Comments on: Interview with Guild Wars Guru’s Inde

By: Ravious

Ravious — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:22:22 +0000

Just as a warning of bias (or lack thereof), I do frequent the IncGamers forum quite a bit, and I used to also be pretty active at The Guild Hall. I did not choose GW Guru because I believe it is the best. Loralai has it in spades; this was a piece on a community. I just knew that Inde would give me some great answers, could speak as a /representative/ of GW Guru, and she did a great job making some of her answers applicable to possibly any unofficial community rather than just plugging Guru constantly.

By: HawkofStorms

HawkofStorms — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:56:22 +0000

Although I have clashed with Inde about this issue a bit, they do a good job with moderating. Not perfect, but with the volume of traffic they get, they do a good job. The community is… well, that’s how every game forum is. Any game that doesn’t sell as many as WoW has “OMG this game is dying” posts. I take that back, even WoW forums are like that.

By: Loralai

Loralai — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:52:29 +0000

Well, it saddens me to see that it’s obvious the last 2 people who made comments didn’t even read the article. I also see it was posted up on GuildWarsGuru that will hopefully bring more traffic to this blog, but if this is the type of discussion that Inde has to put up with from the GW community I can definitely see the hardships of trying to run that fansite.

I saw this article as more of a focus on 1 particular MMO community and what’s involved with running that. While there were some plugs for areas of the website I hope this certainly doesn’t turn into bashing session on it. Maybe the last few people who commented and any more can focus on the subject of the article which is running a community and not what personal grievance you have against them. Every site is going to have those that disagree with it, Inde stated that it’s not the end all for the Guild Wars community so please feel free to explore the other Guild Wars websites that are out there.

By: tffn

tffn — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:43:25 +0000

guru moderators are carebears.. and there is a lot of deleting posts/censorship. also, mindless, nonsensical posts are encouraged, as long as they are not offensive, while posts that actually make sense (if needlessly offensive) get the content deleted. great way to run forums.. lots of opinions, most of them dumb

By: voltz

voltz — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 01:27:07 +0000

Guru is listed as one of the elite sites from the official GW site, but I find it’s status very questionable with half of the members posts being either something to whine about or finding reason to attack others thoughts and ideas. If you can’t have members supportive of each other, it wouldn’t make sense to list this board over others.

By: Rusty

Rusty — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:16:02 +0000

Guild Wars Guru has my favourite moderators in the Universe.

By: Projecton

Projecton — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:32:14 +0000

Great article. To metroid’s comment, yeah they are actually really good. Seems the only people that get bent out of shape are the ones that get slapped for something.

I do find it interesting the divide between fan sites and official sites, and Inde was very political. I don’t think the GW staff really cares about the community and doesn’t interact well enough. On official forums they have a large ban stick and will often associated your forum account to your game account, and get banned from one, you can get banned from another. Sites like GW Guru let you have an independent voice that the community managers from places like ANet cannot completely silence.

Also MMO’s are now a dime a dozen and none are really breaking grounds. WoW is the largest, but it’s not the best (IMHO), so why is it large? It had a huge community before it ever launched. Imagine of ANet could leverage great unofficial communities to grow their base vs. trying to cannibalize them like they did with the wiki. I prefer unofficial sites simply because I can make changes through my interaction with the players and staff. I dislike official sites because they tend to be run and moderated by individuals that believe they know what’s best for the community, but are not part of the community (hey sounds like govt to me :) )

All said great interview with a good person.

By: Metroid

Metroid — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:54:21 +0000

guru has moderators?

By: Loralai

Loralai — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:30:08 +0000

Agree, it’s a good article. The MMO fan base can be rabid and ruthless to their developers. Trying to manage any forum, whether it’s official or a fan site, is going to be a struggle after a few years. Content will never be produced fast enough after a while, the criticism will just keep piling on and the fans just want something, anything to talk about. When left to their own devices and after rehashing most subjects the “noise” as Inde stated just gets louder and louder.

Fan run websites are getting, all at the same time, more numerous but are quickly burned out. Getting a fan site that can last for any length of time and still be active is really an accomplishment. I’ll be looking to see what new ideas for Guild Wars 2 they might have.

By: gw player

gw player — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:42:16 +0000

Wow, good article.