The forums are being stripped way down, just like this Rohirrim
Just this afternoon, Sapience posted details about the coming forum changes.
The forum revamp will start on July 29th at 10am server time.
The forums are getting several updates and upgrades…
Official Forums
The forums will be upgraded to a newer version of VBulletin. Changes will include:
- The forum styling/appearance will be updated and will now scale to the full width of your browser window.
- A new “Community Digest” page that will have links to lotteries, forums, and updated news.
- The reputation system will be discontinued.
- Forum performance will be improved.
- Forums should perform better on mobile devices.
The only thing that is really interesting about the updates is the “Community Digest” page. This could be a great step for Turbine in how they interact with players and the community as a whole. Overall though, I am sad about the seemingly lack of improvements to be found.
The forums are also getting several things taken away.
The following features are being discontinued:
- The LOTRO Lorebook
- Player Blogs
- PvMP leaderboards
- Skirmish Leaderboards
- Character and Kinship Data and Pages
- Referrals
- Signup Rewards
- Item Icons / Tooltips
- Signature System
Seeing all of these in a list makes me really sad. First of all, there are way more points in the discontinued category than the new and upgraded features area. That is a real disappointment. While it was not the most up to date anymore, loosing the LOTRO Lorebook is a big hit to the community. Continuing the disappointment trend is the scary fact that player blogs will be discontinued entirely. This is a big part of the community and taking it away is a huge loss.
PvMP Leaderboards are now leaving as if they didn’t abandon that community enough. I didn’t even know there were skirmish leaderboards but they should be taken down if Pineleaf was not at the top. Ok so that was a bad joke.
Character and Kinship pages leaving is terrible as well. Being away from the game and yet still having the ability to see your character’s stats and cool weapons was a great way to pass the time till you can return to LOTRO.
Referrals going is a huge mistake if they don’t bring them back. This kind of mechanic is the best way to market LOTRO, simple word of mouth. Taking this out is a very poor marketing and community move and when you pair it with removing the signup rewards it stands out even more as a terrible decision. The last two points are not too terribly important in my opinion. While the signature system looks amazing, it doesn’t really serve any purpose other than looking amazing.
As you have noticed from the article, I am not the happiest about this decision. It is only my opinion though. What do you think of the changes?
Also note that LOTRO Players extends its hand out to any bloggers who will be forced to move when the revamp happens. For more information click here.
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I have pretty much stopped using the official community site all together due to it logging me out every five minutes or so.
I’m all for nuking the entire thing and starting over again if I could use the forums with some amount of speed and not having to login every five minutes.
Assuming they actually are bringing back some features/creating new one, this is a good thing. If they are just cutting stuff out though then I am sad.
I’m fine with only *working* forums. 😛
It is sad. When I found mylotro and all the wonderful writing there, and the Scribes of the Ages as an example to follow, I was inspired to write. The community we had was amazing.
In the year 2013, by Bree-land reckoning, you would think we could have it all.
Having known about the removed features for a while, there’s not much else to say. While it is sad to lose the Lorebook, Blogs, Leaderboards and various data, much of those were either glitchy or non-functioning. That’s obviously no reason to just remove them, but from a personal perspective I can live without them.
At the end of the day, while we are going to be getting a very bare-bones forums after the update, I’ll be perfectly happy with that if it means not getting logged out every FIVE FREAKING MINUTES!!!!11one
Comments need a like button. I’d like this one… twice.
I think the two most important things they have to fix are:
1) a proper secure login, with persistent HTTPS at least being an option
2) no more random log-outs
This doesn’t mention anything about Turbine shutting down the data API’s, but since they’re removing all of their own features that rely on them I’m assuming that’s still happening. It’s a shame that they’re becoming more closed instead of more open.