bounce off a couple of Blaugust posts that amused me with their (Apparently unintended.) oppositional stances.

The first was one by Axxuy called I Miss Forums in which, among other things, Axxuy says "what I miss is the sense of a dedicated space for some community", while observing that, although reddit and Discord have their place, "it’s not the same". 

A lot of people seem to feel that way. It's a sentiment I see quite often and apparently I'm not the only one to have noticed. A few days later, over at The Virtual Moose, there was another post entitled Forums Are Still Great. 

As the Moose (Aka mpklamerus) says "Once in a while I’ll see a post on social media lamenting that the Internet isn’t as good as it used to be and pine for certain things like forums..." Only once in a while...?

The Moose, though, has some practical suggestions on how to deal with the sense of loss, listing a number of ways many of the features of the old internet, including forums, persist and thrive and can still be enjoyed, a one point suggesting, perhaps a little snippily, "Go do it if you miss it that much" before finishing up with a more collegiate "Anyway, this stuff all still exists and it’s fun!"

There's no indication one post is any way a response to the other. I just found it a pleasant synchronicity to come across the pair of them in fairly quick succession.

Personally, I wouldn't say I missed any of the old web features enough to want to make much of an effort to recreate them but I definitely do prefer forums as a means of asynchronous online communication in general and especially for things like video game news. It used to be so much easier when there was just one, central point of contact, somewhere you could go to read the latest update notes, ask a question or just hang out and take the temperature of the game. 

Much better than than having to drag around several platforms, gathering bits and pieces from all of them, trying to put together a coherent picture from YouTube videos, tweets, Discord convos and subreddits.

It's not even as though the companies show any kind of consistency. They make a big song and dance about abandoning the "Offcial Forums" in favor of posting either on reddit or Discord, but then they often keep the forums going anyway and seem to forget where they said were going to post, as Wilhelm found recently. 

Commenting on the late arrival of the monthly economic report for Eve Online, he complained that "After some considerable delay, we got the Monthly Economic Report for July last week.  We were actually warned about the delay, though in a typical CCP muddle, they opted to only put that warning in the official forums and not on their Discord or other channels they maintain."

I'm pretty sure I'm not imagining it when I remember Daybreak making a statement a few years ago about future information about the EverQuest games moving primarily to Discord. For all I know, that may have worked for EQ, whose players seem oddly more au fait with the modern world than their counterparts in the junior game, but as far as EverQuest II is concerned, everything still seems to come through the forums.

EQII does have the most reactionary playerbase I've ever encountered, highly resistant to all kinds of change, so any attempt to bring the game into line with current genre practice was always going to be a big ask. Good luck getting those guys to play nicely with some new-fangled fad like Discord. 

Darkpaw did give it a go for a while. I remember reading many complaints on the forums about questions only getting a reply if they were asked in a Discord channel. Angry, outraged and disgusted complaints, mostly. Helpful players used to cross-post Discord threads to the forums so no-one else had to get their fingers dirty tabbing over.

These days community managers over at Darkpaw seem to have given up trying to swim against the tide. All the links to news items on the log-in screen go straight to threads on the official forum just like they used to. Like today's annnouncement that the Tears of Veeshan expansion will no longer be the last update the Varsoon server will receive. 

"Once again, you all have rallied and let us know how you felt about the continuation of the server, and we heard you loud and clear! So, after much discussion within the team, we have once again decided to allow Varsoon to continue their path!" the OP begins, with what seems to me to be a resigned shrug of the shoulders suggesting "Well, what can you do? That's just what they're like..."

Like Varsoon, forums, as the Moose suggests, are a lot harder to kill than you might have imagined. Long may it continue.

And in emulation of another of Axxuy's posts I have bookmarked to bounce off, that's all I'm going to say on the matter.  

 

Notes On AI Used In This Post

Just the one, embedded image, produced by HiDream I1 Fast at NightCafe on default settings from the prompt "the Roman forum but populated by fantasy creatures like dwarves, elves, trolls and so on video game style image, color". It's pretty much what I asked for except the AI has chosen to use just dwarves as far as I can see, further evidence for my working theory that if you give an AI a list of options or suggestions it will tend to take the first and ignore the rest. 

If You Can't Say Something Nice...

Thanks to my current obsession with Noah's Heart, it's been a while since I last logged into... well, anything else. I am still subscribed to Daybreak All Access, though, and my annual renewal is due soon, so I thought I probably ought at least to drop by to collect my monthly stipend of 500DBC. 

As it turned out, although today's the day the next handout arrives (It's the fifteenth of the month for me although I'm not clear on whether that's a universal or if it's tied to the day I paid my last sub.), when I logged in it was still too early in the morning to collect it. All Daybreak titles operate on PDT, what with the studio being in San Diego, and as I write this it's just gone one in the morning in California.

When someone over there wakes up and unlocks the imaginary safe (I have a vague idea it happens at 9am PDT) my DBC stash will break 27k. This raises an interesting philosophical point, somewhat akin to the old "tree falling in a forest" koan: if you have money that you never spend, is it really money? Especially when it isn't even real money in the first place.

Here's a link to an article in The New Yorker. It's by Anne Wiener, the author of Uncanny Valley: A Memoir, which I've just added to my Amazon wishlist on the strength of it. 

The piece is called Money in the Metaverse and it's one of the better - and better-researched - takes on why so many rich people are so keen to sell us on their concept of the future. It doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know but the way she puts it all together is instructive and some of the quotes she pulls out are blood-curdling.  

I strongly recommend reading the whole thing but if you have virtual crops to water or pets to feed and just don't have time for long-form prose, the tl:dr is it's going to make those rich people even richer and help them keep the rest of us where they think we should be: down.

I jest, of course. If you're six paragraphs into this post you self-evidently do have time to read. Chances are you also have time to write. It's an odd thing about mmorpg players; they have to be more than averagely literate. There's a deal of reading and writing involved.

Even though voice has been an option since the near-earliest days - I remember people arguing in /ooc about which VOIP package was better back when I was hanging out in Lake of Ill Omen around the turn of the millennium - I'd bet even now, a couple of decades later, most conversation in most mmorpgs happens in text. Players either don't talk at all (most of them) or they talk a lot, or so it's always seemed.

Certainly that's always been the case on official company forums, where it used to be said that one per cent posted, nine per cent read and everyone else didn't even know the game they were playing had forums. All of this, random as it may seem, came to mind this morning when I was logging into EQII. 

As I've mentioned once or twice, these days the Daybreak Launcher has a very useful News section. EQII patches and loads faster than most games I play but there's still usually time to scan the latest headlines and click on anything that looks interesting. It's where I get most of my EQII information these days since none of the feeds I set up in Feedly ever seem to work. 

This morning one particular headline caught my eye: terse in the extreme, it read, simply, Forum Guidelines. Odd. Surely we already have those? Why are they suddenly back in the news? 

I'll get to the "why" in a moment. Let's cover the "what" first. Here's the full forum post from Angeliana, Senior Community Manager. 

I found it an interesting read in its own right, not just from the perspective of an EQII player and occasional forum-user. I'd be interested to know exactly what's been changed from the previous iteration, although obviously not so interested as to actually go find the old version and make a line-by-line comparison.

Whatever the details, I'm pretty sure the new rules have been tightened significantly. There's very little wiggle-room here for rules lawyers, of which the EverQuest games have always had far too many. As well as clarifying exactly what constitutes an offence under the rules, there's also no doubt about the penalties, which range from closure and removal of threads to suspensions and bans.

Of particular note are the specific examples relating to cheating, which now cannot be mentioned on the forums at all, let alone discussed: "If you wish to report cheating, please contact Customer Service, or privately contact the community team." No more posting the details of an exploit while claiming you're only doing it to draw attention to the problem. 

Similar blanket bans apply to things like personal attacks, illegal activities and trolling. Suggesting someone should lose their job, a common response to just about any update, is now specifically forbidden. Generic abuse of groups is as unacceptable as direct attacks on individuals, meaning you can't call out the company either. 

The harshest sanctions are very properly reserved for "Attacks specifically regarding race, religion, political affiliation, physical or mental attributes, or sexual orientation", which are "grounds for immediate suspension or banning", as they well should be, although I am a little surprised to see "political affiliation" on that list. Has that ever been an actual issue, I wonder?

Perhaps the most significant line in the whole post is this definition: "Trolling can include: Non-constructive feedback or comments."  Granted, it's framed as a conditional but even so it's a very strict interpretation of the concept. 

It doesn't mean a complete shutdown of all criticism; as it says at the top of the post, "Disagreements with others are acceptable but must be expressed in a reasonable and polite manner." It would certainly make you think twice before hitting "Submit" on yet another rant about how summoners are broken, all the same.

The whole thing takes the tone of a no-nonsense teacher, restating the ground rules after coming back to the classroom and finding everyone rolling around on the ground, fighting. Whether it'll have any effect remains to be seen.

As to why it's happening right now, I have my suspicions. As we've seen, Daybreak's portfolio brings in roughly three-quarters of all EG7's revenue. There are no more acquisitions planned and future plans seem to revolve around growing the current titles. 

Most of the work will necessarily go towards managing the installed base but if there's to be any hope of attracting interest from outside the core group of existing players, it's crucial the games maintain a clean, professional, successful image. That means busy-looking servers but also good word of mouth. Few things create a worse first impression on discovering a new game than hearing it being trash-talked by the people already playing.

The EQII forums have been a cesspit for that kind of self-hatred on occasion. There's always someone ready to jump into any positive thread to derail it with their jaundiced take on everything they think is wrong with the game. It makes you wonder why some people play at all.

And there's some history here. When EverQuest was the most successful mmorpg in the western hemisphere and player numbers were growing faster than the servers could handle, the forums became so toxic SOE had to close them down completely. The fear was the flood of curious newbies would drain to a trickle as they came to check out the amazing new game they'd heard about only to find it was apparently a broken, buggy mess no-one in their right mind would play, even on a bet.

The official EQ forums went offline for weeks and when they came back the rules were severe and the moderation draconian. It took a few years before things loosened up again, by which time World of Warcraft had all the players and all the problems and no-one was googling "Is EverQuest any good?" any more.

If I take anything at all from this unexpected restatement of the ground rules it's that at least someone at DBG is paying attention to the forums at last. For far too long the boards have been like the back room of a members' only club, where the same handful of old soaks come back again and again to bicker and fight and tell each other how the world ought to be run and how much better a job they could do than all these kids nowadays.

It also underscores the refreshed commitment to the future of the existing games, as does the ongoing renovation and smartening of all the portals, from the launcher to the website. How realistic it is to build a successful future on a clutch of ageing games is something we'll find out only if it happens but it seems someone's at least trying to make the most of the options available.

Just so long as no-one in the boardroom gets a bee in their bonnet about crypto or NFTs, we should be fine. But that would never happen in a responsible, reputable games company, would it?

Job Well Done

As Wilhelm reported , EG7 recently put out a video for their first quarter 2021 report. It appeared on a YouTube channel belonging to Direkt Studios. According to Google Translate's version of the Swedish, "Direkt Studios is the channel for you who need the latest information from the financial market." Among other activities, they "upload educational clips, CEO interviews and company-specific features daily with the financial market as a common denominator."

They also act as a platform for paid promotions: "Film clips that are financed by the companies themselves, so-called commissioned films, appear on the channel. Always read disclaimer!" The EG7 video is one of those: "Direkt Studios handles technical production and distribution of this broadcast on behalf of EG7. The content of the broadcast is put together by the company in cooperation with Wildeco and is not part of Nyhetsbyrån Direkt's editorial activities."

I'm not even going try to find out who or what Wildeco might be. All of this is very not interesting indeed, except as it contrasts with what went before. 

For the longest time there was SOE, veering wildly between coming across like a well-meaning, out-of-touch uncle or a passive-aggressive partner. There was always a scent of anarchy around SOE. You often felt something bad was going to happen but no matter the current crisis, you never worried too much. You always knew there was a megacorp standing in the shadows, ready to swoop in and pay the bond when the team woke up in jail.

Towards the end, though, it began to feel like the grown-ups had gone on vacation and left the kids in charge. Next thing you knew there was a wild party going on and things had gotten completely out of hand. 

 

People were coming up with all kinds of crazy ideas they couldn't wait to tell the world about, even though it was plain no-one really had a clue how to make them happen. Livestreams would turn into long, rambling conversations between people clearly not used to talking to camera while shorter PR pieces devolved into what felt like try-outs for a career in stand-up. An unsuccessful career.

I'd link a couple of those but I can't seem to find any. Mercifully they don't seem to have survived. The internet's supposedly infallible ability to record all human digital history is often overstated.

When Sony corporate finally came to check on how things were going on and found out what had happened while they were away, party time was over. It wasn't just a case of putting things back in order and re-establishing some ground rules. Sony sold the house and moved out of town.

Honestly, as a longtime customer, it felt like a relief. The sale was a worrying time but things had gotten so bad I didn't see how it could get much worse. And it didn't. It got better.

It got better but it didn't get any simpler, that's for sure. If there was one overiding feature of what we can now call the Daybreak Years it has to be the sheer obscurity of it all. We never knew who owned what, who was paying, who was in charge, what the plan was, anything. "Follow the money", the saying goes. Well, we tried that but we couldn't find it. Someone hid it too well.

It was a thrill ride and kind of fun in a scary way. Great for conspiracy theories and wondering if the games were still going to be there when you woke up next morning. It might have been wishful thinking but even in the weirdest moments I never felt quite as unsettled by any of it as I was during several periods under SOE - the massive data breach, for example, or, worst of all, the PSS1 debacle.

Even so, comparatively comfortable as I was with Daybreak, I wasn't sorry when whoever it was that actually owned the company decided they'd gotten whatever it was they'd wanted from it. I don't imagine any of us will ever know who or what that was.

The new owners seem... reassuring. Reassuringly professional. Reassuringly clear. Reassuringly boring. From what we've seen so far, EG7 have managed to come across as enthusiastic and interested but also staid and stable. It's a good trick if you can pull it off.

The Q1 video is pitched squarely at investors but with an astute awareness that gamers will watch and comment on it anyway. I'm not going to do that. Wilhelm summarizes it excellently and it's a short and painless watch if you want all the details. 

The one aspect that catches the gamer's attention has to be confirmation that there's another AAA mmo in development. It's somehow related to “one of the greatest brands in the world”. Initially I took that to be hype for EverQuest, since EG7 have been bigging up EQ's significance as a brand ever since they bought it. 

As both Wilhelm points out, though, one of the assets EG7 acquired through the purchase of Daybreak's portfolio appears to have been a license to produce a game featuring some subset of the Marvel Universe. Now that really is a world-ranking brand.

It's also been let slip that sub-studio Dimensional Ink, the one that runs DCUO, is working on a new game. It wouldn't take Thor's hammer to knock two and two into four there. Except that it really would be weird to have the same studio operating and promoting mmos for both DC and Marvel at the same time. Imagine the cross-promotional opportunities!

What started me thinking about all of this wasn't the video. That's old news. If I'd wanted to talk about that I'd have done it a few days ago. No, it was some other, even older news, something that has passed me by altogether.

When I logged into EverQuest II this morning I was greeted with a flurry of pop-ups telling me a whole bunch of the infusers I had in my bags had been made obsolete and replaced. I turned to the forums to see if I could find out why. There was a short downtime yesterday, unusual on a Thursday, and a small patch when I logged in so I thought there might be some clarification in the patch notes.

There wasn't. I still have no idea what was wrong with the old infusers or why I need new ones. While I was on the forums, however, I noticed some unwelcome news. 

Dreamweaver, Community Manager for both the EverQuest titles, is leaving. Actually, he's already left. He posted his goodbye notice a couple of weeks ago but I only saw it this morning.

I read through the whole thread, all seven pages of it, and it's astonishingly positive. Well, other than the two pages wasted on bickering between several forum regulars. I also went to the EQ Forums to see what people there had to say and it was much the same story, minus the childishness.

Both games have a long and extremely checkered history when it comes to Community Managers. There have been some absolute shockers over the years, quite a few forgettable non-entities and very few universally appreciated and respected professionals. Judging by the stream of accolades, Dreamweaver was definitely one of the good guys:

"You were a great community manager"

"You were the best mod we ever had in EQ2"

"You will be missed as you went to bat for the community on many occasions and have left mighty big shoes for your replacement to fill."

"You were the BEST!"

And plenty more along those lines. I always found Dreamweaver affable and noticeably non-confrontational, two things I absolutely would not have said about many of his predecessors. That said, as with all people doing their job well, I didn't really notice him at all most of the time.

If it hadn't been for the Kander's Candor podcast series I probably would have struggled to remember his name but listening to him on those fixed his cheerful voice in my head. He always seemed both interested and amused by everything he had to talk about and most importantly he always sounded genuine. I wonder if the podcasts will carry on or whether they were something that will disappear along with Dreamweaver.

Other than to record his passing (Let me make it quite clear. He hasn't died. He just got a better job. Which no doubt we'll eventually hear about eventually.) I wanted to comment on a surprising missed opportunity. Pretty much no-one used the thread to make portentous comments about how the Community Manager signalled the end of the known universe!

No-one got up on their soapbox and made a speech about how EG7 were going to fire everyone and all the games were headed for maintenance mode, if we were lucky. No-one took it as the first shot in a flame war (well, except those few kids at the back, fighting among themselves). Everyone just popped in, dropped a compliment for a job well done and moved on.

Okay, a couple of people made passing mention of rats and sinking ships and one person made a crack about Dreamweaver being the only person left working there that any other company would want to hire but by the standards of the EQII forums it was a remarkable show of positivity.

Whether the future under the new owners will be bright or blighted is something we'll only find out as that future turns into the present but I think I'd already be prepared to go as far as "We're no worse off than we were", though, and that's not nothing. Maybe I'm not the obnly one who feels hopeful, for once.

I'd like to wish Dreamweaver well in whatever endeavor he's begun, not that he'll ever read this (although you never know... it is on the internet, after all). And best of luck to whoever takes over the CM role. It's going to be a hard act to follow.

Although it could be worse. Just imagine what the job's going to be like if that new triple-A game does turn out to be set in Norrath.

Like A Bad Head In The Morning

"And I might as well just grin and bear it
'Cause it's not worth the trouble of an argument"

Blur

I don't often rant but sometimes you just have to, don't you? I'll try and keep it short. After all, no-one reading this is likely to be part of the problem and there's nothing anyone here can do about it but a trouble shared is a trouble two people have to deal with instead of just the one. That is how the saying goes, isn't it? I thought it was pithier, somehow.

Also, complaining about people complaining (which is what I'm doing, although I realize I haven't actually said so yet) is such a bad look. I mean, who wants to be that guy? Or girl. (Why is it that "guys" plural can be gender neutral but "guy" singular is always male? Not that I'm complaining. Just observing. Or maybe I am complaining. Sometimes it's hard to tell.)

Bad look or not, I am going to be that guy. As I commented on this thread, which is what got me wound up in the first place, some people will complain about anything. This post proves it.

You can work out what my posting name is on the EQII forums from that link, by the way. Unless someone else said it as well. I mean, it's hardly an original aperçu, is it, "Some people will complain about anything"? It's not like I'm claiming copyright on it.

Not that the name I post under is a secret or should be, although if I wanted to be sneaky I do have several accounts, so I could post as different people. I could go on the forums and have a huge argument with myself, maybe even try to get one of me banned. That would be meta. Or postmodern. Or ironic. Or childish. And probably against the EULA.

Hauling the point back in on a very long rope, the substantive issue that some EverQuest II players are ready to quit over is this: instead of patching every week the game will now patch every other week.

I know, right? It's armageddon! Or at least one of the harbingers. I think it's in Revelations, somewhere. God forbid the developers should take more time to get things right or give the excellent, dedicated and tireless testing community longer to do their selfless, unpaid QA shuffle.

Clearly a move like this is a slap in the face, the last straw, incontrovertible evidence that the game is on fast track to maintenance mode. What are we paying them for, eh? EH??

EverQuest and EQII players both have what seems to me to be lower than average anger thresholds, although I strongly suspect there are other MMORPGs could give them a run if there was an award for "Most Easily Outraged". Just not any that I play. Thankfully.

The other hot button issue right now (or at least the latest - there's a line of them stretching right around the walls of Freeport and back over the hills half way to Qeynos) is the removal of descriptive text from crafting mats. It used to say what level items the material was used to make. Now it doesn't.

I admit it's an odd change although the ostensible reason is entirely valid in my opinion. Changes to the crafting system over time mean that what used to be a straightforward, vertical progression is now far more horizontal. In consequence those tool tips, once helpful, are now potentially confusing, especially to newer players.

That makes a lot of sense to me. I stopped looking at that text years ago for exactly that reason. If I want to know what mats to use nowadays I open the Recipe, where it always tells you, or if I have a material I'm unsure of I go to the invaluable EQ2 Traders and look it up there. 

It seems that I'm crazy. No-one should have to do anything as outrageous as looking stuff up. It should all be there, in front of you, on the object, all the time. And if it's not you should down tools and walk away.

The hills some people choose to die on! Unplayable lag, gamebreaking bugs that stop you logging in at all, PvE events that end in a FFA PVP brawl... (oh, wait, wrong game and working as intended...). Those I could see as legitimate reasons for remonstration. The removal of a few words of guidance text? Yeah... no.

The thing that annoys me most isn't people complaining per se. Everyone complains. I complain. I'm doing it now. It's human nature. What annoys me is people complaining on my behalf without asking me or even knowing me.

"Everyone hates...". "No-one wants...". "We all wish...". No we frickin' don't! Or maybe, yes, we do, but how do you know? And who elected you spokesbeing anyway?

Generalizations are fine. Necessary, even, to put a point over. But qualify them, ffs! "It seems to me like everyone hates...", "No-one I've ever heard about wants...", "Everyone I've spoken to wishes...". Is that so hard? You may still come over as insular and ignorant but at least you're not claiming to be omniscient.

It's particularly galling when, as so often seems to be the case, I'm having a great time and someone's telling me I'm not. Blood of Luclin is my favorite expansion for years, I've played more of it than I have most others in the Daybreak Era, the progression mechanics work better for me, I'm making more money, getting better gear and having more fun. I even like the changes to how crafting works, the ones that apparently mean crafters are "shafted" and crafting is ruined forever for everyone.

Don't tell me I'm not having fun when I'm having fun!

Anyway, I said I'd keep it short so I will. Feel free to complain I went on too long or missed the point or that I don't know what I'm talking about or I contradicted myself (I do realize that all the things I'm complaining about are remarkably similar to things I've been saying about GW2 for years now...).

That's what comments threads are for, isn't it? Complaining?

A Funny Thing Happened...

As long as I've been playing MMORPGs I've been reading Forums. Longer. Back in 1999, when I was considering dipping my toe in the online gaming waters, almost the first thing I did was visit the Official Forums of the games I was looking at (Ultima Online and EverQuest) to get a feeling for what I might be letting myself in for.

Back in those days, forums tended to be lively. There were often frank exchanges of views. Some people became tired and emotional, as the tabloids used to put it.

Forums then were not for the faint of heart. Communication between players and developers could be... robust. Several of Sony Online Entertainment's so-called Community Representatives adopted tones more suited to a nightclub bouncer or the sarcastic host of a late-night panel show.

Games companies were very well aware of the impression their forums could have on potential customers.  They needed to be. Social media was in its infancy. There weren't a whole lot of other places to look for information on games you might want to try other than the company's website and forums.

Both the quality and intensity of debate varied enormously, forum to forum. Much depended on the skills of the moderators. I remember Dark Age of Camelot having surprisingly well-mannered forums, particularlyfor a PvP-oriented game, something that was most likely the direct result of Mark Jacobs hiring Sanya "Tweety" Weathers to run them.

EverQuest, in direct contrast, had first Abashi and then Absor. Things got so bad after a while that SoE became probably the first and possibly the only MMORPG to close its own forums because they were bringing the game into disrepute.

What's missing?

Even so, they had to return, albeit very heavily moderated. In the early 2000s no online game could afford to run without public forums indefinitely. It was reckoned at the time that no more than ten per cent of players ever visited forums and only one per cent posted or commented there, but those minorities were what we would now call "Influencers".

"Read the Forums" is a phrase I remember keenly from public chat. The forums were where you sent people to find out things you didn't want to spend ages typing out; then there'd be an argument about it and you - or someone - would end up typing it all anyway.

There was always someone in every guild who made a practice of reading the forums and relaying all the info in guild chat. Sometimes that person was me. Over the years, though, I did that less and less.

At some point Official Forums stopped being central to companies' communications. There were flashier, sexier, zeitgeistier options. At the same time, tolerance for bad behavior diminished. Moderation became stricter. Swearing and name-calling, something not always limited to players, fell out of fashion. Forums became anodyne, bland.

After a while, even official communications drifted away. You can probably still find the weekly or monthly Patch Notes somewhere on the official forums of most MMOs, but you're more likely to find the latest news releases on Reddit or, increasingly, on Discord.

Reddit was, for quite a while, the up-and-coming channel for hip developers to hang out with their fans. The crowd-controlled moderation there supposedly allowed for more civilized discourse. That was hard for some older players to believe, given Reddit's widespread reputation for vindictive flame wars and general bad behavior, but I have to say my own experience of MMO sub-Reddits has been pleasant enough.


The problem with all such third-party applications, though, is ephemerality. Social media is littered with the rusting hulks of former giants. It may seem cost-effective to avoid customer service bills by outsourcing communications to the current hot social media platform but how long before you have to move again? And again?

There was a time, not so long ago, when many of the MMORPGs I played were very keen to push their presences on Facebook. That's a name I don't hear so much any more. Reddit is still going strong, especially when it comes to Ask Me Anything, but increasingly Discord is the place to be.

Discord, the theory is, allows for both instant and asynchronous communication. It also handles both speech and text. You can chat in real time to game developers while you and they are playing the game. Or you can hold forum-style discussions that persist over days or weeks.

If only ten percent of players ever went to the official forums, though, how many visit the Official Discord? Based on numerous in-game conversations I've heard over the past few months, as various Guilds and Alliances in World vs World attempt to shore up their organizations, Discord doesn't yet have much of a universal recognition factor.

I admit I'm somewhat biased. I don't much like Discord. I find it over-fussy in appearance, fiddly in function and vaguely patronizing in tone. It gives every impression of trying too hard to be popular, like one of those teachers who insists the class calls them by their first name.

Even if I did like Discord more, though, what I would still object to is being asked to make an account with a third-party just to have access to official communications from the company that operates the game I'm playing. As an alternate channel I can put up with it but as the only one? That's a step too far. 

I don't play Revelation Online any more and I'm not likely to, so when I noticed today that My.com has permanently closed the Official Forums for that game I didn't have to make any hard choices. And let's not get melodramatic: I don't imagine forum closure would immediately lead to me leaving an MMO I was otherwise enjoying.

It's a bad omen, though. Fortunately, it's not something that seems likely to affect the games I'm playing, or not right now, at least.

I've noticed over the past couple of years that Daybreak, who appeared very keen indeed to talk to players via both Reddit and Discord, have quietly reinforced their presence on the official forums. Discord is still the place to go to get immediate dev feedback but most of the answers I've found to issues I've been researching of late have turned up in developer posts on the the forums.

The Guild Wars 2 forums are also very lively. I would guess traffic is down compared to a few years ago, and ArenaNet developers are infamously cautious about what they say in public, but there's still plenty of to and fro going on. I visit the forums most days and find something to keep me amused.

Looking ahead, I was reading the Ashes of Creation Q&A on Reddit this morning and literally the top question in the comment thread that follows it is "Official Forums. When?". To which the next commenter has appended "That is the most important question of all".

If AoC turns out not to have any Official Forums it wouldn't stop me playing. It wouldn't encourage me, though. And when you're already on the fence about a game it doesn't take all that much to tip you off. I hope the devs have been reading Reddit.