Why does MMO board require a sub to post?
PostPosted:Thu Feb 14, 2013 7:04 pm
Usually the official boards of any MMO requires a sub to post. The theory for this that someone who hates your game would at least have to pay for it, or that the board quality will go down if people who didn't have to pay gets to post.
I don't know about you, but internet message boards are usually pointed to as examples of why aliens/Gods/whatever should exterminate human beings. If your game has even some people playing it's safe to say that your game already covers posters that we wouldn't want to represent our race in front of some all powerful being. So, I really don't see how 'lowering the quality of the board' can possibly make sense. As far as I can tell the quality most official boards is generally low enough to make me question the worth of humanity and while things can always get worse, it really can't be that much worse.
From a financial point of view, it's not like there are people who will actually sub to your game to post, even though it's often said posting on the message boards is more enjoyable than playing the game itself by many people. In general I've found that people have no idea why a game is successful and usually the best reason to play a certain game is because everything else is worse. In theory, if a developer is truly interested in preventing population loss not to mention winning back lost customers, it'd make the most sense to have feedback from people who left the game, who presumably have some idea why they didn't like this game, as opposed to listening to your current population which often have no idea why they're playing the game other than that they're hopelessly addicted. In fact, I'd say that since the sub requirement self-selects posters to be favorable of you (people who don't like your game will eventually leave), this is indirectly responsible for most MMOs flopping since no one would ever tell the devs what they're doing is very dumb.
I don't know about you, but internet message boards are usually pointed to as examples of why aliens/Gods/whatever should exterminate human beings. If your game has even some people playing it's safe to say that your game already covers posters that we wouldn't want to represent our race in front of some all powerful being. So, I really don't see how 'lowering the quality of the board' can possibly make sense. As far as I can tell the quality most official boards is generally low enough to make me question the worth of humanity and while things can always get worse, it really can't be that much worse.
From a financial point of view, it's not like there are people who will actually sub to your game to post, even though it's often said posting on the message boards is more enjoyable than playing the game itself by many people. In general I've found that people have no idea why a game is successful and usually the best reason to play a certain game is because everything else is worse. In theory, if a developer is truly interested in preventing population loss not to mention winning back lost customers, it'd make the most sense to have feedback from people who left the game, who presumably have some idea why they didn't like this game, as opposed to listening to your current population which often have no idea why they're playing the game other than that they're hopelessly addicted. In fact, I'd say that since the sub requirement self-selects posters to be favorable of you (people who don't like your game will eventually leave), this is indirectly responsible for most MMOs flopping since no one would ever tell the devs what they're doing is very dumb.