Keep the forums!

I bought this game only after looking at the forum.
The game is great, it has never crashed in the 30-40 games i've played.
Most comments are from the b***ing 5% not the majority.
I like to keep up on the latest news.
Thanks & keep up the good work.

It's worth noting that since DG has been demoted, I am now the only *active* volunteer moderator left. If anyone has been a particularly upstanding forumer you may be able to contact Sd about helping out. Maybe. I know at the very least there are a number of people that deserve promotion to higher ranks (though not neccissarily moderator status).

I don't think we should destroy the ENTIRE forum. How about deleting very old posts and have a forum bug sticky?

For all those worried about losing the forums, you should check out the Apolyton and CivFanatic forums. I've been a long time visitor to both those forums for Civ III and IV. They are well run and administered as well as having a large number of quality submitters.

The important thing is will Frogboy, CariElf and the rest of the gang be regular visitors and submitters. I'll go to what ever forum they're lurking in.

Plus, we haven't had any spammers or bad people since, well, (whispers)Physco was here.

Hello Stardockians, remember me? still here just gone quiet lately.

I think shutting down these forums would be highly damaging. Personally I'm not interested in a general genre forum, I'm interested in GC2 and I want to hear what Stardock is doing in a place where Stardock call the shots. On this forum you have total control over how you release news and communicate, you surrender that going to someone else's forums.

With this forum we have a focal point for the GC2 community where information isn't vying for attention against some new title by whomever.

With the expansion pack on the way I think you need to keep this asset and make full use of it to inform us and let us respond directly. Ok the forum format hasn't been all that was hoped for but it's not worth scrapping the whole site over.

I've been with you since GC2 was first announced on the GC1 forum, there are posts from me on the "what would you like to see in a sequel" threads from back before the dawn of time. I wouldn't still be here if this wasn't a stardock site.

Honestly? Do what you want. In eve-online the quote is "Fly only what you can afford to lose." .. if you cant afford to spend the time to maintain a forum than dont do it, however still make it possible for players to report bugs.

I couldn't be bothered to read all of the responses as I just finished a 13 hour shift. My 2c are that the forums become locked to only users with serial numbers (anyone can view them) and stardock staff. That would prevent anyone other than those with "valid" views on the game posting. There are plenty of other forums where non-owners can post and get responses from game owners (apolyton etc) and save this forum from being overrun.

If you point to a third party forum, will you be able to moderate those forums? If not, does that matter to you?

Food for though.

CommanderFutility said:

I'd hate to see some of the nice features with this integrated site go to waste. I.E> The medal system

I agree alot with that. Don't delete the forums. If that were to happen, what would the Metaverse be good for? Nothin' that's what.


Don't let these forums fall into another forums ring of influence! DECLARE WAR ON THEM. Just kidding... ignore the influence sentence.

My problem with the forums is that it trashes Firefox. I'd keep the forums on-site, but change to a new code or something.

Nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Nooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I haven't had any problems with the forums, so I think we should keep them. That and it's really cool looking and the medals are fun.

Game's own forums = good. There's just a certain detachment in being made a subsection of somewhere else. It's a turn-off.

Well said, DreadArchon. Whatever problems this forum may have (the only one I've noticed myself is with the paragraph breaks), it's still definitely preferable to being eliminated/merged with another forum. CivFanatics and Apolyton are both good sites, but GC2 would just be another game among many there.

I'll respect whatever decision Stardock makes in regards to this issue, but I'd be lying if I said that I felt closing down the forums here wasn't a mistake.

ive almost made the forum my home page.

Please dont destroy part of the game, its like the bar after a soccer game.

Yours in Posting Plasma,
Star Dagger

I vote to please keep them. I check them close to once a day to try to keep updated and to hear about new ways to defeat the AI.

I also like seeing all the 'bling' earned by the players at large here!

Please keep the forums, I visit at least twice daily (though don't post much).

I was about to flame the nooble who suggested canning one of my daily reads. Then I looked again.....

I read multiple times a day (don't tell my boss), and I would sorely miss the forums if they were moved somewhere else. I've never posted before, but this is just too important to stay quiet.

Please don't let a minority ruin this for the silent masses.

Shawn

Visiting the forums daily, quite the place to find proper reading material, I thought. So it's bad eh? Would never have known, if not for this thread.

I agree that this msg board software is a little weird, compared to what most sites use. It took me a while to get used to it. The only thing I really like about it is the medals. I wouldn't want to see it shut down though.

I don't know what the expense is in keeping it up or how big it is. I have a feeling most of the headache is in the fact that it's custom-built and having to chase down bugs.

Maybe it would be easier and cheaper to switch to Invision Board and have it hosted by them at IPHosting. Or set it up on a Linux server and run it yourself. The medal system might be lost, but there is probably a way to hack that back into the template.

I should point out that it was the post here about a Starforce employee linking to pirated copies of GCII, back in March, that prompted me to buy the game. I read about it on Slashdot. The game sounded cool and a company with your attitude about copy protection deserves some support, so I bought a copy. Haven't stopped playing it since and I'll probably get that expansion pack when it comes out.

[A lot of people don't like the galciv2.com forums.]
Is this a good reason to eliminate this forum? Flamers like that.

Well clearly we underestimated the use of the forums.

We'll have to put more thought on how best to do things going forward.

Based on all the negative feedback we get on the  forums, I was getting the impresison that we'd be better off pointing things to a dedicated community site.

IMHO, you better eliminate the trouble makers, I mean, the flamers.

You're going to get negative feedback on it no matter what. When people see something they don't like, they make a post about it. When they see something they do like, it doesn't occur to them to post that they like it. That's why the majority of posts are from people griping about something.

Being able to show off the MV medals is very nice. Having direct contact with the people writing the game's code is also very nice. It sounds like you just need to get some more moderators to deal with the knucklehead stuff while you guys look for bug reports (in the game) and feature requests.