Only if you are wanting to talk to Smeadly. The Devs themselves have said it is harder for them to find issues in the vet lounge because there are so many posts that the good info is lost, and that is when we have places where we go to post other information and specific places to discuss issues that have a limited scope. So now it will actually be harder not easier to interact. The Devs can and have replied on other sites but primary only after being directed to the posts by a player or a post here. This is not a corporate issue this is a customer relations issue and they say to do pretty much the opposite, you want to address issues directly and eliminate the controversy before it becomes serious.
Reddit is not a suitable venue and the current EQ one is almost unused. I dont think many forum goers want to move to reddit.
I suspect the order was given to streamline and reduce the size of the forums prior to them being moved. Especially since we are seeing it being done at all the Daybreak Game sites.
I reall don't see why as there would be any benefit from all of this. Unless the webpages, forums, and such have always been hosted remotely at a Sony location and not at a SOE/DBG location. The only thing that should be needed done is changing the domain name which can be easily change.
Now i dont know about the rest of these people but i loved the guide event forum. I make it a point every week to go to the event the main guide on Drinal puts on because well he is awesome and makes many of us on drinal happy with his events even if they little or big. And I also used the Tradeskill and homeshow discussion alot as well. That was the one place we could go to see other players amazing work with their homes. So do us all a favor AND BRING THEM BACK so we can continue to post on them. Ever since daybreak took over they have been making wrong changes
Streamline: euphemism for get rid of, delete, remove, hide, erase. No more Tradeskill and Housing forum? No PVP topic? No Lore and Role-play? Good grief! Who made the decision to make such drastic alterations to the forums...again? You are aware, I presume, that the forums underwent a major alteration a while back which caused the utter disappearance of years worth of valuable information. Now an unknown someone who may or, more than likely, may NOT be familiar with the game of EverQuest is basing decisions on views or number of posts? I ask again, who is calling these shots? As for Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. No thank you! None of them is a suitable venue or a comparable replacement for a game forum.
To be fair having looked into these forums they weren't being used much. That being said I wonder what they figured they would gain versus the uproar/concern it would create. I get somoene said clean up your forums before we move them. But was it worth exciting people? *shrugs*
PVP forums may not have been used "much" but since Zek is a server with its own rules/play style surely it needs a forum of its own .. or are Daybreak trying to tell Zek something ( ie goodbye) ?
Discussions: 92,306 Messages:1,144,490 You and I obviously have different definitions for "used much".
so....in streamlining ...does that mean you all pick and choose what we read how we read it and what deserves to be seen?? Did anyone there with this brain fart of "streamlining' have the slightest notion that you in fact were back handed censoring what WE the community deemed what we wanted to read and where to find it? Did it occur to anyone "stream lining" who dont spend an 1/8th of the time the posters here perhaps didnt want the change or at LEAST tell us and ask for feedback first on it? Is moving forward and wanting us to believe that you all are wanting to move forward and hear us tantamount to becoming a totalitarian state here and just up and acting on what you deem fit the way to "hear" us? just stunned.
Adding another piece of history. Last time the massive forum changes went down ... it was without FIRST asking the game's Devs their opinions. Were they asked this time? Secondly, having a sense of community means interacting with others. Sheex and I are probably strong good examples of this with our shared Guide. I believe our playful competitiveness with each other has entertained others as well as that Guide. People getting to respond on the guide posts after a great event brings us closer to the game. If now it's going to be a cold announcement with no interaction, that's harmful to us players. EQ players are older and more set in our ways than other games. Some will watch twitch/FB and some younger ones may look at reddit. But for the most part, where we're complaining there is no posts of what's going on is here on these very forums. They're our main source for many of us. ~~ Separately, most of the external class forums are dead and don't generate any new traffic (they're mostly used for the information that resides there) but little to no new discussions take place. So if the plan is to move us off site, you should know that's going to be next to impossible. These forums are our main source of conversation as players.
There is going to be plenty of "streamlining". Columbus Nova is not an entertainment company. They are strictly money guys who expect a big ROI. Wall Streeters backed by Russian oligarchs. They are even more suit'y than Sony's suits. Expecting them to care beyond the bottom line is going to get you nowhere. Hopefully this is the "gonna get worse" before it gets better. Still, cutting back on the guide program and the boards really is nickle and diming it as how much can those cost as a line item? Not a lot since the boards are a fixed expense (unless they are wanting to downgrade the software and the server hosting it) regardless of how they are arranged and the guide program is by all rights...free. That really demonstrates who is in charge and what the plans are. That is why the community needs to be thinking about how to reach out to the devs without relying exclusively on "official" channels since those channels might close.
the devs have repeatedly stated that they(at least one of them and I am paraphrasing him here) are not interested in non-official channel communication and find it mostly useless.
In an effort to streamline our airplane we have cut off the wings and tail. We will be completely surprised when it falls out of the sky.
Maybe not that bad.More like.... No longer allowing people to have luggage (checked or carry on) to allow more lucrative freight space. Turning the whole airplane into coach where everyone sits on C130 style nylon mesh jump seats. Or just put in bus/subway style seating where most everyone stands. It is an Airbus after all. No more inflight entertainment/beverages/meals/flight attendants to pay. The bathrooms are replaced by a 55 gallon metal drum cut in half, full of sawdust. Having just one pilot whose job is really just to babysit the computer that actually flies the plane. Switching off one or more engines while at cruise altitude to save fuel. It can fly with just one just fine! Pretty much everything that a certain Irish airline has tried to implement only in the context of a video game.
Please keep this on topic and constructive to ensure further moderation isn't necessary. We absolutely want everyone's opinion but it must fit within the forum guidelines.
I had alerts this morning from the tradeskilling board - yet nobody uses it? I read Windstalker's post - going to sell a PoK port for cash because SHE has non-porting toons... oh my what a problem that is! They want a progression server all right - one that takes you from start to finish, squeezing every last dime out of every level... I think I'm going to retire - killing the tradeskilling board and others means much less emphasis on those aspects of the game. Don't try to say different, we're all aware how corporate-speak works... you know it, we know it.
Just illustrates to me the kind of bubble our decision makers exist in. Had she grouped with one actual veteran player, even an unwashed casual scrub like me, this problem would have been solved in a couple hours by hitting up a few old PoP zones and having an absolute blast of a time - maybe even getting a little taste of what some of us found so fun about the game. Nope. Just inventing more reasons ad hoc and on the fly to hit up the cash shop instead of rediscovering the game that made players want to sub.
