[...] post is mostly a critique of some points that Ryan Schwayder made on the pros and cons of official forums, but amongst all of that she makes some very [...]

[...] Shwayder, a game designer for 38 Studios, recently put in his two cents on the official vs. unofficial forums argument. He originally called official forums a necessary evil but when prompted by Warhammer Alliance [...]

[...] Posted by Dalqak Actually, there was a quite timely post today over at NerfBat listing the 3 things that each forum (Official versus Unofficial) offers that the other does not. [...]

“There’s no reliable or safe way to get players connected to their game accounts through non-company websites or applications.”

The fact that so many people believe this upsets me. There are about a dozen different ways to approach this issue. Each, safe, secure, reliable. The easiest way perhaps, would be a single use, unique generated key created by an account center, that is validated on a fansite. There are more invasive ways however. To put it bluntly and in plain terms, a script has a piece of data, checks it against a developers database (that contains no personal information), returns a value and then performs an action based on that value. Or even worse, a developer has an API which can do the validation securely and safely.

Developer produced APIs the empower the external community, that’s crazy talk! I mean why do we want to empower a community we don’t moderate, control, or have the ability to spin the company line?

“Game-centric social networks, tight coupling between the forums and armory, in-game access to forums and website information, forum and site-based access to certain game systems, etc.”

So how much does a developer social network cost? 1 million? 5 million? 10 million? How much did sites like Wowdb.com cost the developer? This site, it has an API so guilds and link items, post guild rosters, character profiles, all on their own guild forums. Where are those kind of community empowering offerings? You don’t see them because of…

Two words, Disney World.

But more on Disney World another time….

Mark Jacob’s “McQuaid-esque” dismissal of something like having official forums put him and his company squarely on the sidelines while the MMO industry ran right by them.

Jacobs should be held responsible for this decision.

[...] there was a quite timely post today over at NerfBat listing the 3 things that each forum (Official versus Unofficial) offers that the other does [...]

News & Discussions
> Announcements (useful for developers or community members to post announcements to the community)
> Official Threads (or something similar, but a place where people can comment on announcements without cluttering up the announcements forum)

New Player Help
> Welcome! (place for new players to post help threads and such– name is general can be changed based on game title of course!)
> Free Trial Discussion (if you do have a free-trial, there should be a place for people to talk about it!)

Customer Support/Technical Support

Gameplay Discussion
> General Gameplay
> Combat (I think it’s important to separate combat from gameplay as a topic because combat can relate to a lot of issues that should be separately discussed from other gameplay issues, in my opinion).
> Tradeskills
> Dungeons (the WoW dungeon forum was pretty well used as far as I remember, haven’t read up on their forums in a bit).

Then you can add a class forum area here.

Community forums here.

Server forums here (if you want to include server forums, of course).

I’d like to keep all off-topic forums off the official forums, and instead link to fansite forums to let those flourish. Maybe give the community a rating system for fan forums to alter the display order of fansite forum links so they can drive the popularity of their sites.

When I have something wrong with a product I don’t naturally think “let me go to the place ran by other customers.” I think, “I’m going to the official website and finding an official technical support person.”

Beyond that though I like the narrow scope official forums. Just enough to get the message across and be the central point for general discussion.

I like knowing that Blackguard will read what I’m screaming than guessing. Yes, I can go over to Mobhunter to complain. Chances are, he’ll see it, but perhaps not as quick.