As expertise advances, and on-line communities shift to adapt, we take it as a sort of default proposition that new websites and platforms ought to be higher than outdated ones. Actuality, in fact, has totally different plans.
Take Discord. It’s a terrific 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 An enormous enchancment over older concepts, and a handy mixture of quite a few outdated messaging and communications providers.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’ll be able to each kind and discuss to one another, it’s excellent!
Discord excels as a way of real-time communication, for individuals speaking within the second. What Discord is not good at, nonetheless, is being a long-term repository of knowledge, the sort of place you’ll be able to ask a query, get a solution then have that reply stay simply accessible for months, years and even a long time to return.
So it sucks that corporations proceed to shut boards, that are glorious repositories, and try 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. It’s good 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 fulfill and interact with our gamers there will probably be instances 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 players 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 transferring ahead. To assist us add as a lot worth as doable to our Discord server, we will probably be sunsetting the Misplaced Ark boards which is able to permit our workers to give attention to offering high quality engagement alternatives in a central, and simply accessible platform.
Our plans on Discord are continuously 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 elements of Discord reminiscent of reside voice, gameplay streaming, reside chat, and discussion board threads. It should additionally supply simpler and extra intuitive entry to neighborhood run initiatives like Searching 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 hold a watch on the market as nicely.
What does this imply for the boards now?
Beginning Might 1st, we will probably be eradicating the power for customers to publish to the boards however we will probably be having them stay seen in order that any form of content material that customers want to save will probably be obtainable for them. Throughout this time we will probably be cataloging the entire historic suggestions that gamers have left, assuring that sentiment and suggestions left just isn’t misplaced.
After that course of is full, we’ll give one last 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.
Thanks all in your continued ardour round Misplaced Ark! We stay up for 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 mentioned 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 individuals 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 tens of millions of individuals going forwards. Discord, even with its latest “discussion board thread” characteristic, 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 assortment of adverse suggestions reveals), nevertheless it simply retains taking place as a result of corporations presumably see it as a solution to save a tiny amount of cash and assets.
It’s very enjoyable to know that main publishers are spending a whole bunch of tens of millions on advertising and marketing however can’t hold a discussion board open. Very wholesome trade. Keep it up, everybody.
