Introducing the EQ2 Discord Chat

okay... communication is already an issue so let's make another form that DGB wont use? this "official forums" and "official website" should be the main communication and anything else as secondary, yet it's not. it's like watching a chicken run around missing it's head and betting on where it will stop, today forums, maybe reddit tomorrow... who the frig knows where to check for info today... i know there is less staff... so why make yet another way to spread yourself thinner?

Its just another way of taking the focus off the obvious communication problems, they will be there for a week or two then disappear into the mist like they did here on forum. It is silly when you must have tweeter or facebook to learn the news. Even this new chat doesnt solve jack if the issues are not fix. Players now a days are used as testers for live server, "lets toss this on them, see what we miss", but only if that would've been all. No we tell them what's wrong what bothers us and in replay we get "crickets".

Even if it was justified to go to that Discord thing...

Why did they leave it to Feldon to announce it here in general where it will soon get buried under random threads and anyone not active on the forum this week will miss it rather than having staff make a stickied post at the top in the News and Announcement section?

/deep breath

Communication is good. Very good. Some people like texting. Some like talking on the phone. Others cannot abide anything but face to face, and yet others write letters. IS any one way MORE right than another? As more forms of communication become available it is natural that folks will want to communicate by whatever method they are most comfortable with.

These forums are the equivalent of face to face communication. However, they are not for everyone. They're comfortable, and we know them well. However many players are moving away from them. For various reasons, they have become a less desirable place to communicate.

/shrugs

Personally, I welcome any effort to get positive communication going. I wish it was also communicated here, because for me this is the easiest place to peek in and get my daily dev fix. However, I have learned that you have to try new things, and shake it up sometimes. I applaud Feldon for taking this on and getting creative. I have high hopes that this will be a good thing!

I understand people are skeptical. I have championed for and been an advocate of these forums for eight years. Here's the problem -- Forums require a tremendous amount of moderation work.

We've seen an endless cycle recently. Someone brings up one or more issues, usually loaded with sarcasm, and then there is a pigpile of people who jump on both sides of the issue. The personal attacks and language get ramped into high gear. If a developer responds, it just opens them up to attack and people take it as an invitation to bring up 87 other issues. People wait until late in the evening or early morning and post despicable things. Then RadarX signs on, with the time he has available, has to remove half the thread. The forums have been hijacked into a huge cat-and-mouse game that makes useful conversation difficult. The bottom line is, Daybreak has 2 Community people trying to manage 6 games.

Of course I am not putting all of this on the players. I have expressed my concerns about closing useful subforums. I have encouraged more transparency and interaction.

Yes it's true that Daybreak like all game companies has experimented with different social medias for its games. By and large, players of EQ2 have not warmed to receiving our news from Facebook or Twitter. Reddit is just not our thing, although it's worked out well for Planetside 2 and H1Z1 because those players grew up on Reddit. As EQ2 players, we're more into forums and and in-game chat. And that is essentially what Discord gets us, except you can access it on a website or on your phone, and you can talk to the developers.

Is it always going to be serious issues? No. Will we have organized Question & Answer sessions? You bet. And logs of those WILL be posted on the forums and my site. If there is one thing the developers (and us players) need, it's a place to blow off steam and talk to each other as human beings rather than just "When are you going to fix X?"

For those thinking that Discord will be abandoned, ultimately it is up to whether people use it or not. Discord has been embraced by the H1Z1 community. Last week 2,100 players were participating in 11 chat channels, with volunteer moderators, Daybreak staff, and H1Z1's development team openly and candidly discussing issues.

The Forums aren't going away. The Bug Tracker isn't going away. Official news will continue to be posted to EverQuest2.com and the Launcher and if you see news not being posted there, please bring it up!

This happened long before Discord was added. RadarX has stated that EverQuest2.com and the Launcher are where News is being posted now. Of course I agree that nobody should have to chase Twitter, Facebook, and half a dozen other websites to keep up to date on what's going on with EQ2. That's why I do what I do.

I'll ask about it being stickied.

/e raises his degreed-&-certified-in-technologies-Resume for consideration.

Sir:

I applaud your dedication to the EQII environment.
Most laudable indeed, from eq2wire, this, and your many other subtle inputs noted over the years.
And most appreciated, as the EQII environment benefits me in my (and know in others') disability(ies).

I am uncertain, however, how this "real-time" access to the Developers will be useful.
With the potential for constant input, what is to prevent this from sounding like the background static on an empty TV channel?
If not sounding, at least feeling like; where there would be input,... and that input would be lost in the din of others screaming louder,...

I am under the impression that the Discord is going to have Q & A pertaining to live. Maybe not strictly as they will be open to any concerns. However as of late myself and many others have come to the conclusion that "problems" plaguing TLE will go unfixed. There have been a few statements in regards to TLE specific issues and it has been made clear (with a little fog) that nothing can and will be done for TLE players because of the way the TLE is linked to live and coding becomes a hot mess for a small staff.

Is it true that TLE players should stay away from Discord? I would say yes because of outlying issues rhat were deemed unfixable. It feels disheartening to see more outlets for communications when most of us know we will recieve the exact same answers.

I'm slightly confused. So someone that doesn't work for daybreak is setting up a site that daybreak doesn't own or run for us to talk to daybreak staff on. Why?

No offense Feldon, I'm just not sure what the goal is. I read about us pig piling (new phrase to me, learn something new every day) on devs here so they don't want to post, but I'm not sure why another website is gonna really change anything significant? Maybe I misunderstood something. I'm just wanting to understand. It seems like if daybreak wanted to, it would run and staff it's own sites and not use volunteers to do it. I'm just lost. I'm not old unless not even close to middle age is now hopelessly out of date in terms of technology. I like the idea of dev and player communication. Heck, Ttobey is amazing. He's great at it. Just not sure why this is being outsourced, and why db isn't holding the reins.

DB does hold the reins. It is their server (can see announcement on side bar). Feldon is Moderator on there.

https://twitter.com/everquestii/status/779089692549586945?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

People jump all over threads with dev responses because dev responses are so rare it's their only choice. Communication about bugs and issues needs to improve, end of story, and in my opinion a chat channel isn't the way to do it. With a chat channel when a dev decides to address an issue only those people actively watching the channel at that particular moment can chime in. What if I have an opinion about something but I happen to be at work? Or making dinner? What if I've done extensive testing on an issue and want to share that data with a dev, but they're not actively watching the chat channel at the time? What if the devs are compiling information and no one happens to be there to provide that information for X class/race/tradeskill?

I don't begrudge the devs wanting to have interaction with the community in a casual way. Just hey, whats up, I like water skiing and beer too! But they need to start addressing issues with the community too in a way that the community at large can see, not the maybe 10 or 15 people who happen to be looking at a chat channel at that precise moment.

One thing I've found out hanging out in the Discord chat. The Devs put in long hours and work weekends.
It's mostly players talking to each other. Every once in a while the dev takes a short break from what he is working on and chats a few minutes with us. It's cool to see how excited they are about what they are working on although they can't really tell us anything that wasn't already announced yet.

And you can scroll up and see any chat you missed or you can check eq2wire. Feldon is doing a good job of posting news at eq2wire.

As I've said before, I think their imminent goal is to shut down all their forums, as they like how H1Z1 players are fine without one. In which case, Feldon's gonna have a lot more traffic.

Too late, I already did it.

Ready? I'm not going to make grand excuses...

We launched a massive update for King of the Kill and I just came off a ballpark 70 hour work week (I honestly lost track). I've been researching Discord for awhile, used it for KotK for a few days and thought it might be an interesting experiment. I had a quick conversation with Feldon and cobbled it together in between other tasks and soft launched it.

My long term goal was to do an article and a little more support but I just ran out of hours this week.

I'm going to add one more bit to this so I don't have to do a fifth post, sorry.

Some of you are going to haaaaate what I'm about to say but those of you who have been around when I post know I prefer to shoot straight. I came up in this community just like many of you did. I had thousands of posts in the NGD back in the day and there is nowhere I will ever be more comfortable than forums.

That being said, it's not 2008 anymore. We are well beyond cloistering ourselves to a single solution and haven't for a very long time. If you are looking for crucial information like downtimes and patch notes, they will always be available in the launcher. If you are looking for that next level like developer commentary, you are going to have to branch out or follow something like EQ2 Wire that keeps up with it.

We aren't going to cut and paste everything and we're going to have more off the cuff conversations in Discord. We'd love for each of you to be a part of it but I completely understand some folks hesitance. You shouldn't see any major changes on the forums because of the Discord server. It's just adding another layer.

There are no reins. Yes I set up the server because I was familiar with with it's administration. The moderators will have every single bit of access I have minus the ability to set permissions for moderators and staff. I've left moderation completely up to Feldon's discretion but my goal is get a few more folks in there.

You should feel free to join. While we aren't going to allow people to bash employees, you are 100% welcome to not like a decision.

well... I'm one of those players not interested in discord. I'm already annoyed/PO'd for having to get bloody twitter, nevermind FB, eq2wire, bug site, guide site etc. quite a few of us are tired of having to jump through hoops and NON-DGB websites to get the info. I know feldon and the rest that run those sites, have put a lot of fantastic work into them, this is not a reflection on them... but they made those sites, when SoE/DGB should have.

As usual, some people in the forums just seem hate everything. Having more choices is a good thing. Use one or all of them, as you prefer. But, it is no one else's business how "anyone" chooses to communicate with DBC.

Right, I have no intentions of bashing anyone. I find it interesting that the Silverwing bug was brought up by Monotone in Discord and the reply was that Gninja has been following the thread. Why do we need to go to Discord to find out something that already had an answer to it. I think that most would have much rather had a response on the OP thread here. Saying, "Hey everyone we know about the issue and are working to put in a fix as soon as we can." Instead we have to find out thru Discord that he already knew about it.

It is just strange to separate the forum questions to another outlet. Like others have said are we supposed to scroll thru 300 responses to find an answer to a question that may have already been asked. What if the question was with voice and the only reply was again with voice and there is no written documentation of acknowledgement for fixes / bugs. My only questions would pertain to TLE and how progress was going for TSO itemization and if there are ETAs on SoH / RE2 if we get them at all. However I already know that SoH may or may not even be here, RE2 isn't coming any time soon, and TSO items haven't been touched in the data base yet. What is going to happen if the super majority voted TSO in the next vote? The answer is most likely going to be, a delay to releasing content.

I have seen Dev answer stuff here on the forums, indicate they are looking at something, etc. and then see people come in and say that no one has noticed, etc. People don't always find the answers that have been posted here either.

The thing is, no one has to use the other forms of communication if they don't want to. I don't look at EQ2 facebook or twitter, or reddit, or the other forums (guide forum, for example). I do use this forum, eq2wire, the bug tracker, several fansites that are useful, and now discord. Why? Because I like to use those. I don't use the ones I don't like. Nobody makes me use or not use the things.

Discord is a chat program and will be least time consuming if you just chat and don't try and read the old chat. I confess, I've been going back and reading chat to keep up but I think I will abandon that and just chat instead.