As expertise advances, and on-line communities shift to adapt, we take it as a form of default proposition that new websites and platforms must be higher than outdated ones. Actuality, after all, has completely different plans.
Take Discord. It’s a fantastic platform! An enormous enchancment over older concepts, and a handy mixture of various outdated messaging and communications providers. If you wish to hand around in a room with pals, in a spot you may each sort and speak to one another, it’s excellent!
Discord excels as a method of real-time communication, for folks speaking within the second. What Discord is not good at, nevertheless, is being a long-term repository of knowledge, the form 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 stated this in 2021 when Bethesda did it, I stated it once more in 2021 when Eurogamer did it. I stated it final yr when Gearbox did it and am now saying it once more in 2023. It is advisable cease this shit. These are apples and oranges.
The most recent firm to make the error are Amazon, who’ve made the choice to shut the boards for each New World and Misplaced Ark, and transfer these communities wholesale to Discord. Right here’s how the choice was introduced on Misplaced Ark’s boards:
As we proceed to discover new and superb alternatives to fulfill and have interaction with our gamers there can be occasions the place we are going to consider our present methods of participating gamers. Boards 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 Misplaced Ark Discord together with the options, performance, and accessibility for gamers we’ve got made the choice to embrace Discord as our major engagement platform for Misplaced Ark shifting ahead. To assist us add as a lot worth as doable to our Discord server, we can be sunsetting the Misplaced Ark boards which is able to permit our employees to concentrate on offering high quality engagement alternatives in a central, and simply accessible platform.
Our plans on Discord are continually evolving and we can be trying to make the most of the platform to the fullest extent. We can be discovering methods to have engagement alternatives that embody all points of Discord equivalent to dwell voice, gameplay streaming, dwell chat, and discussion board threads. It is going to additionally supply simpler and extra intuitive entry to neighborhood run initiatives like Searching for Group, Guild promotion, and so on.
Additionally, you will discover us investing time into rising our presence on the Misplaced Ark subreddit, so you’ll want to hold an eye fixed on the market as properly.
What does this imply for the boards now?
Beginning Might 1st, we can be eradicating the power for customers to put up to the boards however we can be having them stay seen in order that any form of content material that customers want to save can be accessible for them. Throughout this time we can be cataloging all the historic suggestions that gamers have left, assuring that sentiment and suggestions left just isn’t misplaced.
After that course of is full, we are going to give one closing reminder that the boards can be lastly sundown, at which level our URL can be redirected to our Discord 2.7k and different social media pages.
Thanks all in your continued ardour round Misplaced Ark! We sit up for you all becoming a member of us on our official Discord. There are numerous superior concepts we’re going to be engaged on to assist develop the fandom of Misplaced Ark that our groups are excited to roll out to everybody.
See you in Arkesia!
No! A lot of what you stated there’s bullshit! And anybody who has used each a discussion board and Discord is aware of it! Boards 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 current “discussion board thread” function, is simply nowhere close to nearly 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), but it surely simply retains taking place as a result of corporations presumably see it as a strategy to save a tiny sum of money and assets.
It’s very enjoyable to know that main publishers are spending tons of of thousands and thousands on advertising and marketing however can’t hold a discussion board open. Very wholesome trade. Stick with it, everybody.
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