I don't think it's only here but even MOP has many stories with nary a comment. I think the genre has a different face now. It's changed a lot and some of us haven't changed and are expecting more of the old.
Welcome new posters. Encourage others to embrace the new stuff the site now covers. Remind posters not to break the rules and get themselves banned!
The first I have been doing from when MMOs were still king, the second was always fine by me but some folks just won't accept it, we are gamers after all I don't really see an issue, the third I have tried with very mixed success we are still losing too many good posters.
I agree with others that there are simply too few interesting MMORPGs in the making, so there is simply not anything to talk about. We have been burned over and over the past 10 years and I feel like more and more people are moving on to other hobbies or other game genres.
But we do see posts from time to time receiving a lot of comments, so whenever there is something to talk about, people are there. But sure, it's not 2008 anymore.
With the recent Pantheon implosion, it seems busier than it had been in a while.
Who doesn't enjoy discussing a good trainwreck, especially when it proves them all to be right?
Well ... it didnt proved me right.
On the plus side, its not a real implosion. Yet.
On the minus side, its a poor Vanguard successor, and a Vanguard successor is what I would want. That minus side has existed since pretty much the start though.
I don't think it's only here but even MOP has many stories with nary a comment. I think the genre has a different face now. It's changed a lot and some of us haven't changed and are expecting more of the old.
I am just playing the older games.
I think MOP has a few issues which contribute to this:
Their site is setup as a News Site with a little bit of discussion. Their "forum" really doesn't foster posts beyond one or two. You cannot even follow conversations once there are a few replies.
They have far too many articles. I just looked and yesterday there were 19 articles posted. Honestly I think thats OK for news but it isn't condusive to discussion.
The "moderation" is the worst type. Bree only wants people who parrot her beliefs to be able to post. She will stealth delete and edit comments of other posters. I have watched her edit posts people made while I was reading them. At the end of the day, she got what she wanted, the only people that post there are the ones that think like she does, which as you can see is not a lot.
Also, just like other sites... they face headwinds around subject matter and content delivery method.
In general, use them for what the site is designed to supprt: News Delivery Use MMORPG for both News Delivery AND Forums/Discussion because it's setup is so much better (although yes, it could be better as well its lightyears ahead of MOP).
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
I don't think it's only here but even MOP has many stories with nary a comment. I think the genre has a different face now. It's changed a lot and some of us haven't changed and are expecting more of the old.
I am just playing the older games.
I think MOP has a few issues which contribute to this:
Their site is setup as a News Site with a little bit of discussion. Their "forum" really doesn't foster posts beyond one or two. You cannot even follow conversations once there are a few replies.
They have far too many articles. I just looked and yesterday there were 19 articles posted. Honestly I think thats OK for news but it isn't condusive to discussion.
The "moderation" is the worst type. Bree only wants people who parrot her beliefs to be able to post. She will stealth delete and edit comments of other posters. I have watched her edit posts people made while I was reading them. At the end of the day, she got what she wanted, the only people that post there are the ones that think like she does, which as you can see is not a lot.
Also, just like other sites... they face headwinds around subject matter and content delivery method.
In general, use them for what the site is designed to supprt: News Delivery Use MMORPG for both News Delivery AND Forums/Discussion because it's setup is so much better (although yes, it could be better as well its lightyears ahead of MOP).
While I can’t comment on what “Bree “ does (whoever that is) I do agree that their site is not conducive to discussion.
This site seems to lack in news but is great for discussion.
I think part of that is that they seem larger with more people writing articles.
The This site seems to have less people and I wonder if any of them are full time.
Also is Mike Bitton still around? He’s the community manager but we don’t see him anymore?
And if you look at activity there is that former moderator (can’t remember her name) who went to run game space.
This site feels like no one actively takes care of it. Extremely old stickied posts that don’t seem relevant anymore….
I hate to say “maintenance mode “ but it feels a bit like the that.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
You can thank people who couldn't leave politics, and worse, out of conversations. the bans were warranted.
I doubt the moderators care until a post is reported.
PRO TIP: If you find yourself reaching for the 'report' button the internet may not be for you.
They were banned for what they posted. End of story.
Sometimes people are banned for what they posted, other times, what they posted was a really flimsy excuse to ban the poster. Not everyone here will appreciate that difference.
Suffice it to say, this is privately owned and operated forum about gaming. I have to, by principle, 100% uphold the owners/moderators right to ban for any reason whatsoever.
You can thank people who couldn't leave politics, and worse, out of conversations. the bans were warranted.
I doubt the moderators care until a post is reported.
PRO TIP: If you find yourself reaching for the 'report' button the internet may not be for you.
They were banned for what they posted. End of story.
Agree to blame the person reporting is not fair. That power ultimately rests with the moderators acting on behalf of the site. Sorry, but some people on here got to asshatish with the politics and deserve their bans. Good grief, this is a site to discuss games not devisive politics. If I wanted to deal with negative and hateful political rhetoric I'd go anywhere else on the internet.
As for the lack ofactivity on here, well that's more reflective of the state of MMORPG in general and the constant failure of the last hope for it which was crowd funding/indie developers.
I still come in here to read post from the community and old time favorite posters like Kyleran, Slapshot1188, Quizzical and others who keep the old forums interesting.
Just would like to remind that there IS an ignore function which allows you to... ignore a person that annoys you.
Controlling what you hear (see in this case) is far preferable to controling what others say (type).
But whether or not I think it's right or wrong, its undeniable that the banning of active posters has played a large role in the downturn of forum activity. As someone above mentioned, just pull up one of the good and active threads from 2 years ago and count how many of those posters now show BANNED or DELETED next to them.
It's a sad graveyard.
I understand banning for political content. I don't want to read about Trump/Biden here.
What bothers me a little bit is the banning over 'woke' when it became intertwined with games. Changes in culture are going to impact games and yet we cannot discuss them here. Not that I really have anything to say 'bout it.
If you cannot discuss what is going on then yeah, a forum will die off.
You can thank people who couldn't leave politics, and worse, out of conversations. the bans were warranted.
I doubt the moderators care until a post is reported.
PRO TIP: If you find yourself reaching for the 'report' button the internet may not be for you.
They were banned for what they posted. End of story.
Agree to blame the person reporting is not fair. That power ultimately rests with the moderators acting on behalf of the site. Sorry, but some people on here got to asshatish with the politics and deserve their bans. Good grief, this is a site to discuss games not devisive politics. If I wanted to deal with negative and hateful political rhetoric I'd go anywhere else on the internet.
As for the lack ofactivity on here, well that's more reflective of the state of MMORPG in general and the constant failure of the last hope for it which was crowd funding/indie developers.
I still come in here to read post from the community and old time favorite posters like Kyleran, Slapshot1188, Quizzical and others who keep the old forums interesting.
Just would like to remind that there IS an ignore function which allows you to... ignore a person that annoys you.
Controlling what you hear (see in this case) is far preferable to controling what others say (type).
But whether or not I think it's right or wrong, its undeniable that the banning of active posters has played a large role in the downturn of forum activity. As someone above mentioned, just pull up one of the good and active threads from 2 years ago and count how many of those posters now show BANNED or DELETED next to them.
It's a sad graveyard.
I understand banning for political content. I don't want to read about Trump/Biden here.
What bothers me a little bit is the banning over 'woke' when it became intertwined with games. Changes in culture are going to impact games and yet we cannot discuss them here. Not that I really have anything to say 'bout it.
If you cannot discuss what is going on then yeah, a forum will die off.
See that's the slippery slope. It becomes super subjective. You don't want to hear about Trump/Biden but want to have discussions about "woke" but even if that was the case, following that path can lead to discussions about Trump/Biden.
I have never yet seen an argument that swayed me from my belief that clicking a button and controlling what people I hear (or read) is far preferable to stopping them from speaking or writing. That said, I am also very consistent in saying that it's a private site and it can be run however the owner wants. I would simply do it differently. Just do not be shocked when the result of banning your active posters is... less posts.
As I said, go pull up some of the best threads from years back and count the BANNED/DELETED profiles. Folks can argue all day that it's MMOs declining, but the proof for this site is clear as day for anyone that wants to go look. We banned people that were posting here. And lots of them. The results should not be too suprising.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Few new MMORPGs are released and those that do aren't generally warmly welcomed.
Complaint and critique, recycled until there is something new to complain about and critique is common.
And of course there is the celebration of every failure and bare recognition of any success.
It's a tad morbid here.
That may partly inhibit participation.
I think this is also a large part of the problem. When there is new MMOs or info on MMOs developing. This forum is overly negative and the people that came here to talk about these games. Have to deal with negative comments over discussion about the game they are come here to talk about. I am part of many gaming communities and its well known that this one here is a mess. Because of that, why would a company promote their game here? Why would fans of X,Y,Z game come here to talk about these game? We cant get anything new, without tones of trash talk. Its caused a slow death by a 1000 cuts.
Whether you like it or not, you're playing a game about war and that is going to inspire political discussions. A lot of people love roleplaying politics in game. There should be a section in the forum for political discussion if the game does inspire it. What I miss from the old days was how much no one moderated websites and you could freely say what you want, and you learned to stop being angry and just let other people have their opinions. Now adays it seems everyone is offended and to sensitive and its annoying. Emotional development happens when you allow children to make and cope with conflict. we are teaching a generation of players, that there not allowed to deal with conflict. they can only solve a problem.
This user is a registered flex offender. Someone who is registered as being a flex offender is a person who feels the need to flex about everything they say. Always be the guy that paints the house in the dark. Lucidity can be forged with enough liquidity and pharmed for decades with enough compound interest that a reachable profit would never end.
Few new MMORPGs are released and those that do aren't generally warmly welcomed.
Complaint and critique, recycled until there is something new to complain about and critique is common.
And of course there is the celebration of every failure and bare recognition of any success.
It's a tad morbid here.
That may partly inhibit participation.
I think this is also a large part of the problem. When there is new MMOs or info on MMOs developing. This forum is overly negative and the people that came here to talk about these games. Have to deal with negative comments over discussion about the game they are come here to talk about. I am part of many gaming communities and its well known that this one here is a mess. Because of that, why would a company promote their game here? Why would fans of X,Y,Z game come here to talk about these game? We cant get anything new, without tones of trash talk. Its caused a slow death by a 1000 cuts.
For every post that is trash talk and dog piling there is one that's valid criticism. The companies developing these games are doing a pretty poor job and people can't just act like it's all Lolli pops and rainbows in the Ivory Tower.
I feel like the MMORPG genre is due for something great to come along, I still have hope, but all I'm currently playing is EQ, City of Heroes, and did some Guild Wars 2 of late as well... Nothing is getting me excited. In fact the opposite, Pantheon just dropped the ball and I'm just shaking my head.
Look at the state of some of these companies too. Like Activision Blizzard is just pure garbage now in my eyes and was once one of my favorite, must buy all games, beloved game studios.
There has been a drastic fall in quality, monetization, and everything else in the video game industry. Day one patches, early access, crowd funding, broken games, scams, bah!
It's not really hard to see why people are leaving and losing interest and like others have pointed out it's not just this site.
"You CAN'T buy ships for RL money." - MaxBacon
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Few new MMORPGs are released and those that do aren't generally warmly welcomed.
Complaint and critique, recycled until there is something new to complain about and critique is common.
And of course there is the celebration of every failure and bare recognition of any success.
It's a tad morbid here.
That may partly inhibit participation.
I think this is also a large part of the problem. When there is new MMOs or info on MMOs developing. This forum is overly negative and the people that came here to talk about these games. Have to deal with negative comments over discussion about the game they are come here to talk about. I am part of many gaming communities and its well known that this one here is a mess. Because of that, why would a company promote their game here? Why would fans of X,Y,Z game come here to talk about these game? We cant get anything new, without tones of trash talk. Its caused a slow death by a 1000 cuts.
For every post that is trash talk and dog piling there is one that's valid criticism. The companies developing these games are doing a pretty poor job and people can't just act like it's all Lolli pops and rainbows in the Ivory Tower.
I feel like the MMORPG genre is due for something great to come along, I still have hope, but all I'm currently playing is EQ, City of Heroes, and did some Guild Wars 2 of late as well... Nothing is getting me excited. In fact the opposite, Pantheon just dropped the ball and I'm just shaking my head.
Look at the state of some of these companies too. Like Activision Blizzard is just pure garbage now in my eyes and was once one of my favorite, must buy all games, beloved game studios.
There has been a drastic fall in quality, monetization, and everything else in the video game industry. Day one patches, early access, crowd funding, broken games, scams, bah!
It's not really hard to see why people are leaving and losing interest and like others have pointed out it's not just this site.
And yet, these games have fans that know they dont have a safe place to talk about these games here. Blizzard fans wont come here for the most part.
I give an example. Ashes of Creation is a real game, from a new company that has made mistakes but doing a great job of showing the awesome progress they have made. Some really awesome stuff is coming together with Ashes but go read the threads on that game. Same posters bringing up for many years the same mistakes that are long past being any current point of interest.
I know I have tried to talk about the current news on Ashes thats drops on this site about Ashes but it quickly turns into the same discussion. You dont like the game, you dont plan on playing or supporting the game. Move on. Nope thats not what happens. Quickly becomes a pile on because thats how you get agrees and insightful clicks on your posts. As a community we are shutting down almost all positives comments and conversation.
While one could level the accusation that people on this site are jaded (fair enough) I'm not sure that quite covers it.
When someone who graduated from college in 2020 throws down a "new" idea about combining PvE and PvP - and offers up bounty hunters as the solution - it isn't "jaded" and "cynical" that makes me laugh, it is experience.
Many of the people on this site have been in online gaming since dial-up and they've watched the entire evolution of online gaming from start to current.
While one could level the accusation that people on this site are jaded (fair enough) I'm not sure that quite covers it.
When someone who graduated from college in 2020 throws down a "new" idea about combining PvE and PvP - and offers up bounty hunters as the solution - it isn't "jaded" and "cynical" that makes me laugh, it is experience.
Many of the people on this site have been in online gaming since dial-up and they've watched the entire evolution of online gaming from start to current.
Maybe some of those people know stuff.
Yup. Some people refuse to learn from what has come before. And repeat the same mistakes over and over.
Take the ASHES example above. It's a fallacy to say people only criticize based on year's old stuff. The criticisms come from new stuff as well. It just doesn't negate the old stuff.
For instance: They recently tried to create FOMO by saying they were shutting down the ability to pre-order the game. Even this site's official news articles were copying that and saying Ashes had shut down pre-orders. Reality is that they are still selling their pre-orders right now and plan to do so until at lease some point in Jan. Then they will be replaced by something else. Sure, as a one off you can dismiss it as just poor communication, but that is why you have to put it in context against the prior issues and statements. Like when they broke the Kickstarter rules related to paid referrals. Or when they pitched and sold that ridiculous Apocolypse spin off game, or when they tried to destroy the reputation of the PC Gamer journalist.
Some will just shrug, and say forget all that... look at the new shiny they promise. I won't do that. Even for a game I really want. A wise man once said "Trust. But verify". I take it a step farther and say "When the verification fails, stop trusting".
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Nanfoodle said: And yet, these games have fans that know they dont have a safe place to talk about these games here. Blizzard fans wont come here for the most part.
A safe-space (1) to talk about games? Please tell me this is a joke.
This forum has an ignore feature - if someone is rude or unreasonable one need only put that person on ignore. This forum has fully customizable "safe-space".
BTW, I use the ignore feature to weed out the SC cultists. I've enough religion in my life for now.
NOTES: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1: Safe-space = place I can share my opinion but don't have to endure other people who disagree.
There is some kind of bacchanal going on here, and therefore I will tell my short story about how I got rid of stress with the help of cbg[redacted scammer link] For a long time I felt that my boss was a complete idiot and just wanted to strain me with work. But it was he who provoked me to stress. However, my colleague recommended me a good solution to the problem and now I have no thoughts about killing my boss.
I'd click on the link if it could show me how to get away with killing my boss.
While I can’t comment on what “Bree “ does (whoever that is) I do agree that their site is not conducive to discussion.
This site seems to lack in news but is great for discussion.
I think part of that is that they seem larger with more people writing articles.
The This site seems to have less people and I wonder if any of them are full time.
Also is Mike Bitton still around? He’s the community manager but we don’t see him anymore?
And if you look at activity there is that former moderator (can’t remember her name) who went to run game space.
This site feels like no one actively takes care of it. Extremely old stickied posts that don’t seem relevant anymore….
I hate to say “maintenance mode “ but it feels a bit like the that.
I agree, the draw for this site besides the MMORPG info at
least to me was always the forum discussions (and in the past the MMORPG
list). A lot of posters with some keen insights (including some behind
the scenes information), and even to this day some posters inform their
fellow community members about potential scam products / developers who may
have moved on to a new project, so they are not caught unaware. Some of these
same posters make a thread on the forums here with an interesting topic and we
get a good article on that topic (perhaps with some investigative questions
tossed in).
I have never been a big poster, more of a lurker but I check
the site daily several times (without an ad-blocker even lol and most times
not even logged in) for an article which may seem interesting followed by
discussion comments, but it feels like there is less forum activity to me. Some days or
at some times of day you can visit the site and all the latest forum activity
posts are from spambots. The Pantheon discussions were probably the most involved
and spirited around here in several months.
There are a lot of other mediums now (Kyleran mentioned
Redditt, discord would be another) kind of dividing up what remains
of the MMORPG and Gaming community. I mean even Bethesda shut down their forums
and moved to discord.
As far as full-time staff goes, I think there has been a definite
drop in the number of personnel or at least their forum activity. Mike is still around but doesn’t really join
any discussions, and I think with gamespace you may be talking about Suzie Ford
who always seemed to be online for lack of a better term fostering discussions.
As far as the stickied posts being outdated etc…I would rather the old posts be
left alone for posterity then some mass cleaning / deletion which would probably
be the result.
What was it 3 years ago in 2020 when the M.O.B.A
conglomerate purchased MMORPG.com for over a million dollars, the monthly unique
visitors when it was up for sale were listed at 1.5 million a month and when
they bought it, they let everyone know it had more than a million unique
visitors monthly, several million accounts created etc. Across their portfolio
which includes the league of legends community they have over 170 million
visitors monthly so a million or so a month (assuming the site traffic is
still that high) from one of their assets is a small drop in their
collective bucket which is probably why they (the current staff ) must
jump through hoops to report web site issues which they used to correct
themselves / or at least a lot timelier.
Although the forums were already slowing down, the year
after they purchased the site a lot of long-term high-volume posters /
contributors (I guess content creators would also apply) stopped posting
either through what seemed to be increased permanent banning’s rather than some
kind of timeouts for jackassery or members just not posting / leaving the site
altogether (Hopefully still above ground). Like Slapshot mentioned it’s
a cause and effect, less prolific posters / posts, leads to less discussions,
less points of view in the discussions, less interest in the site and eventually
less visits to the site.
Kickstarter MMORP's were not the Savior folks were hoping for. Here's hoping some next level MMORPG or VR MMORPG, or
something comes along sometime in the relatively near future.
I don't think it's only here but even MOP has many stories with nary a comment. I think the genre has a different face now. It's changed a lot and some of us haven't changed and are expecting more of the old.
I am just playing the older games.
I think MOP has a few issues which contribute to this:
Their site is setup as a News Site with a little bit of discussion. Their "forum" really doesn't foster posts beyond one or two. You cannot even follow conversations once there are a few replies.
They have far too many articles. I just looked and yesterday there were 19 articles posted. Honestly I think thats OK for news but it isn't condusive to discussion.
The "moderation" is the worst type. Bree only wants people who parrot her beliefs to be able to post. She will stealth delete and edit comments of other posters. I have watched her edit posts people made while I was reading them. At the end of the day, she got what she wanted, the only people that post there are the ones that think like she does, which as you can see is not a lot.
Also, just like other sites... they face headwinds around subject matter and content delivery method.
In general, use them for what the site is designed to supprt: News Delivery Use MMORPG for both News Delivery AND Forums/Discussion because it's setup is so much better (although yes, it could be better as well its lightyears ahead of MOP).
While I can’t comment on what “Bree “ does (whoever that is) I do agree that their site is not conducive to discussion.
This site seems to lack in news but is great for discussion.
I think part of that is that they seem larger with more people writing articles.
The This site seems to have less people and I wonder if any of them are full time.
Also is Mike Bitton still around? He’s the community manager but we don’t see him anymore?
And if you look at activity there is that former moderator (can’t remember her name) who went to run game space.
This site feels like no one actively takes care of it. Extremely old stickied posts that don’t seem relevant anymore….
I hate to say “maintenance mode “ but it feels a bit like the that.
So a few things on this:
- We do have a smaller staff, which is changing over the next few months. We write fewer news pieces purely because of manpower, we have myself and Christina mostly, and I'm also handling all the features, reviews, etc. So it's a process. Suzie was a machine that could knock out 16 articles a day by herself. I am a single dad, there has to be a cut off point each night, lol. Christina and I are full time, everyone else you see on the site is a freelance contributor, which means they only write when they pitch something or I assign something as the budget we work with allows.
- We are ramping up our news coverage as we bring on more dedicated news writers, so you will start to see more news pieces in line with what everyone else is doing. But that should still (hopefully) foster some discussion like all news articles have the potential to do.
- Mike B is still around. We also have a volunteer mod that helps with keeping things in check.
- In order to foster discussion, we need to be writing the types of features and editorials people are looking for as well. Always feel free to hit me up with the type of coverage you guys like to read. It's not always going to come to fruition, as we also are writing the articles we enjoy writing (take the recent multi-part LotRO series I've been running the last two weeks, for example), but at the end of the day we want to write about what our community is interested first and foremost.
MMOs, especially nowadays when that term is so nebulous it has lost meaning with newer and younger gamers, are incredibly hard to cover than they used to be. I've covered them as my own niche in this industry since 2009 and the landscape and way they are covered has changed tremendously since then. And as such a niche topic, especially focusing on older MMOs or the genre as a whole, it doesn't move the needle on Google as much any more. It's why you saw Bill/Suz start to branch out years ago, and why we continued they when I took the reigns in 2019. One of the discussions we're having behind the scenes right now is reigning in some of that scope again, so over the next few months you should start to see that as well.
That's not to say we won't be covering single-player RPGs and stuff - we will. At the end of the day, the forum traffic is a small fraction of our overall picture, something that is driven by Google and their constant algorithm changes. But I'm hoping that the moves we are making will help not only move our needle the way we want to, but also cultivate the type of conversation that doesn't have us all reaching for banhammers.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. My email is always open if you want to pitch an article yourself as well! Always happy to bring on new freelancers and contributors if you're interested. Maybe a rant to save the site? :P
Comments
I am just playing the older games.
Welcome new posters.
Encourage others to embrace the new stuff the site now covers.
Remind posters not to break the rules and get themselves banned!
The first I have been doing from when MMOs were still king, the second was always fine by me but some folks just won't accept it, we are gamers after all I don't really see an issue, the third I have tried with very mixed success we are still losing too many good posters.
But we do see posts from time to time receiving a lot of comments, so whenever there is something to talk about, people are there. But sure, it's not 2008 anymore.
I think MOP has a few issues which contribute to this:
- Their site is setup as a News Site with a little bit of discussion. Their "forum" really doesn't foster posts beyond one or two. You cannot even follow conversations once there are a few replies.
- They have far too many articles. I just looked and yesterday there were 19 articles posted. Honestly I think thats OK for news but it isn't condusive to discussion.
- The "moderation" is the worst type. Bree only wants people who parrot her beliefs to be able to post. She will stealth delete and edit comments of other posters. I have watched her edit posts people made while I was reading them. At the end of the day, she got what she wanted, the only people that post there are the ones that think like she does, which as you can see is not a lot.
Also, just like other sites... they face headwinds around subject matter and content delivery method.In general, use them for what the site is designed to supprt: News Delivery
Use MMORPG for both News Delivery AND Forums/Discussion because it's setup is so much better (although yes, it could be better as well its lightyears ahead of MOP).
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
This site seems to lack in news but is great for discussion.
I think part of that is that they seem larger with more people writing articles.
Also is Mike Bitton still around? He’s the community manager but we don’t see him anymore?
And if you look at activity there is that former moderator (can’t remember her name) who went to run game space.
This site feels like no one actively takes care of it. Extremely old stickied posts that don’t seem relevant anymore….
I hate to say “maintenance mode “ but it feels a bit like the that.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I think it is the format.
Suffice it to say, this is privately owned and operated forum about gaming.
I have to, by principle, 100% uphold the owners/moderators right to ban for any reason whatsoever.
I don't want to read about Trump/Biden here.
What bothers me a little bit is the banning over 'woke' when it became intertwined with games. Changes in culture are going to impact games and yet we cannot discuss them here. Not that I really have anything to say 'bout it.
If you cannot discuss what is going on then yeah, a forum will die off.
I have never yet seen an argument that swayed me from my belief that clicking a button and controlling what people I hear (or read) is far preferable to stopping them from speaking or writing. That said, I am also very consistent in saying that it's a private site and it can be run however the owner wants. I would simply do it differently. Just do not be shocked when the result of banning your active posters is... less posts.
As I said, go pull up some of the best threads from years back and count the BANNED/DELETED profiles. Folks can argue all day that it's MMOs declining, but the proof for this site is clear as day for anyone that wants to go look. We banned people that were posting here. And lots of them. The results should not be too suprising.
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Someone who is registered as being a flex offender is a person who feels the need to flex about everything they say.
Always be the guy that paints the house in the dark.
Lucidity can be forged with enough liquidity and pharmed for decades with enough compound interest that a reachable profit would never end.
I feel like the MMORPG genre is due for something great to come along, I still have hope, but all I'm currently playing is EQ, City of Heroes, and did some Guild Wars 2 of late as well... Nothing is getting me excited. In fact the opposite, Pantheon just dropped the ball and I'm just shaking my head.
Look at the state of some of these companies too. Like Activision Blizzard is just pure garbage now in my eyes and was once one of my favorite, must buy all games, beloved game studios.
There has been a drastic fall in quality, monetization, and everything else in the video game industry. Day one patches, early access, crowd funding, broken games, scams, bah!
It's not really hard to see why people are leaving and losing interest and like others have pointed out it's not just this site.
"classification of games into MMOs is not by rational reasoning" - nariusseldon
Love Minecraft. And check out my Youtube channel OhCanadaGamer
Try a MUD today at http://www.mudconnect.com/I give an example. Ashes of Creation is a real game, from a new company that has made mistakes but doing a great job of showing the awesome progress they have made. Some really awesome stuff is coming together with Ashes but go read the threads on that game. Same posters bringing up for many years the same mistakes that are long past being any current point of interest.
I know I have tried to talk about the current news on Ashes thats drops on this site about Ashes but it quickly turns into the same discussion. You dont like the game, you dont plan on playing or supporting the game. Move on. Nope thats not what happens. Quickly becomes a pile on because thats how you get agrees and insightful clicks on your posts. As a community we are shutting down almost all positives comments and conversation.
When someone who graduated from college in 2020 throws down a "new" idea about combining PvE and PvP - and offers up bounty hunters as the solution - it isn't "jaded" and "cynical" that makes me laugh, it is experience.
Many of the people on this site have been in online gaming since dial-up and they've watched the entire evolution of online gaming from start to current.
Maybe some of those people know stuff.
Take the ASHES example above. It's a fallacy to say people only criticize based on year's old stuff. The criticisms come from new stuff as well. It just doesn't negate the old stuff.
For instance: They recently tried to create FOMO by saying they were shutting down the ability to pre-order the game. Even this site's official news articles were copying that and saying Ashes had shut down pre-orders. Reality is that they are still selling their pre-orders right now and plan to do so until at lease some point in Jan. Then they will be replaced by something else. Sure, as a one off you can dismiss it as just poor communication, but that is why you have to put it in context against the prior issues and statements. Like when they broke the Kickstarter rules related to paid referrals. Or when they pitched and sold that ridiculous Apocolypse spin off game, or when they tried to destroy the reputation of the PC Gamer journalist.
Some will just shrug, and say forget all that... look at the new shiny they promise. I won't do that. Even for a game I really want. A wise man once said "Trust. But verify". I take it a step farther and say "When the verification fails, stop trusting".
All time classic MY NEW FAVORITE POST! (Keep laying those bricks)
"I should point out that no other company has shipped out a beta on a disc before this." - Official Mortal Online Lead Community Moderator
Proudly wearing the Harbinger badge since Dec 23, 2017.
Coined the phrase "Role-Playing a Development Team" January 2018
"Oddly Slap is the main reason I stay in these forums." - Mystichaze April 9th 2018
Please tell me this is a joke.
This forum has an ignore feature - if someone is rude or unreasonable one need only put that person on ignore. This forum has fully customizable "safe-space".
BTW, I use the ignore feature to weed out the SC cultists.
I've enough religion in my life for now.
NOTES:
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1: Safe-space = place I can share my opinion but don't have to endure other people who disagree.
I agree, the draw for this site besides the MMORPG info at least to me was always the forum discussions (and in the past the MMORPG list). A lot of posters with some keen insights (including some behind the scenes information), and even to this day some posters inform their fellow community members about potential scam products / developers who may have moved on to a new project, so they are not caught unaware. Some of these same posters make a thread on the forums here with an interesting topic and we get a good article on that topic (perhaps with some investigative questions tossed in).
I have never been a big poster, more of a lurker but I check the site daily several times (without an ad-blocker even lol and most times not even logged in) for an article which may seem interesting followed by discussion comments, but it feels like there is less forum activity to me. Some days or at some times of day you can visit the site and all the latest forum activity posts are from spambots. The Pantheon discussions were probably the most involved and spirited around here in several months.
There are a lot of other mediums now (Kyleran mentioned Redditt, discord would be another) kind of dividing up what remains of the MMORPG and Gaming community. I mean even Bethesda shut down their forums and moved to discord.
As far as full-time staff goes, I think there has been a definite drop in the number of personnel or at least their forum activity. Mike is still around but doesn’t really join any discussions, and I think with gamespace you may be talking about Suzie Ford who always seemed to be online for lack of a better term fostering discussions. As far as the stickied posts being outdated etc…I would rather the old posts be left alone for posterity then some mass cleaning / deletion which would probably be the result.
What was it 3 years ago in 2020 when the M.O.B.A conglomerate purchased MMORPG.com for over a million dollars, the monthly unique visitors when it was up for sale were listed at 1.5 million a month and when they bought it, they let everyone know it had more than a million unique visitors monthly, several million accounts created etc. Across their portfolio which includes the league of legends community they have over 170 million visitors monthly so a million or so a month (assuming the site traffic is still that high) from one of their assets is a small drop in their collective bucket which is probably why they (the current staff ) must jump through hoops to report web site issues which they used to correct themselves / or at least a lot timelier.
Although the forums were already slowing down, the year after they purchased the site a lot of long-term high-volume posters / contributors (I guess content creators would also apply) stopped posting either through what seemed to be increased permanent banning’s rather than some kind of timeouts for jackassery or members just not posting / leaving the site altogether (Hopefully still above ground). Like Slapshot mentioned it’s a cause and effect, less prolific posters / posts, leads to less discussions, less points of view in the discussions, less interest in the site and eventually less visits to the site.
Kickstarter MMORP's were not the Savior folks were hoping for. Here's hoping some next level MMORPG or VR MMORPG, or something comes along sometime in the relatively near future.
- We do have a smaller staff, which is changing over the next few months. We write fewer news pieces purely because of manpower, we have myself and Christina mostly, and I'm also handling all the features, reviews, etc. So it's a process. Suzie was a machine that could knock out 16 articles a day by herself. I am a single dad, there has to be a cut off point each night, lol. Christina and I are full time, everyone else you see on the site is a freelance contributor, which means they only write when they pitch something or I assign something as the budget we work with allows.
- We are ramping up our news coverage as we bring on more dedicated news writers, so you will start to see more news pieces in line with what everyone else is doing. But that should still (hopefully) foster some discussion like all news articles have the potential to do.
- Mike B is still around. We also have a volunteer mod that helps with keeping things in check.
- In order to foster discussion, we need to be writing the types of features and editorials people are looking for as well. Always feel free to hit me up with the type of coverage you guys like to read. It's not always going to come to fruition, as we also are writing the articles we enjoy writing (take the recent multi-part LotRO series I've been running the last two weeks, for example), but at the end of the day we want to write about what our community is interested first and foremost.
MMOs, especially nowadays when that term is so nebulous it has lost meaning with newer and younger gamers, are incredibly hard to cover than they used to be. I've covered them as my own niche in this industry since 2009 and the landscape and way they are covered has changed tremendously since then. And as such a niche topic, especially focusing on older MMOs or the genre as a whole, it doesn't move the needle on Google as much any more. It's why you saw Bill/Suz start to branch out years ago, and why we continued they when I took the reigns in 2019. One of the discussions we're having behind the scenes right now is reigning in some of that scope again, so over the next few months you should start to see that as well.
That's not to say we won't be covering single-player RPGs and stuff - we will. At the end of the day, the forum traffic is a small fraction of our overall picture, something that is driven by Google and their constant algorithm changes. But I'm hoping that the moves we are making will help not only move our needle the way we want to, but also cultivate the type of conversation that doesn't have us all reaching for banhammers.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. My email is always open if you want to pitch an article yourself as well! Always happy to bring on new freelancers and contributors if you're interested. Maybe a rant to save the site? :P