Guild Wars 2

Well i really had this feeling since the betas that it’s not a technical issue that forum have – It’s the people who handle those forums that keep this place in such a bad shape and hold back a platform migration (for which you can get outside support too if you can do it yourself.)

let me list 2 0-day bugs that never got fixed:

1. Forum Search
2. Page mismatch after topic get long enough to create more than 1 page to view.

I will repeat myself again – Only long-term solution for this forum is new forum platform. (why crawl when you can fly?)

@ MRA – I’ve migrated my almost 10 year old lineage 2 community forum to one of the modern forum systems – took me around 1 hour as someone who never had to do stuff like this and didn’t loose any data on the contrary the whole thing improved more than we expected – If i can do it,people who get paid to maintain this forums should be able to do it without any problem during their lunch break.

The new idea works fairly well but I’m not clear on how one would link to them. Would there just be a sticky containing a link, or an actual forum link called “Archives” that would then open up the Archives page?

Why not just make a single folder called “Archive” and then move all the archived forums into that?

Because Becka, that wouldn’t horribly break basic functionality, which as you know, horribly breaking basic functionality is a requirement any time Anet updates something.

To be more serious though, +1 I was going to suggest the same thing.

Given that finding historical information, via the search option is less than stellar, I’m inclined not to see a reason for the archive to remain. Also, as patches and updates progress, certain information becomes obsolete as well.

While I understand the needs to reference certain, and critical information, the secondary option Mark provides will give access to that information if required for whatever reason.

Though, I will also admit, this seems a bit extreme, the reasoning that is, to give the front page a ‘tidying up’ or whatever.

Just give it an all-encompassing link that says Historical Archives. Once clicked, these archives will show the old link. Simple fix . . . if appearance is what all this is about.

Becka Williams.4978:

Why not just make a single folder called “Archive” and then move all the archived forums into that?

The problem is when they move threads like that as they did with the recent forum reconstruction search engines end up with a bunch of broken links. I have run across this many times since the recent forum update where I Google a topic and find a link that leads to the image below. When you click the Google link it just redirects to the front page of the forum with an error message. I see this a lot with threads that used to be in the Account Support forum and the Mac Support Forum.

In time I guess search engines will catch up, I even suggested to Anet they submit a new sitemap to Google since the forum was rearranged. However, it still causes a problem.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

A have an alternative that we are considering.

A little background first. We are only looking at making this change to tidy up the front page of the forum, not hide all old posts. While the archived forums are in their own ‘Archive’ category, they still take up a significant amount of space, and we’re looking to give the front page a cleaner look.

So, let me know what you all think of this alternative plan:
Instead of making the archived subforums unavailable to read, we can ‘unpublish’ the subforums from the front page. These subforums would still be accessible (read-only) via a direct link to the page, but would not show up as links in the forum index.

That sounds much better. There’s lots of good material in there.

I’ve often found Anet very Excentric in their decisions, but this takes the lead. A few reasons can be discarded, and so far it looks like only ‘poor reasoning’ can be the reason why.

- Moderating? Can’t post, so not needed.
- More harddrive space? You aren’t deleting it, so false reason
- Faster forums? False, because it’s even now kitten fast for me. Everyone with modern internet can access these forums adequate except on patch days (but hey that’s normal).

Theres only the following reasons left unless Anet enlightens us:
- They have no clue what to do, so they just do ‘something’.
- They hate our post history, so it must be gone, so they can ‘restart fresh’.
- They rarely responded to certain forums, yet incredible good feedback has been send into them. They want to silently shut those down, to keep players hope for a inclusion of their idea in the game, on a low level, so they won’t be dissapointed.
- We’ve been ‘to toxic’ last two years? But what is deleting gonna change… And for every toxic post there’s a constructive one, both in future and past… This is not a solution.

- Pax announcement will be a radical guild wars 2 ‘future idea’ wich conflics with old forums?

Feel free to give us a ‘better reason’ Anet, but this is what comes to mind. It’s not meant offensive in anyway. It’s just an expression of our feeling of why this update is ‘stupid’.

Dear Mr. Katzbach. Consider using the tools you already have available and you’ll see there isnt even a problem to fix.
http://i.imgur.com/DFBPmYu.png

One archive link, many sub-forums under it. If this is not a viable solution then I sense something else is at play here other than ‘cleaning up’.

Slomo.1029:

Dear Mr. Katzbach. Consider using the tools you already have available and you’ll see there isnt even a problem to fix.
http://i.imgur.com/DFBPmYu.png

lol

Please close this thread or put it into archives.

I have to say this: I know of at least one other game that did this in their forums, and soon after that, all support was yanked from the game, and the game kind of coasts now on whatever players still like wandering in it. This change, to me, smacks of hiding things from players. With this, any archived comments devs made that players refer to will be toast.

I just feel if Anet doesn’t want us to have the info that keeps disappearing from this forum, why have a forum at all? It’s not like we can even SEARCH for anything here.

Slomo.1029:

Dear Mr. Katzbach. Consider using the tools you already have available and you’ll see there isnt even a problem to fix.
http://i.imgur.com/DFBPmYu.png

This post wins the thread. XD

What if there was a thread about a particular topic that I want to see to confirm somethings? What if I want to find an old dev post to use as a reference? What if I want to read through older threads to jog my memory? What if I just wanna reminisce?

Don’t remove it.

Slomo.1029:

Dear Mr. Katzbach. Consider using the tools you already have available and you’ll see there isnt even a problem to fix.
http://i.imgur.com/DFBPmYu.png

+1 (lololol)

I thought in 2015 Anet would stop trying to “fix” things that aren’t broken.

JustTrogdor.7892:

Becka Williams.4978:

Why not just make a single folder called “Archive” and then move all the archived forums into that?

The problem is when they move threads like that as they did with the recent forum reconstruction search engines end up with a bunch of broken links. I have run across this many times since the recent forum update where I Google a topic and find a link that leads to the image below. When you click the Google link it just redirects to the front page of the forum with an error message. I see this a lot with threads that used to be in the Account Support forum and the Mac Support Forum.

In time I guess search engines will catch up, I even suggested to Anet they submit a new sitemap to Google since the forum was rearranged. However, it still causes a problem.

All you have to do is edit the address bar to reflect the new forum setup. Although the search engines seems to be catching up with the changes.

From my past experience in other games when this type of consolidation has happened one of the game support sites (ie. Dulfy, Wiki etc) will repost the archived forums.

Just the massive amount of web hits it would generate alone would be a goldmine for a hosting site.

msalakka.4653:

Amazing. The forum software gets more updates than WvW.

where? more than 2 years and forum search still doesn’t work. I hope the webmaster was fired instatly.
and now also everything is getting archivied( harder to find). GJ as always.

strifer.7986:

msalakka.4653:

Amazing. The forum software gets more updates than WvW.

where? more than 2 years and forum search still doesn’t work. I hope the webmaster was fired instatly.
and now also everything is getting archivied( harder to find). GJ as always.

Right! The forums get changed around , but the software? Same old. No one at Anet can fix it and they refuse to purchase /use a different product the would be beneficial to the team/customers and the game.

Tells you how much they care about player feedback. (As does the absolute rarity of a substantial red post on important topics).

It’s not nearly as important as their metrics (which I’m sure show the game as healthier than ever, thanks to the new login rewards!).