We definitely are not adverse to keeping the current class forums, and a major reason for the 1 week period is to allow for feedback and to have a buffer in case we decide to change plans.
How could you maintain any kind of coordinated discussion in a forum with 23 viewpoints being expressed by many thousands of people? EJ manages it through good moderation, but moderation has never been a strong point of the official WoW forums. I can't see how this change is a good thing for feedback to the developers or discussion between the players.
Wading through 22 forms of 'spam' to get to the information you want seems... daunting. Then again, the old/current official class forums are little more than wading through spam to get what you want as it is. With good strong moderation it will work. It's really dependent on how far Blizzard is willing to go in supporting their '3 bucket' model. Are they willing to put manpower behind the decision to consolidate forums?
It's going to give class QQ'ers an even bigger audience for their crap. In the old system I could go to the mage forums and QQ about mages (too OP or not OP enough), now I can do it and force every class to wade through my drivel. It's at the same time consolidating and compounding the worthless posts.
Also, will players listen to CMs (like Neth) who will be in charge and the voice on these forums now that we've had direct interaction with Devs (Ghostcrawler)? That seems unlikely; the cat is out of the bag, and players won't want to go back.
It looks to me that the current setup has those forums existing in addition to the class forums.
Reread the first paragraph:
Originally Posted by Nethaera
...To that end, we have created three role-based forums -- Tanking, Damage Dealing, and Healing -- in place of the class forums...
The flame wars that ensue on these forums are going to be horrendous. I'm sure there are still players out there that think that Ret Pallies are worthless and that Shamans should be tank healing. The sheer amount of idiocy concentrated upon those three boards will make them all but unreadable.
Keeping this a little more on topic than "zomg flame warz," I know there are many different topics on the Druid forums (one stickied, and then others from those who don't read it) that deal with the Swift Flight Form chain. I'm sure there are similar topics regarding the Lock/Paladin mounts on their respective forums, and then various questions regarding leveling for each class (Swim Form? Suggested Professions? Hard quests for certain specs?).
I can see Blizzard adding these forums in addition to the class forums, but they didn't word it very well.
The class forums help each class set up an identity and a community. Each forum has their own class celebrities, in-jokes, and actual practical information about the little details. Removing these forums just feels like the further homogenization of WoW classes. It's rather depressing.
With good strong moderation it will work. It's really dependent on how far Blizzard is willing to go in supporting their '3 bucket' model. Are they willing to put manpower behind the decision to consolidate forums?
I see nothing in the history of WoW forums that indicates that this will be the case. Honestly I'm not sure that such a level of moderation is possible. You'd need teams of moderators working in shifts with specific duties(ie someone is in charge of deleting retarded threads started by druids, someone else is in charge of cleaning up non-retarded threads by druids which have retarded posts in them) in order to prevent a manpower clog. You'd need such massive and constant moderation that exceeds any level of moderation Blizzard has ever put into the WoW forums to keep these new 3 forums clean and useful that I simply cannot expect it to happen.
Tanking and Healing forums should be a little bit cleaner, since you have 4 classes in each, with 6 specs in Tanking and 5 in Healing(due to the 3 DK trees serving as both tank and DPS and Priests having 2 healing trees). In addition, you simply have fewer players Tanking or Healing(maybe even Tanking AND Healing) than you have DPSing that the number of threads will be naturally lower. These forums could be a bit more useful, but I can't imagine the DPS forum being anything but a cesspool of inter-class warfare and flames.
Sounds like a reasonable suggestion to me; I can see the tanking and healing forums being comparatively civil (for an official forum), while the real carnage occurs in the DPS forum (with all ten classes represented). And yet, this could be an opportunity to provide real cross-class exposure to an audience who hitherto kept their visits to other class forums to NEFR MAGES!!!11 posts. Couple it with a step up in moderation (which should be easier, as there are 3 forums to keep an eye on, rather than 10), and there could be an improvement in the overall quality of the official forums.
In order to find what you want, you need a way to search the forums which players have never had an effective way of doing. Has the search function on the official forums ever worked?
I think that this is probably a good move for the official forums, to be honest. Yes, it's going to make for an almost unbearable deluge of trolling/flaming, especially in the early days.
When you get right down to it, though, if you go onto the class forums right now, every single class is complaining about their performance in every single role. Warriors? Protection, Fury, and Arms don't do enough damage, survive long enough, or have enough cool skills. Paladins? No spec does enough damage, no spec is good at healing, or applying pressure, or tanking. It's not true, but the class-based nature means that the people who are reading this garbage mostly try to support it in order to increase the likelihood that they'll be buffed.
With a centralized forum, we're probably going to see the standard response to the standard topic being something like "Shut up, you guys are OP for <role> as it is!" However, I could see this leading to a lot more threads with actual theorycraft coming at a problem from multiple angles and multiple classes, as well. A retribution Paladin thread with input from a Rogue / Warrior theorycrafter who looks at their numbers, helps to correct mistakes, and/or posts calculations to compare the theoretical damage directly starts to look a lot more accurate.
The forums will look overwhelming, due to the sheer volume of bad/good posts condensed from nine(ten) forums to three, but I doubt the actual ratio of bad posts to good will change significantly, and the good posts will often get significantly better and more effective.
I see nothing in the history of WoW forums that indicates that this will be the case. Honestly I'm not sure that such a level of moderation is possible. You'd need teams of moderators working in shifts with specific duties(ie someone is in charge of deleting retarded threads started by druids, someone else is in charge of cleaning up non-retarded threads by druids which have retarded posts in them) in order to prevent a manpower clog. You'd need such massive and constant moderation that exceeds any level of moderation Blizzard has ever put into the WoW forums to keep these new 3 forums clean and useful that I simply cannot expect it to happen.
I think if forum bans were accompanied by in-game bans for the same length of time, it would go over much better. There would be an actual consequence to being a jackass on the forums.
Given that you comment with WoW accounts, this is actually feasible for the moderators.
We've reached a point where we feel we can now accurately evaluate the events since the patch release. Though overall downtime has been minimal, players have experienced latency, inaccessible instances, and general frustrations. We are therefore announcing that we will be issuing compensation to accounts in all realms in the US, Oceanic, and Latin American regions. Accounts that are currently active and in good standing will be credited with an additional three days of game time.
I think if forum bans were accompanied by in-game bans for the same length of time, it would go over much better. There would be an actual consequence to being a jackass on the forums.
Given that you comment with WoW accounts, this is actually feasible for the moderators.
While that would give it more bite, I'd rather Blizzard felt they could fairly freely place heavy/permanent forum bans, and actually do so, rather than in-game bans, which would almost certainly result in forum bans being fewer and farther in-between. Part of the problem with forums is that people don't realize that they're out of line, and that being correct, "better" at the game, or anything else has little to no impact on the need to be civil as much as possible. I'd much rather they kept the really asinine posters from ever posting again rather than trying to scare people off from being asinine via in game penalties, as I really don't have confidence the latter will work all that well. Fortunately, blue-post trackers and places like these forums greatly limit how often I have any reason to visit the official forums these days *shrug*.
As for being tougher on the forums, here you go. They will likely not be as strictly enforced as is necessary and Blizzard knows and admits this. How they believe that the dregs of the WoW official forums will play nice without strong moderation is beyond me.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
Look at the way the EJ forums are set up -- they virtually have a single thread on a class. Now they moderate probably more strictly than we could get away with, but the information is still easy to find.
Edit: The SOP for WoW forum bans only lets the poster/user know why they got banned and the post/thread is deleted. Without real examples of consequences (e.g. EJ orange dots), I'm not sure even heavy moderation of this type will ultimately be effective.
As for being tougher on the forums, here you go. They will likely not be as strictly enforced as is necessary and Blizzard knows and admits this. How they believe that the dregs of the WoW official forums will play nice without strong moderation is beyond me.
Edit: The SOP for WoW forum bans only lets the poster/user know why they got banned and the post/thread is deleted. Without real examples of consequences (e.g. EJ orange dots), I'm not sure even heavy moderation of this type will ultimately be effective.
I'm not sure how EJ is in any way a positive analogy for him to point out. For the average player, the information layout here on EJ is considerably less accessible than it is on the official WoW forums. The 150+ page threads are not user-friendly and only those of us who frequent those threads can really follow what's going on in them. I follow the Hunter thread just fine, but when I want information about specs or gear or w/e for an alt, I will first visit the official forums for the basics and then (maybe) come to the relevant EJ thread for more detailed information (thank god the search function actually works here).
I'm forecasting a disaster with this move, with newer players being the hardest hit (which makes it a terrible business decision). If I'm new to WoW and I want to know where to start putting my talent points when I hit level 10 for the first time, the current official forums are typically pretty helpful as long as you understand the concept of a sticky. If that same player clicked on over to the class-specific threads here on EJ, they may just throw up their hands and quit the game with the perfectly valid excuse that the game is far more complicated than they have hoped/expected.
I cant believe GC compared the EJ forums, which have highly specialized info, to the WoW class forums that have info on a broad range of issues ranging from leveling guides, macro guides, talent guides to QQ posts.
I'm not sure how EJ is in any way a positive analogy for him to point out. For the average player, the information layout here on EJ is considerably less accessible than it is on the official WoW forums. The 150+ page threads are not user-friendly and only those of us who frequent those threads can really follow what's going on in them. I follow the Hunter thread just fine, but when I want information about specs or gear or w/e for an alt, I will first visit the official forums for the basics and then (maybe) come to the relevant EJ thread for more detailed information (thank god the search function actually works here).
I'm forecasting a disaster with this move, with newer players being the hardest hit (which makes it a terrible business decision). If I'm new to WoW and I want to know where to start putting my talent points when I hit level 10 for the first time, the current official forums are typically pretty helpful as long as you understand the concept of a sticky. If that same player clicked on over to the class-specific threads here on EJ, they may just throw up their hands and quit the game with the perfectly valid excuse that the game is far more complicated than they have hoped/expected.
Since I'm a forum junkie I follow almost all of the different wotlk class threads. You can see all kinds of amusing stuff like the bugged shaman tests, leading to the belief that the spell hit cap had been lowered and how it proliferated all over the internet. You can also see how often people fail to use the search feature coming out and asking questions over and over again. While I sometimes blame them for being lazy half the time, I often find it hard to find the exact post I remember on the discussion of chaos bolt versus demonic aegis 40 pages ago. Or the convoluted optimum mutilate cycle and poison discussions.
Keeping the first post of the thread updated is good but it relies on one person following everything and updating enough regularly that. What I feel would really help with clarity would be some kind of ability to tag posts or a series of posts with metatags. So when a new person came to the thread the could just click [mutilate] and be moved back to the latest mutilate discussion. I won't stop the true noobs from just randomly posting but it could decrease the intermediate range of people that just couldn't find anything useful by casually searching.
Sharpening Stones and also Wizard Oils have been discontinued. While they were something nice to use once in a while for most people for many raid guilds they were simply another burden to the cost of raiding. They also caused some issues in that they only helped certain classes and took away some of the uniqueness of other classes who were able to imbue their weapons with temporary enchants such as rogues and warlocks.
Does this mean that they are not going to be adding in new "WoTLK" stones/oils - or removing existing ones from raiding? It looks like they're just not adding any newer ones to the game.
Let's face it - if they are intending to remove the additional burden/cost of raiding - simply refusing to add newer ones isnt going to help - because the min/maxing crowd will the use the lower level oils/stones, inflating the prices of lower level materials. Essentially all this does is force people to use old consumables, rather than stop people from using them altogether.
I think the old ones are changed to not work on items that require > lvl 70, at least i saw a screenshot once for the old brilliant wizard oil only working on items that required lvl 60 or less.
I really can't see the point of bringing role-specific fora.
It's not because a rogue does DPS that he has anything to discuss in common with a warlock, and I really see no sense in separating ret paladin from protec paladin.
I can spec through different roles with the same class. I can't spec through different classes with the same role.
Class-specfific fora makes sense, because if I need informations on a template, or an ability, or anything like that, I can go into a forum where people play with the same abilities and talents than me, and can point me about them.
Having someone from a totally different class with totally different talents and abilities, won't help me much. And if I have to jump from forum to forum if I ever wish to learn a bit about another spec... Not very efficient.
I really don't understand what Blizzard is trying to do with that.
If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !
I think the largest problem with the forum change is that they still need the beginner forums for people new to a class. I don't know how to do an advanced/beginner split, but it would work well if they could pull that off.
While I theoretically welcome the reduction of necessary consumables, I just spent the last few days grinding for hundreds of blessed wizard oils for anything undead come expansion, now it's all useless. They could have mentioned this a few days ago. Still, a positive change overall, better to have raids tuned without them, one less waste of time and resources.
As for being tougher on the forums, here you go. They will likely not be as strictly enforced as is necessary and Blizzard knows and admits this. How they believe that the dregs of the WoW official forums will play nice without strong moderation is beyond me.
Edit: The SOP for WoW forum bans only lets the poster/user know why they got banned and the post/thread is deleted. Without real examples of consequences (e.g. EJ orange dots), I'm not sure even heavy moderation of this type will ultimately be effective.
The real issue is that GC is wrong. For instance, GC says at one point (in the linked page): "Look at the way the EJ forums are set up -- they virtually have a single thread on a class. Now they moderate probably more strictly than we could get away with, but the information is still easy to find. "
If you look at the class forums, you'll see it. The threads are irregular: there's a single thread on LK warrior mechanics, encompassing tanking and both DPS trees, while there are separate threads for each Shaman spec. It's difficult to find information in single class threads. Without using the search function, it's difficult to zero in on exactly the information you want.
At least the EJ search function is terrific. The WoW forums search is absolutely abysmal. Sometimes I can't find WoW forum posts that I wrote just a few hours back.
Moreover, EJ only works because of the heavy moderation. Half the time, the WoW forums are filled with barely literate posts, and you can forget about proper grammar and punctuation. The only way to reinforce good behavior would be to moderate at least lightly, but impose heavy penalties on trollers/grammar-hell. I know that I've read more than my fair share of illiterate, trolling posters who give out blatantly wrong information.
Link forum penalties to in-game penalties. Have a 3-strike system: first time that a player trolls/writes out false information, they get a warning. Second time, 1 month forum ban and 3 day game ban. 3rd time, indefinite forum ban and a week ban from the game. Grant MVPs (players that are forum helpers, they have green text) the right to issue one and two level penalties, and increase the number of MVPs. Grant all the EJ forum moderators power to moderate the WoW forums as well. If you make some examples of a few hundred people, I'm sure the rest of the players would get the hint.
Grant all the EJ forum moderators power to moderate the WoW forums as well. If you make some examples of a few hundred people, I'm sure the rest of the players would get the hint.
You wouldn't want that, there would only be a handful of people left in the forums. Keep them separate, I come here for a reason (other than the BB of course) and that's moderated content without the "wow forum QQ". If they were to moderate even 1/10 as hard as the EJ mods do there wouldn't be many people left.
One thing they could start out doing is stopping the level 1 posts, 99% of the time its just trolling which leads to more trolling (not to mention drama). Make the highest level character the default, if you have more than one you get to pick.
Originally Posted by Sebudai
Addons aren't a crutch, they're tools to be abused by skilled players to increase performance. Like a carpenter using a hammer, a fisherman using a lure, or Xi using curse words.
10/30/08, 4:03 PM
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