Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

O_O

No, really.
I've been out for a while, taken in the tentacles of RL, i come back here to give a look to the threads of the good old times and what do I see? :shock:

Sombre, Omnirizon, Trumanator (among others) have been banned?

I mean, those were among the most distinctive guys of this forum, very good contributors, and at least Sombre was also a mod-maker.

What in the hell could have ever happened in an already medium-sized-at-best community for so many of its veteran members to be permanently banned? :(

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

We had a Sunday Bloody Sunday of our own a few months ago.
You can still meet Sombre and the others in these forums :
http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?act=idx

FYI read these threads :
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45509
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45498

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

As with most bans, at least part of the story can be chalked up to being "voluntary".
Basically raising your hand and saying "go ahead and ban me".

I consider this to be one of the harder forums to get banned from. You can get slapped forever here but as long as you dont directly challenge them you tend to last forever. But you do have to be willing to bow your head to the alphadog and say "I will be good from now on"

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Ankh-Morpork does, however, ahave an extraordinarily high suicide rate, due mainly to the city's view on what constitutes as suicide. For example, walking alone through the night-time alleyways of the Shades is suicide, as is asking for a short in a dwarf bar. It is very easy to commit suicide in Ankh-Morpork if you are not careful.
(c)

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

What happened to the community? Not much really.

A bunch of people got upset and left. A bunch more stayed. The forums are still active, games are still being organized, new people still show up.

There's a new site. There's cross-pollination between the two. The other site seems fairly hostile to newbies, which isn't good for it's long-term health, but this place is welcoming so maybe they'll pick up people who learn a bit here first.

The usual predictions of doom seem overblown.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

fixed your post

And of course its debatable how welcome the forum will remain without at least half a dozen of the most active forum posters and modders. Now I cross post on both forums so it does not really affect me but any newbie coming in and asking questions is going to have a real hard time finding answers after the forum lost some of its most knowledgeable vets.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

@thejeff
Excellent post. Altho Im not sure about the "long-term health" thing. Some people seem to thrive in an environment where part of the fun is trying to differentiate between the help and the sarcasm. Such a place obviously cannot be run by "official corporate" admins. It would have to be a user-run site. Im thrilled that such people have a place to go to. This forum will survive and be more along the line of what the admins want. :target:

"The only un-censored site is your own."

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Im seeing what COULD be Zen tracks.
Id love to see him log into the new forum and give his viewpoint. Im surprised they didnt include him in their poll there. I dont think the implications and effects of the Sombre incident holds a candle to the Zen incident.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

There are still plenty of knowledgeable people here. Questions still get answered. New players tend not to ask the questions that only the most knowledgeable can answer. They're more helpful with the deep weird behavior stuff that comes up from time to time.
And some of those who left tended to snipe at those asking what they considered simple questions. Which is not very welcoming.
So knowledge has been lost, but not the type that's useful to newcomers. And when the weird stuff comes up, we can go looking over there. :)

I'd be more concerned about the modding, except that there still seems to be enough interaction that I don't think much has really been lost. It's just a bit split up.

As for "long-term health", I'm aware that some people like that kind of environment and I'm fine with that. I'm sure the site will continue as long as they want it to. My experience with environments like that is that they tend to pare down to a in-group that it's very hard to break into. With few new members, the site dies as people leave for one reason or another.
I've usually seen this as a takeover of an existing site, not a splinter faction. It may well be in this situation, new people who prefer that environment can come here and build up enough cred playing or modding to get accepted over there. It's an interesting little social experiment. We'll see how it plays out.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Exactly.
Everything has its pros and cons. I was actually smiling at the predictions of the wasteland death of this forum due to losses of experts.

Elites, and Experts, can actually be the death of official and distributor-run forums. Discussion, discovery, rapture, and answers on the level of the in-game tips file are its bread and butter. The impression that everything is already known, the winning strat is found, the community elites win all the public games is not conducive to sales. Im NOT saying it was done on purpose (I know the staff well enough not to suspect that) but the predictions of lost sales and dead forum were naive. Examples of the pros and cons have existed for longer than internet and have been studied by psych students for decades to be used by business students.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

BTW: Have I just blacked out the Zen incident? I poked around with the search function a bit, but didn't see anything explosive with his last posts.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

I'm relatively new here. Who was Zen and what happened?

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Zen was a very active map maker, modder, programmer, and a very popular moderator.
He created the CBm mod for one thing. And his departure also caused a rash of sympathetic departures. For all of the reasons given why the previous banishments would destroy this forum, I felt that Zen had already been that route and more already showing that as long as there is influx of new people then this forum will survive just about anything.

Frank Trollman was another I thought was missing from the poll unnecessarily.

Then again, one of the most common parting conversations of the banned always reminds us that you can never truly ban anyone (though they rarely seem to understand that makes no difference).
But like the Dom3 song in the parody thread says...
What if xxxxxxx was one of us?
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...1&postcount=35

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

The only downside I see, so far, is a lower game quality :p.
I see a lot vets are registered on the other forum, doe I don't know if they changed the team completely or still lurk on both forums.

Anyway, my point was that it's a shame to lose good players.

And the benefits from this, well, now we can organize a "new forum meet old forum" game, an all star game! :D

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Hmmm...

I think the game thread would be over there by default, eh?

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

I'm pretty sure neither side would agree, so than they'd open up a third forum for that. hahaha :)

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Gandalf, its hard to include FrankTrollman in a post about forum drama when he deleted all his posts on this forum. Whatever drama was there is gone.

It can't just have been drama in the past, it must be drama we can go and savor. (Similarly, I've seen none of the Zen-related posts, if there are any, so if there was drama we need documentation!)

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Well some of the drama of Frank Trollman can be discovered thru the magic of Google which is aware of the Archived posts.
"Frank Trollman" site:forum.shrapnelgames.com
which is a trick to keep in mind since it totally whips the in-house search feature.

One of the drama threads..
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/archi...p/t-34058.html
I believe that we can all thank FT for the present policy which allows us very limited editing capabilities.

The same searching is true of Zen but its much harder to pin down since there are multiple variations of the login in use.

But one of the reasons I bring it up was the amount of surprise shown over the lack of info. Shrapnel has NEVER been much forthcoming with information in such situations. Not FT, Norfleet, Zen, me, Sombre and many others. Usually because most of it occurs in private conversations or emails so providing that info would be highly improper.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Its pretty obvious why Norfleet is no longer with us - that was rather public.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

I guess its relative. Most of the interesting discussions I remember about Norfleet involved betas, moderators, devs and staff. Im not sure if the public discussions ever got it quite right.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

I haven't gone trough all the threads regarding that incident, but it sounds to me that is exactly what made everybody go bananas, the lack of info regarding the ban.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

We have the relevant thread linked in the drama poll thread. You can go refresh your memory. Its actually a pretty good read.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Exactly.
But WTF since thats been the way it has been with every incident for as long as I can remember it.

And its not likely to change. Or at least it shouldnt. As long as it involves posting something like "well in a private email to me he said".

This is not unusual. Ive moderated many forums, and online worlds. Its fairly standard to confront someone in private about their disgressions. And its also fairly common that the final straw occurs in those private conversations. Therefore, we will never really know what that final straw was.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Well I think a simple explanation could have maybe stopped or lessened the flame war, but than again, it's Shrapnel's prerogative, they have the final word and that's that, and I am all for dictatorship myself. :)

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Justice is never served unless its public and transparent. And it lets the community know how justice operates and prevents accusations of power tripping or unfairness. (Unless of course that is what happened, then it becomes obvious - so public justice helps prevent favoritism, abuse of power, and other nonsense).

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Nothing really happened to the community, other than it kind of split in two. I still come here, though I spend most of my time on the newer forum. It's where most of my compadres are.

As for that forum being unfriendly to noobs... there's maybe a grain of truth to that. But it's more like just friendly taunting. It's mostly vets over there, and if a noob pops in with a noob question, well, they're probably gonna get poked in the ribs for a bit. But someone will finally answer them, or point them back here.

Of course, the community is smaller on the whole. A lot of longtime players have left the game and don't post much anymore (it is a 5 year old game after all).

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Thats one of those things that always sounds good. But Ive never seen it work well when Ive seen it tried. Posting a private conversation publicly and then declaring punishment doesnt tend to go over well. And having a public trial tends to be more drama than justice.

All in all I think a fast axe and clear statement of "no discussion" creates the least turmoil. We might not want it to, but it does.

But now we have a chance to see another forum tackle the subject.

"The only un-censored site is your own.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Okay, so this just aint true.

Being an unrepentant newbie, I can speak with authority on the tone of the 'other site', as you dub it. If I have a Dom question, my first tool is the search function here, followed by a trip to the wiki. If that doesn't answer my question, I re-assess and re-examine. If I still don't know, I assume that I have a flawed precept, start from first principles and repeat the above. If I still don't know? Then I ask, and I feel that I would get a good answer, nearly without needling.

Now, if I just got confused and asked every question that came to mind? I'd catch hell. And I should. Getting spoon-fed answers only annoys people with more knowledge and prevents me from learning.

I think that's the big difference between the 'other site' and this. This forum is, more or less, a bouncy ball castle full of child-like fun and unencumbered whimsy, whereas the other site is a boxing club. Go there as you like, but be unprepared, be foolhardy, and you may just get a fat lip.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Heehee. Nicely put..
But isnt it the same description with different wording? :)

Either wording, both groups feel they have a handle on how a forum should be and seem to be on the road of creating it. As long as we have both, neither needs to put up with the other if they dont want to.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

I think his point was hostility is equally distributed. (Also, you sort of deserve the hostility if you make no effort to find the answer yourself).

Anyway, I can't even respond to your post about public justice Gandalf. It makes me very angry. To believe that minimizing drama should be the goal... excuse me, I don't want to get banned for saying what I feel about that. Morally bankrupt doesn't even begin to describe it.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

No.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

On a lighter note, welcome back Tifone. I was wondering what happened to you.

And radio star, you have just won the Noob of the Year award.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Hmmm this seems to have come to a stop.
Im not at disagreement with Radio_Star's descriptions.
And Im not in disagreement with Squirrelloid's reaction to lack of morale high-road.
Both seem fair descriptions of any corporate-owned sales-interested forums.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

So much drama. They type things over there, we type things over here, some people type things over there and over here. Sometimes people take a break from that and play a few turns of Dominions.

The End.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

LingChih is a bastard and loves the 3rd degree. Also we cuddle and I call him snugly names that he adores like "Fufflebunny"

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Yes. No.

Community?

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

You will pay for that remark, Zen. Tomorrow. Clear out your games, Gandalf, Zen and I have a score to settle.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Amen. There's a community of people who play games, and a community of people who post on the forums, and of course, enormous overlap between the two--but the first community is more silent, because gameplay mostly doesn't produce words, and the first community is also far more important, because there is only one Dominions 3 and it is very special, whereas there are a million billion trillion forums online where people can post about stuff and fight about stuff and try to formulate the Last Word on every possible topic and grow as social creatures and stalk each other and fall in love and be masterful humorists and BLAH BLAH BLAH yes all that stuff is valuable and some is very good but it's available EVERYWHERE. Thumbs up to people who strive to defend justice and all that, but if you think that your refusal to perform a trivially easy demonstration of fealty to some seemingly-awful moderator is more interesting and good than Dominions 3 is, then I think you are a poor judge of what is interesting and good. Not that there's anything so bad about that... as long as you keep playing the game!

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

wrong, without all the chatter around dominions, besides the games themselves, this game will die like most others... it's this "second group" that actually keeps this game alive so long after it's original release. oh and by the way, all the modders, map makers, etc are also in your "second group" yet those are the people who keep this(and other) relatively old games fresh, along with the constant discussions and chit chat as you call it.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

My description of the distinction between these groups was sloppy--let's say, there's activity focused on the game, stuff that couldn't happen the same way if it were a different game. And there's activity focused on the people who play the game, which could happen in any forum. The former is essential and rare, and the latter is commonplace, and it is bad to fight for the integrity of the latter at the expense of the former.

It's certainly not true that, in order to survive, every multiplayer game must lean on a "community" that's capable of standing on its own without the game. The world is big, and there are other ways.

One could claim that the only practical way for this particular game to survive is to be associated with a fairly open community--one that's open enough to statistically guarantee that standard-type forum fights will sometimes occur. Maybe that's true.

But I'm not saying there shouldn't be fights. I mean, if there were a friendly genie listening, then I'd definitely say that, and the genie would stop the fights. But you, reader, are just a single person, not a genie, and not a community. So I'm suggesting that when you are in a position to decide whether to get into a big ol' argument about the rules of a forum or about who has or hasn't displayed proper respect to whom, you would do well to consider how easy it is to find arguments like that, and how hard it is to find the other nice stuff that the forum is supposed to be about. And after saying that I think I have to shut up about the matter, because I really am here to play games. Chat on, those who must chat!

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Actually Im in four forums and 2 channels where Dom3 is nearly all the conversation.
And they all tend to refer to THIS forum as the drama forum.

I host Dom3 games for all of them and there is a definite difference in the feel of the conversations.
I dont know why.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

this remains to be your biggest mistake, which shows a lack of understanding on MP(multiplayer) games and their market. generally any new game is good(well, unless the game is just bad, but we're talking about the good games here...) however not all games last more than the normal life shelf of computer games(2-3 years max). in fact, most games just die off a year or 2 after their release. the big differentiating factor is the community.

games with good communities can last for almost forever. take a look at Starcraft for example. the game was released in 1998(or 1999 if you insist on the world release) yet it's still being played today(2010 mind you)! oh and it's actually played professionally too, mainly in South Korea, as in people actually work at playing(as well as coaching, team managers, etc) Starcraft! now, after 12 years Starcraft2 is finally coming out, but if it wasn't than the original Starcraft would probably still be played for quite a few more years.

now, what makes Starcraft so great? well, it's a classic RTS game, top game of the year, a game that redefined the genre, etc, but you can say most of these things on the first C&C as well. however nobody plays the original C&C nowadays, heck there has been so many expansions and copies of C&C that I already lost count... Starcraft on the other hand never changed(just received the Brood Wars expansion), yet is still being played more than ever before, and much more than C&C ever was. the big secret is the Starcraft(or well, Blizzard too I guess) community! these are the people that keep the game alive and kicking, despite being so old and without any new content. just go to YouTube and search for Starcraft, you'll find a ton of games with Korean commentators as well as English commentators and even a few in other languages. you'll see a ton of games, be it professional tournaments, private leagues, private games, etc. without these fellows, who have been around for quite some time now, Starcraft would have never lasted for 12 years.

this, my friend, is the power of community!

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Of course this is the drama forum. This is the forum where Internet is serious business. We got rules here, mister. And don't you forget that.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Not enough babes :dk:

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Bring some - you are French after all! ;)

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Quoted for truth and to emphasize this point.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

So much irony :D

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Quoted for being even more vague than I was, and trying to create a point where one was not.

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Quoted as an excuse to post.

Btw I think Shrapnel is a pretty cool guy, eh bans moeders and doesnt afraid of anything!

Re: Wh... wha.... what happened to the community?? :'(
 

Ironic in its own sense since it might violate rule #6

Excellent use of a meme