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Star Wars Galaxies Forums Turn Player-Only
mwbay writes "A note from the Star Wars Galaxies Forums indicates that starting today, SOE will be hiding the PC MMORPG's forums from the non-paying public. Raph Koster submitted this response [on the now-inaccessible forums]: 'It isn't really that we have anything to hide. We spend a lot of time on the
boards here talking to you, and I don't think we have been shy about confronting
controversial issues... But yeah, publicity is at the heart of it. The heart of the matter is
will a game's Internet forums ever be a source of
positive publicity post-launch? And I'd suggest to you that the answer is
no... Someone who isn't a player has no idea exactly how widespread a given issue is.' It is certainly well within SOE's rights to do what they want with their boards, but isn't this a bit extreme?"
At Simutronics, we chose to open up our formerly subscriber-only forums to the world, even knowing that the subjects that receive much traffic and attention in forums, nowadays, tends to be complaints or acerbicly worded suggestions, in large majority.
If I was on the fence about Galaxies and went to the forums to check things out about it, I would definatly not buy it after reading them. Then again, I'm about to cancel anyway, I don't recommend it. Wait for World of Warcraft.
...will a game's Internet forums ever be a source of positive publicity post-launch?
./, game reviews... On their forum, they have at least some form of control over it (I assume).
:)
With the internet being what it is, do the producers really think that closing the forum is a good move? I assume that problems and negative opinions will be voiced in other forums, wikis, product sites,
The truth is out there and everyone will know it, eventually
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
It's a good decision for exactly the reason stated.
Anyone going to a game's forum will find countless complaints and very little positivity, an unbalanced ratio that is of course NOT representative of the majority of players. It creates an inaccurate impression of what people think of the game, which in turn may discourage other people from playing it.
Now you may say that it's also 'hiding' the legitimate complaints from potential customers, and of course that's true. However, it has only come about after many years of openness from all (or nearly all?) games companies.
The reason is has got to this stage is that the vast majority of people posting on a game's forum will be very angry, very vocal, very rude and somewhat-obsessive. If you want to blame someone for this decision then blame them, because they have created the situation that is now being addressed.
To be clear: I don't *like* the decision, but I understand and agree with it.
I read about EQ-style time sinks, lots of walking. Content like lore and quests sounded rather sparse. Aside from humans and wookies, most of the races sounded like "random guy from the cantina" -- not gungans or jawas or things like that which would at least be recognizable as a Star Wars creature. No spaceships, though supposedly they're coming in a future expansion. Lots of going out to hunt random creatures to build up one's character.
It sounded like something that a lot of people were enjoying, but not really very "Star Wars"-ish in terms of the roleplay possibilities, and not something for me. By reading over the boards, I was able to determine before having to buy anything that I would be dissatisfied with this title, based on my own tastes and expectations.
You might look at this and think, "Sony lost a sale because you read the boards, closing them is a good move". But it's not. Sure, if I had bought the game and hated it, they might have made $50 more, but I would have been much more wary of buying anything from them in the future. After being burned, Sony would have a much higher burden of convincing me to buy their product next time around, and in the long run would lose much more money than they made.
I bought the game and played it a bunch, but once the free month expired I didn't subscribe. There was just NOTHING interesting to do.
The problem with Galaxies is that it is NOT a game. It is a 'simulation' of the Star Wars universe, but unfortunately you get to simulate the life of the most bored person in the galaxy...
As a game reviewer, I always check message boards dealing with a game I'm reviewing, mainly for reports on technical difficulties. So far I've been lucky, and most of the games I've played were very stable. However, sometimes (most recently with Republic: The Revolution), there is a widespread technical problem that's significant enough for me to take notice and mention it in my review. Over the course of my reviewing career I've nocised some interesting patterns:
1. The smaller the company the more positive the board. While this is not always the case, very often games from small publishers receive more praise. In addition, the developers tend to follow these boards more closely and are ready to answer any question or solve problems. Especially the Dramcatcher/Adventure Company and JoWooD boards are great examples of how game forums can have positive spin. In fact, as long as the developers sound helpful, I tend to buy games with known technical problems, because I'm confident that I'll be helped.
2. Scam and deception works, too. Remember Command & Conquer: Renegade? It was not a perfect game. In fact, it was piss-poor, deserving a fraction of sales it ultimatelly achieved. The reason for such high sales was that EA was censoring out all posts that mentioned technical and gameplay problems. Those who recognized this practice were booted off the forums, and those who came to check other players' reactions found only positive posts. SW:G falls into this category. While not as deceptive as EA, SOE is still trying to create the impression that the game is better than it really is. Most likely, the strategy will work.
Personally, I decided I wasn't interested when the developers said that being a Jedi was going to be next to impossible. Now, I understand why they did this. It's tough to have a universe where everyones a Jedi, and there's a risk that that would've happened. But... Jedi are a pretty big thing in the Star Wars universe, and they're what everyone wants to be. No one's going to pay $15 a month to be a baker or a dancer. Add to that the fact that so far there are no spaceships to fly around in (Yes, I know they're supposed to be added in later; but they're asking me to pay them now, not later), and you have very little Star Wars in your Star Wars game, as quite a bit of the movies are Jedi and people flying around in spaceships! As a result, I think the game is a tough sell, and the people running the forums are sensing that, and are getting worried. Hence the desire to eliminate bad PR.
Smaller than Expected? The games been out 2 months and they've already had over 275k accounts..making it the second largest MMOG in the United States..Second only to SOE's flagship product Everquest.
That is a hell of a lot of people, making this game a far cry from disapointing.
I disagree. Reviews of the game in magazines, tv, or other forms of media are going to give a more objective overall review of the game, as opposed to forum dedicated to a discussion of the game.
The forum could be detrimental to their marketing in that only the most vocal forumites make their views clear, and in many cases, these views tend to be impassioned and sometimes irrational.
Actually, Simu's forums may have been part of the impetus for Sony's opposite decision.
Some members of Sony's Planetside team, including the head programmer, used to work at Simutronics. A subset of that group could only be described as "disgruntled"-- they have bitter personal gripes with the management at Simu, for reasons that seemed totally insignificant to me. Those one or two people have pushed to do everything as differently from Simutronics as possible, since the project started. If Simu had open forums, said persons wanted forums to be either closed or nonexistent.
The producers of Planetside overrode that decision by making a compromise. The agreement reached was to use the forums to generate buzz, up until the game reached a certain "critical mass" of subscribers. At that point they would restrict the forums to players only, in order to minimize negative word-of-mouth. (For instance, it's bad when an upset ex-player mouths off and convinces others to cancel their subscriptions.)
When word of this idea got to the Galaxies team, they decided it would be a good idea for them too. But because they have the Star Wars name, they decided they have better a built-in draw, and therefore don't need as big a community to be self-sustaining.
Apparently Galaxies has hit their "critical mass" of subscribers, and it's time to close those forums. The Planetside forums are still open either because someone changed his mind, or because they just haven't reached the triggering point yet.
Disclaimer: I used to work on the Planetside team for Verant, which is now SOE. That was way back when the game was still being called "Tanarus 2," so I don't have direct personal knowledge of recent developments, but I know all the people involved and I still talk to some of the team members. I'm posting as AC because I'm still covered under my unbelievably strict NDA.