GameBanshee Forums

Before I dig into the meat of this topic, I should probably point out that I have never seriously been into any MMO before, neither have I taken part in much of the community forums on Bioware's own site.

So anyway. I've spend some time on the official SW:TOR Community forums, and I am taken aback a little by the profound lack of moderation. I would say about half the people who come there either fail to listen, or constantly try to insult whoever started a topic. I sincerely wonder if Bioware has ever hired a community manager, pretty much no one is doing anything about it by setting straight the house rules, or banning people from the forums. You can get away with a *lot* of crap.

My personal experiences with this forum drama aside, do you think that it is likely that this conduct will come to reflect the server population itself? Can I expect Bioware to do a better job at handling the server population than its forum population? I really have no idea how in-the-face kind of a problem this is going to be once the game launches, but that forum was definitely a turn-off for me.

(important edit: I nuanced my opinion a bit in my next post)

do you think that it is likely that this conduct will come to reflect the server population itself?

Sadly from my limited experience in on-line games, watching people playing WoW and playing Evony, I'm afraid the answer is probably yes to a large extent. Both those games are plagued by juvenile spoiled brats, the people that monitor the chat features on Evony seem to think it's enough just to suspend people from chat for a period for swearing, and their definition of swearing is weird. At least with that game you can turn off chat if you want to.

How well Bioware police the game will be very important, if they fail, as you indicate is likely from the lack of moderation on the forum, the game really will be dead in the water from my point of view.

I suppose time will tell. I'm not sure if any review is going to cover that aspect though. I've never read a review that kept the community in regard.

Regardless, I reply now because I have to take at least part of what I said back. I've been observing one issue in particular about the naming of a certain class, the Jedi Wizard. One thread in particular broke out quite a disgusting flame war. As I kept reading up on the new posts during the day, I suddenly found half of them was deleted.

No warning was issued and I could not tell if anyone got a forum ban in the process, but topic moderation had happened. Perhaps this is just how they operate. While I think they could do better, it may not be as bad as I originally thought. How this will reflect on the server population however definitely remains to be seen.

I've played both LOTRO and DDO.

My experience in both is that a very large percentage of server populations is composed of juvenile morons.
The trick is (no pun intended ) to hook up with a mature, like-minded guild. Then, most of your interactions will be with just those people, and if Bioware follows the pattern of other MMOs, you'll also be able to turn off global chat.
A lot of guilds actually have age restrictions and such for precisely these reasons.

That's some great advice, DW. There already is a guild recruitment forum. I haven't really seen age or RP requirements yet, but I can always start my own guild. I might also PM the odd guild leader about this.

Thanks.

Minor update:

It seems Bioware was actually without a community manager for the short time I visited the SW:TOR forums. I'm not sure how quickly they were able to replace that person, but it probably coincided with the first days of my registration.