The official forums are going to be shut down on May 1, and taken offline soon after.
Remember whenever we asked everyone to impress stop making Discord servers(opens in a new tab) for stuff that shouldn't be Discord servers? Apparently, Amazon wasn't listening, because it has revealed plans to turn off the forums because of its New World andLost Ark GoldMMOs in support ofyou guessed itDiscord servers.
"With the launch in our official New World Discord combined with the features, functionality, and accessibility for players we now have made the decision to embrace Discord as our primary engagement platform for New World continuing to move forward," Amazon said(opens in new tab). "To allow us to add just as much value as you possibly can to our Discord server, we are going to be sunsetting the New World forums that will allow our staff to pay attention to providing quality engagement opportunities inside a central, and easily accessible platform."
Aside from swapping the game name, the Lost Ark forum closure message(opens in a new tab) is similar.
Forum posting is going to be disabled on May 1, even though forums themselves will stay up to have an indeterminate time so users may have a chance to save what they need to keep. Amazon "is going to be cataloging all the historical feedback that players have remaining, assuring that sentiment and feedback left isn't lost." Once that's done, the forum URL is going to be redirected to Discord servers (New World(opens in new tab), Lost Ark(opens in new tab)), and social networking pages. Somewhat oddly, considering the fact that it's pulling the plug by itself forums, Amazon said Hello will also be increasing its presence around the New World and Lost Ark subreddits.
The reaction to the plan from forum users isn't great. Some of the pushback is overwrought (one thread around the decision to finish the forums calls it "a horrendous, vile mistake," which is pretty heavy) but lots of users result in the valid point that Discord and forums are extremely different tools made to serve completely different purposes.
"Discord is actually useful for many reasons, most gamers utilize it," New World forum user Gavyne(opens in new tab) wrote. "But its a dreadful place to possess a back forth discussion on several topics, in addition, to search for data content."
"While the chat layout on Discord serves a much better purpose for small talk and one-liners, the bulletin board forum layout, however, provides a much better overview for deeper discussion/analysis, simpler to access, and also has far better and much more tools for formatting," Julezer(opens in new tab) added. "People generally also put a lot more thought into posting on the forums than inside a chat. Looking at your present Discord layout it's in no way able to replace a forum. It will quickly end inside a disorganized mess."
"It doesn't seem possible to have an engaging discussion in Discord, it's a real-time chat app," NSilva(opens in new tab) wrote around the Lost Ark forums. "There is completely no fucking point of leaving feedback or posting if users cant easily read all of the related messages. Even if you post stuff there it's just gone, unrealistic forever after 2mins."
I'm a classic forums guy myself (I still occasionally find myself taking into consideration the old, long-lost BioWare forums(open in a new tab)) so there's definitely some bias at play here, but I need to agree using the sentiment this isn't a great move for New World and Lost Ark players. Forums really are a litany, a spot to share considered thoughts and discover arcane knowledge buried over time; Discord, in comparison, is definitely an unruly tavern: Great for ending up in friends and fighting with strangers, but greatly a "moment over time" kind of thing.
Luckily, New World andlost ark gold for Saleplayers have other channels for forum-like communications, including Reddit and Steam, therefore the closure of the native forums doesn't represent the entire end of civilized interactions. Even so, it's kind of a bummer: Call me old-fashioned for a moment, but big games deserve their very own forumsDiscord can be a new method of doing things, but I am not saying it's better.
