As know-how advances, and on-line communities shift to adapt, we take it as a type of default proposition that new websites and platforms needs to be higher than previous ones. Actuality, after all, has completely different plans.
Take Discord. It’s an important platform! An enormous enchancment over older concepts, and a handy mixture of quite a lot of outdated messaging and communications companies. If you wish to hand around in a room with buddies, in a spot you may each sort and speak 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 data, the type 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 come back.
So it sucks that firms proceed to shut boards, that are glorious repositories, and try 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 12 months when Gearbox did it and am now saying it once more in 2023. You’ll want to cease this shit. These are apples and oranges.
The most recent firm to make the error is Amazon, which 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 satisfy and have interaction with our gamers there shall be occasions the place we’ll 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 have now made the choice to embrace Discord as our main engagement platform for Misplaced Ark shifting ahead. To assist us add as a lot worth as potential to our Discord server, we shall be sunsetting the Misplaced Ark boards which can 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 shall be trying to make the most of the platform to the fullest extent. We shall be discovering methods to have engagement alternatives that embody all points of Discord resembling stay voice, gameplay streaming, stay chat, and discussion board threads. It can additionally provide simpler and extra intuitive entry to neighborhood run initiatives like On the lookout for Group, Guild promotion, and so forth.
Additionally, you will discover us investing time into rising our presence on the Misplaced Ark subreddit, so make sure you preserve a watch on the market as properly.
What does this imply for the boards now?
Beginning Might 1st, we shall be eradicating the power for customers to put up to the boards however we shall be having them stay seen in order that any kind of content material that customers want to save shall be obtainable for them. Throughout this time we shall be cataloging the entire historic suggestions that gamers have left, assuring that sentiment and suggestions left shouldn’t be misplaced.
After that course of is full, we’ll give one remaining reminder that the boards shall be lastly sundown, at which level our URL shall be redirected to our Discord 2.7k and different social media pages.
Thanks all on your continued ardour round Misplaced Ark! We look ahead to you all becoming a member of us on our official Discord. There are a lot of 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 may be 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 locations 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 “discussion board thread” function, 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), but it surely simply retains taking place as a result of firms presumably see it as a strategy to save a tiny amount of cash and sources.
It’s very enjoyable to know that main publishers are spending lots of of thousands and thousands on advertising and marketing however can’t preserve a discussion board open. Very wholesome business. Keep on, everybody.