Do Dung Slingers Eat Forums?

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Loading... it's like a blockbuster movie, except I'll never hire Tom Cruise.

First, the Ten Ton Pulse, your finger on the beating heart of the MMOG industry.

If the Top 10 isn't enough, we now show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)

Age of Conan - 200 BPM
World of Warcraft - 77 BPM
Lord of the Rings Online - 27 BPM
EverQuest 2 - 22 BPM
EVE Online - 16 BPM
Warhammer Online - 16 BPM
Lineage 2 - 16 BPM
Dungeons and Dragons Online - 11 BPM
Vanguard - 11 BPM
Dungeon Runners - 10 BPM

A little bird told me that today might be Tony "RadarX" Jones' birthday. Happy Birthday Tony! RadarX currently spends his time getting our Warhammer Online community off the ground., a community that recently announced that it would not have official forums.

Vanguard, a title released in January of 2007 also made the decision to go without official forums. Comparison of these two titles isn't easy, nor is it fair. Vanguard was a half-baked product that required at least another six months of incubation to be ready for the public. I don't for a second believe that Warhammer Online will ship before it is ready.

Whether the game is ready or not doesn't change the fact that official forums for anything other than support are a nightmare for developers and publishers. If you haven't ventured into the septic tank that is the World of Warcraft official forums then hop over there now and see what developers put up with.

Mark Jacobs, the man at the top of the Mythic food chain stated that he doesn't want to throw his team into that fire. I don't blame him. I wouldn't throw my team into that inferno either, if they were developers.

Community sites on the other hand, at least a couple of them, pay staff and train them how to deal with the chaos that is an official forum. They build communities. Game developers build games. MMOG players want official forums. They don't require them. They want them so that if something that they find disagreeable happens they have a venue to vent their frustration. I'm going to let the griefers, dung slingers and attention seekers in on a little secret. Nobody cares what PwnU317 has to say when every other word is a curse except other griefers and dung slingers.

I'm sure that some of you disagree. Should there be official forums for Warhammer Online (or any other game) for topics other than support? The Loading... forums await you.

Do you feel the need to contact me personally with naughty pictures or derogatory comments? Here's my E-mail.

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- John "Boomjack" Hoskin and the Ten Ton Hammer Team

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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