2 replies to this topic

[Knechter]

Some feedback concerning the current state of communication

As far as i can see official communication from PGI is spread over to many channels.
At the current state it takes to much effort( it is really a pain in ***) especially for new players to get valid information on gamemechanics, maintenance progress, downtime, development, etc.
Here are some suggestions to solve the most urgent communication issues.

Make Tweets visible on the front page
Believe it or not, not everyone is following twitter or facebook. Information posted on this plattforms must be also visible at your main plattform mwomercs.com.
For example last patch i was looking for information when patching would be finished. I couldn't find any helpful information on the forums and only by pure desperation i clicked on that twitter icon on top of your page.
There are a lot of nice tools that can be used to make tweets or facebook posts visible on any webpage. USE THEM!

Make Staff Statements visible
Mark Posts with staff response visible in the forum overview and add a link in each thread to jump directly to official responses.
The World of Warcraft Forums got those features since i can't remember. So implement it!

Start an official wiki on gamemechanics
Currently the best source on weapons, mechs etc is http://mwo.smurfy-net.de (engl.). If you are not able to add an own piece of work in an acceptable amount of time: BUY IT!

Regards
Knechter

[Straylight]

Knechter, on 13 January 2013 - 05:20 AM, said:

Make Tweets visible on the front page

Twitter content IS visible on the frontpage, though I agree that it could be improved. However, I should point out that the people (like me) who don't use Facebook or Twitter typically also don't care about Facebook or Twitter, and it's not like clicking on those buttons is hard if we for some reason decided we do.

Quote

Make Staff Statements visible

I can't think of a single instance (5 years played, including beta) where that feature ever improved anything about Blizzard's forum. On the other hand, not calling attention to individual posts that are as likely to be bored PGI employees snarking off as actual useful information encourages people to engage their brains and actually read things, which is good for everyone.

Quote

Start an official wiki on gamemechanics

Why? Resources like the one you linked already exist, and the "many eyeballs" theorem means that any community-developed resource will always be superior to any "official" one developed by a small, closed group.

What PGI should be doing instead is calling attention to these community resources. They already do some of this through their collaboration with NGNG, I see no reason they can't take the idea further. It saves them time and cost, encourages community involvement (which is life or death to a game like this), and makes those responsible for the creation or maintenance of such content feel valued for their work; all good outcomes, and everyone avoids the pain, misery and hurt feelings of your "buy it" solution.

[Knechter]

Actually, i overlooked the tweets on the mainpage.
But if PGI only uses twitter to anounce server downtime and eta for server restart the information gets lost to me by all the other Buzz Infos posted in the radio chatter tool.

On your remarks concerning usefullness of marked official statements. I know a lot of people who primarly visiting the forums for reliable facts and not for in depth discussions. For this purpose its quite an adventage to see if a topic was answered by any developer. While i agree with you that marks dont solved the problem of total overblown WoW forums, in my opinion it is an easy and fast solution to find official responses.

Player generated information on gamemechanics,etc. will always be better than manuels but at the moment most non-battletech/MW players start completly blind and that needs to be adressed by PGI. Its really sad that there is really non official information on weapons etc.