Whats happened to this forum?

[gollum]

The org is being slowly but surely detached from its relation to tw, especially past Empire. I think that as far as the org was concerned Empire was make or brake; and it seems that its brake after all. The other reason is that the (strong) org demographic revolving around MTW/STW will fade to nothingness as the games are less and less compatible with newer systems and ca won't fix them by all accounts.

Part of the reason is the original .org demographic itself; the org started out as the tw forum that had the most strong presence from the mp community during the stw/mtw days; and back then the mp community and the mp game were by all accounts very enjoyable and attracted many dedicated gamers that knew lots about gaming and games and pcs and played really well. In terms of SP tw was also addressed to less mainstream and more dedicated gamers - the devs were puting an effort in terms of historical plausibility, strategic and tactical depth and challenge, aesthetics and atmosphere.

With RTW the demographic of tw changed and the org attracted too quite a following both from the SP and the new mp communities, as well as a significant part of the modding community (EB one of the most significant that makes up for a very substantial of org daily traffic today). Many people that joined the org from that era are still around to this day. M2TW continued the same trend, although by that time it eventually became abundantly clear that the TWC had become the hub for modding and for SPers.

Possible reasons for this shift may be the more SP newby friendly atmosphere of the twc, that lacked strong criticism from people from the STW/MTW era with whom the new games did not sit well, the reputation and personalised avatars and the general more diy and more loose tone of conversation. Clearly those matched the most generally younger audience of RTW/M2TW too.

All in all, the org is changing - the most frequented places are the tavern, the arena and of course the gameroom (no idea about the backroom, as i'm not interested), and the RTW/M2 modding sections probably due to EB and EB2. The main tw forums lack tw related leadership (moderators or leading members) that would attract others' attention or are simply suffering because ca left the tw games to their fate or both. For empire and ntw the stats of threads/topics in the main forums speak for themselves, although March last year (at ETW launch) there were hundreds of viewings. The really poor state of the game at release and the unfortunate lack of ETW mods in the org hit those parts of the forum hard. Not that anyone is to blame for this - had Empire been as good as it was promised many old hands would have spread the word and then more and more, but unfortunately it was the exact opposite: old hands spread rightly the word that the game wasn't really worth it. On top of this all, the ETW section lacked leadership; Martok rarely was seen posting about the game past two first months, Mr Beane is absent since last year March and Nelson is also not appearing in the forum as a participant. Only Fisherking keeps teh forum slowly going.

A side effect of this situation is that many of the org awards need simplifying - voting shows that there is simply not enough interest for so many award categories and so many nominees. Also moderators often take awards for years because people vote for them for their general contribution and even "status" instead of their contribution in the year that voting is being carried for.

Although of course the org is not responsible for the overly commercial direction tw took - it seems at this stage to be coming off from present tw. However from M2 and especially for RTW/MTW/STW, the org has some of the most knowledgeable members about the game with no equals to other online communities.

All in all i think that the newer sections lack a bit care and foresight; the ETW/NTW section needs people to moderate that play/mod the game and dont just moderate invisibly. I also reckon as i wrote in a number of posts last year that puting Andres to moderate the reboudt as if it was the gameroom was a questionable move that hurt the mp traffic for the org at the very launch of a new tw game (which is a crucial time, since many return, make new accounts etc). Tomisama was an excellent choice but even a good leader needs members to lead somewhere, unfortunately there were none left there. Even people like Swoosh So that were always posting harmlessly were given out infractions over misunderstandings. The results are clear to see - at least in the M2 forums there were some well informed - no matter how heated - debates. Yet not even this happens now - really sad.

The org is meybe having right now a decision to make - if forum leaders and admin think that its ok to become a homely forum related a bit more loosely to tw is fine, then the current status quo can remain. However if not, action need to be taken for the newer parts of the tw forums.

In any case this site has been instrumental for me, in a very difficult period of my life. I met people here that i became close friends - a thing that i had never imagined was possible. They taught me a lot regarding the tw games and also honored me with their company and friendship.