As know-how advances, and on-line communities shift to adapt, we take it as a form of default proposition that new websites and platforms needs to be higher than outdated ones. Actuality, after all, has completely different plans.
Take Discord. It’s an amazing 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 An enormous enchancment over older concepts, and a handy mixture of quite a few outdated messaging and communications providers.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 possibly can each sort and discuss to one another, it’s excellent!
Discord excels as a way 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 possibly can 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 wonderful repositories, and attempt 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. You have to 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 wonderful alternatives to satisfy and have interaction with our gamers there will probably be occasions the place we’ll consider our present methods of partaking 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 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 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 trying to make the most of the platform to the fullest extent. We will probably be discovering methods to have engagement alternatives that embody all features of Discord comparable to reside voice, gameplay streaming, reside chat, and discussion board threads. It’s going to additionally supply 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 be sure you preserve a watch on the market as effectively.
What does this imply for the boards now?
Beginning Could 1st, we will probably be eradicating the flexibility for customers to publish to the boards however we will probably be having them stay seen in order that any kind of content material that customers wish to save will probably be accessible for them. Throughout this time we will probably be cataloging the entire historic suggestions that gamers have left, assuring that sentiment and suggestions left will not be 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 on 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 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 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 hundreds and even hundreds of thousands of individuals going forwards. Discord, even with its current “discussion board thread” characteristic, 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 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 tons of of hundreds of thousands on advertising however can’t preserve a discussion board open. Very wholesome trade. Stick with it, everybody.
