Forums

[Happy]

I wonder if others look at forums to see what kind of community plays a game. I can tell you I do. What I look for is a helpful community and welcoming community that will help a new person learn a game.

I play a game now where I have gotten a lot of assistance and people welcomed me very nicely. If someone does not know an answer to a question they research it and get back to me. Even the Game Masters have taken time to help me and many others to play. I see the number of new players going up all the time and I think this is why. It is a great group of people I play with. I play a game that is pay-for so to see the community grow is great.
I would like to make an observation here. First I see passion from the players for this game. This is a good thing. Second I see many conflicts between the players, old and new. This is not a good thing for people looking to play this game. Many threads go off topic here and fights or shall I call them arguments occur over the main topic. Then what happens is the thread gets locked or closed frustrating the people even more.

As a new person looking for a game would you join a game with so many troubles to read about? I wonder if that is part of why your numbers are so low for a game that has progressed for so many years now, http://laanx.fragnetics.com/index.php?page=char_stats. One more observation from an ‘on looker’ who has not played this game is it seems many players play for a few years and leave. In my game people have played for so many years it makes for a real tight knit community. We are a family. Do the conflicts really cause people to leave this game? Could this be a deterrent to new people who might want to play?

One more thing I must say I admire Luca Pancallo, better known as Talad, I guess, for coming up with what seems like a unique concept and making it real. For his sake I hope this game is going in the direction he envisioned it. I hope that the players realize how lucky they are to play such a unique game. I also hope they will take his feelings into consideration and learn to be kinder and nicer so that the game grows as I think he hoped it would.

As an outsider this is how I see things. I do not wish to offend anyone. In past real life experiences sometimes we get so involved with things we lose sight of the importance of it. I hope this thread will not be locked or go off topic. It is written to remind all who play that others look at your forum to see if it is worthwhile to play and a potential new player might get turned off and go looking for something else. I do not think that is what Luca wants, quite to the contrary as it grows I am pretty sure he would like to see more people play, and stay, in the game he created for so many people to have fun.

[bilbous]

Personally I think game forums are generally full of obnoxious tools, there are a few people who are helpful but mostly not. I usually only go to the forums if I have a specific issue with the game and then wade through the jackass responses to my request for help to find the one or two useful posts. This place was a little different because it is far more hands on in regards to development. It has a bug tracker and volunteer developers so it is more likely your input will be accepted once you accept the underlying assumptions of that development.

Sure there are obnoxious tools here too, myself included from time to time, I'm certain, but because the community is small you get much less of the leet speaking trash talkers, the kiddies can't keep up their interest and go elsewhere. Anyway the forum community is a subset of the playing community and many like me do not play the game as much as they follow the forum.  Any time there is a major upgrade I'm in clover as there are more things to report. It is almost like a treasure hunt!

[Illysia]

I think bilbous is somewhat right. I rarely see anything but stuff like this in MMO forums... I play the game for the game, not for the people usually. It's nice to have welcoming people, but in this day and age the internet is an anonymous place and people can act however they want without retribution. That usually means being a jerk. I say try to get past it and have fun. Many people play the game, a few ever actually come to the forums.

[Akkaido Kivikar]

I agree, every MMO forum has those kinds of people on it.

There's far less aggression ingame, because people don't want to get banned from there, whereas a ban from the forums is not the end of their PS world.