Potential Forums

[MongoJerry]

The first thing Bolty is asking me to do as LL:WoW Site Administrator is choose the what forums we'll use. As Bolty told me, "Give some thought on these - too many forums and the discussion is too fractured, too few and it's hard to keep things on topic."

I definitely see the following three forums being put in place (blatently copying the LL:DII forum descriptions):

• General Forum -- General WoW discussion forum - anything not covered by the other WoW forums goes here.
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• The Workshop -- Knowledge is power. In this forum, we discuss detailed game mechanics and statistics, from how WoW functions, to the probabilities of events happening.
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• Bugs & Exploits -- Think you've found a new bug or exploit? Want to find out about the bugs and exploits present in WoW? Here you'll find discussion of gameplay bugs. Note that this isn't a technical support forum.<>
  [st]I would especially like the Bugs & Exploits area to be a Lurker Lounge niche. Eventually, I would like to have a database where we can keep track of what bugs are in the game and see when they get fixed. Also, in addition to having a screenshot of the day on the eventual LL:WoW home page, I like to have a "Bug of the Day." Call it a way to keep Blizzard on their toes.
  
  The above three forums will definitely be implemented, but I could use some suggestions for better titles and descriptions of them. The equivolent DII forums are called Atma's Tavern, The Workshop, and The Maggot Lair. Any WoW related titles that people can suggest? Maybe Silithus for the Bug & Exploits area?
  
  In addition, let's talk about other possible forums:
  • Strategy Central -- The forum for strategy questions and answers, strategy guides, and tactics discussion for WoW.<>
    [st]As a user, I was always confused about when something should go into Atma's Tavern (general forum) or The Armory (strategy central). Do people find it useful to have a seperate general strategy forum like this?
    • The Meeting Place -- If you're looking for others to game with, post here. This includes all pre-planned events, raids, special groups, etc. Be sure to include a meeting time, location, group requirements and objectives, etc.<>
      [st]This would be the place where people could post messages like "Organizing a Van Cleef instance party for Wednesay at 6pm Pacific on server blah-blah." My inclination is to not have this forum at the start and only start a forum like it if the volume of such messages in the general forum becomes large enough.
      • Class Forums<>
        [st]Many sites like to have individual class forums, and I'm torn about whether we should have them or not. On the one hand, it is nice to have a smaller more intimate community of players to talk to about class-specific things. On the other hand, class-specific forums can have so little traffic in them that hardly anything ever gets discussed.
        
        The Amazon Basin made an interesting choice. They combined the individual classes into groups like this (I'm choosing to move the paladin to the Hybrid Class area, because it makes more sense to group them with shamans and druids):
        • Strategy Forum - Fighter Classes -- Discuss Hunter, Rogue, and Warrior classes here.<>
          
        • Strategy Forum - Caster Classes -- Discuss Mage, Priest, and Warlock classes here.<>
          
        • Strategy Forum - Hybrid Classes -- Discuss Druid, Paladin, and Shaman classes here.<>
          [st]
          Any and all ideas and comments are appreciated.

[NuurAbSaal]

EDIT: me is moron, ignore please

Nuur

[Quark]

I say 'nay' to the class-specific forums.

Back in the Diablo Strategy Forum days, anything that was posted for one class was posted for all too see. I wasn't much of a Warrior, but I enjoyed the Warrior guides and ideas about low-AC Warriors and such. If I had seen character-specific forums, I would have gone for the Sorcerer's one ... but missed out on Rogue which is a class I highly enjoyed.

The idea of class-specific forums also gives off the vibe that some classes are pigeon-holed into specific ways. In a Barbarian-specific forum for Diablo 2, how likely are posters who just focus on barbarians to come up with a Bard-Barbarian who won't fight at all?

It may cause some instances of skipping or glazing-over posts that people aren't interested in, but part of the idea of LL is that we read the gems when we find them, and gems certainly won't only apply to our favorite classes.

[NuurAbSaal]

To produce something useful in this thread, I'll agree with Quark on the class threads. There will be (at some point) enough class specific strategy guides hosted on this site (I imagine there will be one for a high lvl Group Priest, courtesy of a certain MongoJerry :) ) to provide educated reading for those inerested, without dividing up people in different threads.


my 2 Cents
Greetings

Nuur

[Dyntheos]

Prefer just one Class forum. I don't think we see enough traffic to warrant even three at this time. Maybe if we see an explosion of members that happen to like the vibe here and stick around then perhaps implementing more than one would seem logical.

At this time I only see the need for one forum dedicated to Classes.

As for Naming the forums perhaps using locales from the game?

The Workshop --> Scholomance
Strategy Forum --> Onyxia's Lair
The Meeting Place --> The Dark Portal
Bugs and Exploits --> Maelstrom / Ironforge

[NuurAbSaal]

I like the naming idea!

might I suggest "Un'goro Crater" for the bugs Forum though? I like the word "crater" :)

For some reason I would find a Strategy Forum named "The Target Dummy" quite amusing too. Maybe make it "Teh Target Dummy" :)

Sorry, I'll stop now

Greetings

Nuur

[--Pete]

Hi,

As to what fora to have, I'd say to go with the KISS principle and just set up the three (general, workshop, and bugs) at first. If, after the first wave of enthusiasm, any or all of them get overloaded so that a person checking once a day has to look at more than one page of threads per forum, then splitting them up finer might be indicated. And by observing the distribution of posts, you'll be able to tell what structure makes sense.

If you absolutely feel you must have another forum, then I would suggest a 'strategy and tactics' forum apart from the workshop. But even that could probably hold off for a while.

As to names, I suggest 'The Gnome's Lab' for the workshop. No idea (yet!) for the other two.

--Pete

[Lord BEEF]

For general discussion, I first thought "ironforge" or "Ogrimmar" but then I realized you're only choosing one faction there. Perhaps "Booty Bay" or the name of the tavern in Booty Bay?

For workshop you could name it Gnomeregan, and I like Silithus for the bug forum.

[MongoJerry]

Good ideas, all! Keep them coming!

How about "The Crossroads" for the general forum?

[FoxBat]

Maybe I'm pessimistic, but being an MMOG, you don't have access to code, and you don't have character editors and mods that let you quickly test things and in "pure" conditions.&nbsp; I see the amount of genuine mechanics knowledge taking quite a nosedive as a result of these two factors.&nbsp; Thus it may be better to start off by mixing mechanics in with the strategy/tactics forum, since I don't think the true mechanics will be nearly as easily identified as what sorts of things "work" in strategy.

You know, I think you have a point here. There are tons of game mechanics stuff that I want to know like: What's the armor formula? How do resistances really works? What's a person's real dps (as opposed to what the classic Blizzard LCS tells you)? And how does defence come into play (would you rather have +5 defence or +300 armor?)?

However, I think you're right that these kinds of discoveries will take time to discover and that perhaps combining the workshop forum with the strategy forum would be a good idea.

[Dyntheos]

I like the Crossroads for a General Forum.

[Artega]

Prefer just one Class forum. I don't think we see enough traffic to warrant even three at this time. Maybe if we see an explosion of members that happen to like the vibe here and stick around then perhaps implementing more than one would seem logical.

At this time I only see the need for one forum dedicated to Classes.

As for Naming the forums perhaps using locales from the game?

The Workshop --> Scholomance
Strategy Forum --> Onyxia's Lair
The Meeting Place --> The Dark Portal
Bugs and Exploits --> Maelstrom / Ironforge
[right][snapback]60777[/snapback][/right]

How about Thunder Bluff instead of Ironforge? Everyone knows Tauren are cooler than Dwarves.

Otherwise, I like all of the names you've thought of :)

[MongoJerry]

How about Thunder Bluff instead of Ironforge?&nbsp; Everyone knows Tauren are cooler than Dwarves.

I just don't understand what Ironforge or Thunder Bluff have to do with the theme of Bugs & Exploits. Actually, maybe Gnomeregan would be better. You know, "Oops?"

[lemekim]

I don't know if naming The Workshop after some place from WoW would be a good idea, seeing how even Workshop is vague enough. First time users would be thoroughly confused as to what is what, and I always liked better when forums were named after what they actually were for! (Strategy Forum, how complicated is that) But...

If you are intent on naming them something, then perhaps more related names would help, to at least provide some connection, preferrably related to Warcraft mythology. Such as for example Town Hall for the Meeting Place, which was the initial central building for Humans faction in Warcraft games. Even the Workshop for detail game mechanics would fit, seeing how Workshop building was used by humans throughout warcraft games for development of "Advanced" units.

[MongoJerry]

OK, I think we're making progress here. I'm seeing these three forums as our starting point now:

The Crossroads -- General WoW discussion forum - anything not covered by the other WoW forums goes here.

Strategy & Game Mechanics -- The forum for strategy questions and answers, strategy guides, and game mechanics discoveries for WoW.

Gnomeregan -- WoW is gnome engineering at its finest. It works -- most of the time. This forum is for those times it doesn't. Post all discoveries of bugs and exploits both large and small here, and perhaps we can get the gnomes at Blizzard to get them fixed.


I still need a name for the Strategy & Game Mechanics forum. Scholomance is lukewarm, and I didn't quite get the reference to Onyxia's Lair. Can't use "Gnome's Lab," because I'm already using the gnome reference for Bugs & Exploits.

[Lord BEEF]

How about "Valley of Wisdom" named after the portion of Orgrimmar that contains Thrall's chamber

[Dyntheos]

Scholomance I thought would fit the mechanics and statistics side of things because the instance is a school, and a school is where you learn about numbers and how things work.

Onyxia's Lair I proposed because it seems even a raid group of 60 needs a lot of strategy and tactics to survive 30% of the fight before they get wiped. Hence the place where you need the most strategy is Onyxia's Lair.

Ironforge is where things are made and mended when broken, so a bugs forum where things that are broken and submitted for fixing sounded appropriate.

[Guest]

I doubt we can support class specific forums.

If we star having a lot of "how should i spec...." questions we might need them, but if people miake a slight effort the internet is already fulll of such forums for WoW.

[Ajax]

Gnomeregan -- WoW is gnome engineering at its finest.&nbsp; It works -- most of the time.&nbsp; This forum is for those times it doesn't.&nbsp; Post all discoveries of bugs and exploits both large and small here, and perhaps we can get the gnomes at Blizzard to get them fixed.
[right][snapback]60863[/snapback][/right]

Ha! Very fitting this one if you ask me.

Perfect example in-game of the best intentions resulting in the biggest catastrophe. That in turn is the perfect metaphor for a bug. :-)

just had to throw that out... never mind me.