Tabula Rasa, now with no FUN!

[Mrbloodworth]

Just want to point out that the no official forums/fan site thing failed for vanguard.

[Johny Cee]

Just want to point out that the no official forums/fan site thing failed for vanguard.

Vanguard failed as a game.  Having an official forum wouldn't have helped much.

The DAoC model seemed to work fairly well:  no official forums, a newsite (the Herald) including grab bags and feedback forms, some developer support for the TL program, and login polls.

Login polls were always amusing,  because they would generate responses at odds to the prevailing opinions of the boards.


I give TR credit for the dev presence in game.  Lord British was in game last friday making rah-rah noises in General chat....   though of course I immediately closed out General chat so I wouldn't have to be exposed to either Lord British insanity or average_mmo_mouthbreather insanity responding to him.

Whenever I think of Lord British I now get a mental image of the Yahtzee stick figure chasing him around with a giant syringe trying to "extract the crazy".....

[Lucas]

The Military Surplus (AH of Tabula Rasa) has been implemented on the test center, plus the usual bug fixing/nerfing/adjusting stuff.

[edit] You can read the patch notes here

[geldonyetich2]

Just want to point out that the no official forums/fan site thing failed for vanguard.

Vanguard failed as a game.  Having an official forum wouldn't have helped much.

Vanguard has official forums.  Checking the release date of the game (Jan 30th) versus the oldest post in the forum (Jan 31st), it looks like the forums were there the day after release day.

[Mrbloodworth]

Just want to point out that the no official forums/fan site thing failed for vanguard.

Vanguard failed as a game.  Having an official forum wouldn't have helped much.

Vanguard has official forums.  Checking the release date of the game (Jan 30th) versus the oldest post in the forum (Jan 31st), it looks like the forums were there the day after release day.

They were only added after SOE took over.

[geldonyetich2]

Well, they had beta forums, and SOE had taken over before the game was released, so what time does that leave us that they did not have forums?

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, they had beta forums, and SOE had taken over before the game was released, so what time does that leave us that they did not have forums?

*sigh*

[geldonyetich2]

I think that they intended to have no official forums, and there was a period that you'd not be able to access the forums if you were a new beta player who didn't have access to the closed beta forums, but they reconsidered. 

A moot point, really.  The forums were there Jan 31st, a day after release, that's all that really matters.

[Draegan]

I distinctly remember posts from McQuaid about not having forums and using the fanbase for that purpose.  This was post release.

[schild]

I distinctly remember posts from McQuaid about not having forums and using the fanbase for that purpose.  This was post release.

Who wants to bet Brad doesn't remember... anything?

[geldonyetich2]

I think I figured it out.  Here's the old forum archive.  Compared to the new forums, there's a 15-day gap.  So they must have went a little while without forums, but reconsidered on release day (Jan 30th) because the forums were up a day later.

On the bearing of Tabula Rasa forums, I guess we could say that Vanguard was an example of going without forums as having 'failed', but they didn't really run with it much post-release.

[Mrbloodworth]

I distinctly remember posts from McQuaid about not having forums and using the fanbase for that purpose.  This was post release.

The affiliate program. Don't really care who what when, its beside the point. We all know what it ended up being, in fact i think schild half called him on it.

[Vinadil]

I think I figured it out.  Here's the old forum archive.  Compared to the new forums, there's a 15-day gap.  So they must have went a little while without forums, but reconsidered on release day (Jan 30th) because the forums were up a day later.

On the bearing of Tabula Rasa forums, I guess we could say that Vanguard was an example of going without forums as having 'failed', but they didn't really run with it much post-release.

I played VG well into... May? I think.  It has been a while and my brain is actively attempting to wash all memories.  But, SilkyVenom was the closest you had to "Offical Forums" until the whole melt-down SoE takeover in the summer.  Perhaps there was some place that people posted, or perhaps they have just copied over posts from some other forum, but there were (by design) no official forums until summer 07.

[geldonyetich2]

I guess they would have had to have copied over the post from SilkyVenom considering they've got player posts from the beginning of February on the SOE board. 

I can't even remember how we got here on this thread, let alone the state of Vanguard's forums 8 months ago.

Well, taking a bit of direct imperial evidence from both of those links (the old and new Vanguard forums) what exactly is a developer going to do with that feedback?  How much worse off is Tabula Rasa to hide their feedback behind a WWW submission form and /bug ticketing system?

[Miasma]

There were no official forums for Vanguard from launch until SOE bought them out.

Tabula Rasa not having official boards is just as stupid.  At least Vanguard had an "unofficial official" board, even if it was ugly as sin.  I have yet to find anywhere with a healthy number of people and posts where you could have a good discussion about class abilities, quests, bugs, etc.  There aren't enough people playing this game to fragment them into shitty fansites.

[Johny Cee]

I can't even remember how we got here on this thread, let alone the state of Vanguard's forums 8 months ago.

[geldonyetich2]

It's no good, I took all the fun out of it this time.

 

[tmp]

It doesnt take a million screaming retards on one forum to debug a game.  Sure, they're MMO's... but at their heart they're games with a beginning and an end - at some point testing stops.

Am talking more of players finding combinations of game mechanics and tactics, that result in providing them with advantages the developers in their limitation never imagined and accounted for. This kind of stuff can take million screaming retards because some of such finds are things only retard would try, and then it takes a retard to scream about their findings.

And believe you me, if's much easier to find useful nuggest of info. on fansites then on official ones.  And it's much easier on the eyes and seemingly more "neutral" rather than rantish or fanboish. (sites like warcry, stratics, tentonhammer, etc.)  Obviously, if you go to "Butt Monkey's TR Shrine" you're probably in for a rather biased view.  If you stick with the main ones though, they're by no means biased.

I don't see much difference between fansites and official forums in that regard, really. Same topics, same opinions, same whining. With fan-sites just sometimes sprinkled with "we are better than official forum retards" attitude to some degree. With multiple fan-sites rather than single input point it's just more redundant because each fan-site tends to repeat the same stuff the others (and the official forums) do. Manually hop between numer of sites to search for something useful or have it all in single spot, why would the former make the info more accessible? If nothing else the RSS aggregators and such disagree -- there's preference for having the stuff delivered to you, not the other way around.

Lastly, I'm in support of the fansite model because I believe MMOs create a nice little sub-market for these guys who go through the trouble of creating them.  Rather than cornering the market by making their own support site, they let capitalism take hold and one can make a chunk of change by making their own.  Technically, this is exactly what sites like warcry, stratics, etc. make money at.  And many times they do it much better than a dev can.

To use imperfect analogy, if official forums are WoW then while it's huge and popular, its existence doesn't exclude other makers from making cash with their own developments (fan-sites). It simply means the official forum is part of their competiton and this is quite normal part of that capitalism you speak of. For that matter, the sites you mention do exist in world where covered games have their official forums, which would suggest the official forums aren't such big obstacle in this kind of venture.

[Falconeer]

Whenever I think of Lord British I now get a mental image of the Yahtzee stick figure chasing him around with a giant syringe trying to "extract the crazy".....

Isn't that worth a repost? 

[Merusk]

His reviews are all kinds of awesome.  It's probably the only bit on The Escapist's site worth anything.

[DarkSign]

His reviews are all kinds of awesome.  It's probably the only bit on The Escapist's site worth anything.

Agreed. Their forums are nazi-fied trash moderated by kids with special needs. But his reviews are comedy gold with the insight of a videogame vet.

[geldonyetich2]

In all fairness, that "review" of Tabula Rasa was only a preview, and he spends more time discussing "Richard Gariott crazy" and "how people who like FPS and MMORPGs are unlikely to like both" than he does about the actual game.

But yeah, Yahtzee's stuff is pretty good, comedy-wise.  He also recently released a game that's pretty good (if you can stand 640x480 and midi music).

[schild]

MOTHERFUCK.

Yahtzee = Croshaw = 5 Days a Stranger.

He needs to get the fuck away from Escapist and make his own moneys. He deserves his own shit and they are in no way paying him enough.

Goddamnit how didn't I make that connection. Fuck.

[Falconeer]

The Trilby saga is great and if you don't think so you must be stupid.
Yes, he deserves videogame moneys, much more than most of our well known fuckers. I just hope he won't start with a mumorpuger.

[BigBlack]

His reviews are all kinds of awesome.  It's probably the only bit on The Escapist's site worth anything.

Agreed. Their forums are nazi-fied trash moderated by kids with special needs.

Uh, what?  The main problem with any given videogame-related forum is that it's not moderated harshly *enough*.  I've yet to find a forum where the problem was too much moderation.

Or, put another way, what'd they ban you for?

Edit: I like the Escapist in general, and Trilby is interesting, though oddly enough there was a game (called "Thief!", I think?) for the old ZZT system that pulled off the same concept only more interestingly (in ASCII).  It's also similar, in a lot of ways, to the Java-based Splinter Cell games you can download for your cell-phone.  Still, solid gameplay.

[Hoax]

Uh, what?  The main problem with any given videogame-related forum is that it's not moderated harshly *enough*.  I've yet to find a forum where the problem was too much moderation.

Oh dear gawd, who is going to respond to this one?

[tmp]

Oh dear gawd, who is going to respond to this one?

Supreme Cmdr Serek Dmart..?

[geldonyetich2]

Whether or not you like moderation, we should at least agree that there's such a thing as too much of anything.

[DarkSign]

His reviews are all kinds of awesome.  It's probably the only bit on The Escapist's site worth anything.

Agreed. Their forums are nazi-fied trash moderated by kids with special needs.

Uh, what?  The main problem with any given videogame-related forum is that it's not moderated harshly *enough*.  I've yet to find a forum where the problem was too much moderation.

Or, put another way, what'd they ban you for?

Nice attempt at throwing it back at me, but I havent been banned, asked to leave quietly, nor held in low regard.

There are lots of Nazified forums. ESF for one. Spend a few minutes actually talking about Oblivion's craptastic parts (yes in a civil way, inviting discussion) and see how long it takes Summer to ban yo ass. (Not banned there either, case you're wondering)

[Amaron]

I find it surprising to see so many people saying Dev's should ignore forums.   Maybe if they wanted to make the kind of game some people enjoy that would be a good idea.  I consider a big part of WoW's success to be from them listening to the forums though.   Just thinking of the original rest system which they seemed so intent on ramming through makes me shudder.  The only reason that got repealed is the forums.  Looking at how they did it I'd say the only important thing is for a company to learn who to ignore.   Their were a ton of whiny bitches who wanted the leveling to be harder but they got completely ignored as was proper.   Blizzard forums are probably home to the worst gutter trash the net has but they still obviously get useful info out of them.

[cmlancas]

Look at what the idiots who write for AIM's homepage think!

http://dashboard.aim.com/home

 

[Venkman]

copy/paste plzthx.

[CharlieMopps]

I personally prefer that there are no official forums. IF there are official forums, everyone gravitates to them... no real community is built outside the game. Since all posts are under the control of the MMO as soon as there's anger in the community about a particular subject they start censoring posts... it's all bad. Leave the forums outside the companies control so they aren't tempted to quell public opinion.

[cmlancas]

copy/paste plzthx.

Oh. The tagline said, Tabula Rasa? Move over WoW!

Lulz. 

[Venkman]

Oh, lol, I don't need to know then