In-game World Forum (Bulletin Board)

[vinnyq]

Hey I sorta suggested this in a previous thread, but I think it's such a good idea (and should be easily implementable!) that I am going to suggest it again.

We know ingame forum works for guilds. Can't we have a in game forum for the entire Atys too? So people can post events, merchants stuff, roleplays stuff, etc? That would soooo rock!

[edit] posted further down the thread but being reprint here for clarification. I goofed up in the poll wordings and I can't change it.[/edit]

aye I feel we are venturing a bit far from my original intent.

I just wanted some sort of in-game world bullentin boards, one for GMs to post annoucements and news to (e.g. like the MOTDs, but they stay there on the board), and one for players to put up their personal messages, ads, etc, on.

Not really meant as in-depth "discussion" forum, that's what these here forum at the website is for. Just a place to broadcast messages to everybody in game, and be able to see again, and allow players who weren't on at the time the messages were broadcast would still be able to see it. (The MOTD you can miss if you weren't logged on).

Heck, use the current in-game guild forum engine, that would certainly work (cept they have to code some sort of thread ownership/deletion mechanics, that seems to be lacking. And maybe even an auto prune mechanics to delete threads that are inactive after a certain date).

[aylwyne]

I like the idea. As has been mentioned many times, it's a pretty narrow segment of the players that actually frequent the forum. Most times when an event is announced, there's a lot of people in my guild that don't know about it because they don't visit the forums.

If they did something like this, I'd also like them to greatly improve the notification system (as in, make one) for in-game communication. With the current forum/mail system in the game, there's no notice that a new message is there. You have to actively go search it out. If they have a notification system that alerts you when you have a new mail or when a new post is made to a forum you are interested in, then I think it would be used a lot more.

Barring the introduction of a full-fledged open forum, it might be kind of cool if they made an NPC you could talk to (maybe the city welcomers), where you could submit an event announcement. I'm thinking it'd be a form where you put in the time, duration, description, and the broadcast message that should be displayed. The GMs could then approve it so other people could see it in an "Events" window. Also, the broadcast message could automatically be displayed as the event time draws near.

[oldmess]

We know ingame forum works for guilds. Can't we have a in game forum for the entire Atys too? So people can post events, merchants stuff, roleplays stuff, etc? That would soooo rock!

I'd suggest they take this one step further. Instead of creating new forums, make it so we can access these forums in-game. Connect the B@w folks with the in-game folks.

[vutescu]

YES. Or even better to be able to access this one from game, without need to switch.

EDIT: LOL@OudKnoei. It seems we posted in the same time

[borg9]

Vote: Yes

But only after spring clean and outposts are add

[vinnyq]

eh, that might be kinda hard. But who knows, if they can do it, that would doubly rocks!

[geezas]

What neun said

[rrwfreak]

I second what Neun said.

[kostika]

Its not a bad idea. But the only thing I fear is that if we had a forum (or this one) available IG then many of us would spent alot of time on the forum and not playing.

I think maybe having the 2 seperate works best. Said that though, something along the same lines that would be nice is the ability to "chat" with those IG while you're Out of Game. Basically the ability to log into chat (guild, pm) while not being logged into the game.

[oldmess]

... the only thing I fear is that if we had a forum (or this one) available IG then many of us would spent alot of time on the forum and not playing.

I love a good forum discussion as much as the next hobbit ... err Tryker ..., but if Nevrax allows this game to get so stagnant that it's more fun to argue about forum avatars, time zones and pandas, then the game is nearly dead anyway and we should just turn off the servers.

The main thing I like about this whole idea is being able to better communicate in-game between people that live in wildly differing time-zones. The Bazaar forum for example makes it easy for people to request/sell crafted items between folks that rarely see each other. In-game mail helps, but only if you know exactly who makes what. In-game forum would allow you to find a crafter or even get a little competition between crafters going.

As long as we're suggesting in-game forums, let's include a calendar that players can add to and link to a forum thread. Then, as events are planned, we have a common calendar to use to see when something is scheduled. Said calendar can and should even handle all of our time-zone confusion.

But only after spring clean and outposts are add

Absolutely. This idea is a good one IMHO, but it's definitely a WIBNI ("Wouldn't It Be Nice If..."). WIBNI's should always be done after key feature work and bug work. The only exception is if the WIBNI is a relatively small amount of work, then slip it in.


* Yes, I work in software development and get asked for a lot of what I think are WIBNI's. Now, if I can just convince the people asking for them that they are just WIBNI's and not absolutely critical to the function of the product...