Bear in mind after we requested everybody to please cease making Discord servers (opens in new tab) for issues that should not be Discord servers? Apparently Amazon wasn’t listening, because it has revealed plans to close down the boards for its New World and Misplaced Ark MMOs in favor of—you guessed it—Discord servers.
“With the launch of our official New World 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 New World transferring ahead,” Amazon stated (opens in new tab). “To assist us add as a lot worth as potential to our Discord server, we will probably be sunsetting the New World boards which is able to enable our employees to deal with offering high quality engagement alternatives in a central, and simply accessible platform.”
Except for swapping out the sport title, the Misplaced Ark discussion board closure message (opens in new tab) is similar.
Discussion board posting will probably be disabled on Could 1, though the boards themselves will stay up for an indeterminate time so customers may have an opportunity to avoid wasting what they wish to maintain. Amazon “will probably be cataloging the entire historic suggestions that gamers have left, assuring that sentiment and suggestions left is just not misplaced.” As soon as that is accomplished, the discussion board URL will probably be redirected to Discord servers (New World (opens in new tab), Misplaced Ark (opens in new tab)) and social media pages. Considerably oddly, on condition that it is pulling the plug by itself boards, Amazon stated it should even be growing its presence on the New World and Misplaced Ark subreddits.
The response to the plan from discussion board customers is just not nice. A number of the pushback is a bit overwrought (one thread on the choice to finish the boards calls it “a horrendous, vile mistake,” which is fairly heavy) however loads of customers make the legitimate level that Discord and boards are very totally different instruments designed to serve very totally different functions.
“Discord is clearly helpful for a lot of causes, most players use it,” New World discussion board consumer Gavyne (opens in new tab) wrote. “But it surely’s a horrible place to have a again & forth dialogue on a number of subjects, in addition to seek for knowledge & content material.”
“Whereas the chat format on Discord serves a greater objective for small discuss and one-liners, the bulletin board discussion board format nevertheless provides a significantly better overview for deeper dialogue/evaluation, simpler to entry and have much better and extra instruments for formatting,” Julezer (opens in new tab) added. “Folks typically additionally put way more thought into posting on a boards than in a chat. your present Discord format it’s on no account able to changing a discussion board. It is going to in a short time finish in a disorganized mess.”
“It’s not possible to have an enticing dialogue in Discord, it’s a actual time chat app,” NSilva (opens in new tab) wrote on the Misplaced Ark boards. “There may be completely no fucking level of leaving suggestions or posting if customers can’t simply learn all of the associated messages. Even in the event you publish stuff there it’s simply gone, out of attain without end after 2mins.”
I am an outdated boards man myself (I nonetheless sometimes discover myself fascinated about the outdated, long-lost BioWare boards (opens in new tab)) so there’s positively some bias at play right here, however I’ve to agree with the sentiment that this is not an important transfer for New World and Misplaced Ark gamers. Boards are a litany, a spot to share thought-about ideas and discover arcane information buried in time; Discord, by comparability, is an unruly tavern: Nice for assembly with mates and preventing with strangers, however very a lot a “second in time” form of factor.
Fortunately, New World and Misplaced Ark gamers produce other channels for forum-like communications, together with Reddit and Steam, so the closure of their native boards does not symbolize the entire finish of civilized interactions. Even so, it is type of a bummer: Name me old school if you’ll, however massive video games deserve their very own boards—Discord could also be a brand new method of doing issues, however that does not imply it is higher.
