As know-how advances, and on-line communities shift to adapt, we take it as a sort of default proposition that new websites and platforms must be higher than previous ones. Reality, after all, has totally different plans.
Take Discord. It’s an excellent platform! An enormous enchancment over older concepts, and a handy mixture of quite a few outdated messaging and communications providers. If you wish to hand around in a room with associates, in a spot you may each sort and discuss to one another, it’s good!
Discord excels as a method of real-time communication, for folks speaking within the second. What Discord is not good at, nonetheless, is being a long-term repository of knowledge, the sort of place you may ask a query, get a solution then have that reply stay simply accessible for months, years and even many years to return.
So it sucks that corporations proceed to shut boards, that are wonderful repositories, and attempt to shift these communities to Discords, that are completely ineffective at it. I mentioned this in 2021 when Bethesda did it, I mentioned it once more in 2021 when Eurogamer did it. I mentioned it final yr when Gearbox did it and am now saying it once more in 2023. You must cease this shit. These are apples and oranges.
The newest firm to make the error are Amazon, who’ve made the choice to shut the boards for each New World and Lost Ark, and transfer these communities wholesale to Discord. Here’s how the choice was introduced on Lost Ark’s boards:
As we proceed to discover new and wonderful alternatives to satisfy and interact with our gamers there will probably be occasions the place we are going to consider our present methods of participating gamers. Forums are a venerable staple of the historical past of on-line gaming and have served as the first level of contact for avid gamers and builders for fairly a while. With the launch of our official Lost Ark Discord together with the options, performance, and accessibility for gamers we have now made the choice to embrace Discord as our main engagement platform for Lost Ark transferring ahead. To assist us add as a lot worth as potential to our Discord server, we will probably be sunsetting the Lost Ark boards which is able to enable our employees to give attention to offering high quality engagement alternatives in a central, and simply accessible platform.
Our plans on Discord are always evolving and we will probably be seeking to make the most of the platform to the fullest extent. We will probably be discovering methods to have engagement alternatives that embody all points of Discord resembling reside voice, gameplay streaming, reside chat, and discussion board threads. It will even provide simpler and extra intuitive entry to neighborhood run initiatives like Looking for Group, Guild promotion, and many others.
You will even discover us investing time into rising our presence on the Lost Ark subreddit, so make sure you hold an eye fixed on the market as properly.
What does this imply for the boards now?
Starting May 1st, we will probably be eradicating the flexibility for customers to publish to the boards however we will probably be having them stay seen in order that any kind of content material that customers wish to save will probably be obtainable for them. During this time we will probably be cataloging all the historic suggestions that gamers have left, assuring that sentiment and suggestions left isn’t misplaced.
After that course of is full, we are going to give one ultimate reminder that the boards will probably be lastly sundown, at which level our URL will probably be redirected to our Discord 2.7k and different social media pages.
Thank you all on your continued ardour round Lost Ark! We look ahead to you all becoming a member of us on our official Discord. There are many superior concepts we’re going to be engaged on to assist develop the fandom of Lost Ark that our groups are excited to roll out to everybody.
See you in Arkesia!
No! So a lot of what you mentioned there’s bullshit! And anybody who has used each a discussion board and Discord is aware of it! Forums aren’t only a place for folks to make preliminary contact with a developer, they’re a spot the place somebody can ask a query, get it answered formally then have that reply simply searchable for 1000’s and even thousands and thousands of individuals going forwards. Discord, even with its latest “forum thread” characteristic, is simply nowhere close to pretty much as good for this.
What sucks right here is that followers don’t need this, this has been made clear repeatedly (on this case too, as PC Gamer’s collection of negative feedback shows), however it simply retains occurring as a result of corporations presumably see it as a method to save a tiny amount of cash and sources.
It’s very enjoyable to know that main publishers are spending a whole lot of thousands and thousands on advertising and marketing however can’t hold a discussion board open. Very wholesome trade. Carry on, everybody.
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