Fellow Armor Gamers, I bring to your attention an impending crisis: the death of the forums. No, the forums are not totally dead, but it is dying. Yes, there is plenty of activity in the Tavern and in other places in the Forums, but the quality of the threads are slowly deteriorating and the activity of the forums is dwindling.
Yes, the forums of Armor Games are dying. Many Veteran forum users have left, and I do not blame them. Yes, we all have things to do besides go on Armor Games, and that is understandable. But, if we do not do something to rectify this crisis, then Armor Games will cease to become the best gaming website on the Internet. How does this even apply to Armor Games as a whole? If we improve the quality of the forums on Armor Games, then there will be more traffic coming in to Armor Games, which means more people visit the website and play the games here, and we will continue to be the best gaming website in the Internet.
My fellow Forum Users, this is what we must do: We must revive the Forums. There needs to be better quality threads in the Tavern, better Forum Games, compelling topics and debates in the WEPR and above all, more activity. In doing this, we will bring back the forums to its former glory. We will bring the Forums into a new Golden Age. Yes, it will be hard. It will take a long time. But we can all do this, for we are Armor Games, and we are Armor Games Strong.
The forums have been in this 'dying' phase for a while now, and running on a low base activity. However, there have been a few interesting topics in the WEPR recently, so quality is not deteriorating everywhere. We 'simply' need more activity.
Well, I see where you're coming from man. Some of the best forums games I've known have been made by Lowco, and I think hes gone. I can't really help much with the Tavern and other sections of the Forums, but I've been trying to make quality Forum Games for all the enjoy.
Another thing that you have not looked into, only about 6/10ths, I'm willing to bet, of the people who play AG make accounts. And of those, maybe 3 or 4 of 10 actually participate in Forums. But I agree all in all.
You could petition the staff to create more Forum related Quests (10 posts, 100 posts, 1000 posts), etc. Or Section related Quests (Post 10 times in the WERP), etc. Of course, that would need to come with a caveat of no spamming. We could have a link to the Forums, especially Quest threads in every game description, in order for new users to post their queries there.
I'm sure we'll get a spike in activity whenever major political events come to past, like the presidential elections, but ultimately we should remember that most people come here for the games, and not Forums sadly. I'm glad that you and the others still care though.
You could petition the staff to create more Forum related Quests (10 posts, 100 posts, 1000 posts), etc. Or Section related Quests (Post 10 times in the WERP), etc.
I was also thinking about petitioning the Admins to make a Exclusive Forum for the users who hit 2k posts. That, I'm sure, would spark activity. But it would also mean the disappearance of all the Vets, since they would all be in the exclusive Forum.
i dont think they are dying. I think, in fact, they are doing fine! Alpy, you started in the forums during the summer of this year, if i remember correctly. School has started, and most of us are in high school, or college, so we really dont have time. Im sure there are other people out there like me, that balances school, multiple sports, and maybe an instrument. Lots of us simply dont have the time to spend talking to people over the interwebs, when there is 2 hours of homework piled up next to you. Just wait til Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, activity will spike, then most likely drop until summer starts. At least, thats what i think. Maybe the forums ARE dying. But i dont think so.
A lot of kids play flash games. I think the best way to increase traffic to the forums is to get games to an older audience. Flash games were pretty casual before, but now I see a lot of them moving to the mobile way of playing games. You know, play for a certain amount of time and then pay for crystals or energy to continue playing.
I was also thinking about petitioning the Admins to make a Exclusive Forum for the users who hit 2k posts. That, I'm sure, would spark activity. But it would also mean the disappearance of all the Vets, since they would all be in the exclusive Forum.
Not really...I mean, you do see the Knights appear in the main Forums. Even if they do disappear, if there are more newcomers in the main Forums, I wouldn't mind.
There actually have been quite a few threads addressing the activity problem in the past. The usual result of them all was a quick burst of activity that then settled down again and once again had the forums in a sort of low activity slump. My point being, even if we address these problems in a thread, we all know full well that there's little activity, at least compared to the olden days. There hasn't been a single thread that has permanently fixed this problem.
I'm not one to be a negative Niel, but I feel like most of the forumers are akin to New Years resolution makers about going to the gym every week, only to stop going after a few weeks or couple months. That's not to say we SHOULDN'T make threads like these, but there's gotta be someway to make a more profound, permanent solution. I mean, threads similar to this have changed the forums before (a relatively recent one might be the 'Community' to 'Forum' change). If we're going to increase activity, it's better to change it little by little so that instead of a short burst of increased activity, we steadily have an increase (which I do think is happening, with the influx of new users and whatnot).
Besides, you can't do much to affect somebody's activity when they have real life problems going on, nor can you really affect anybody that hasn't seen this thread. Actually, I'm willing to bet that the people who will see this thread are one of the more active users, and the audience that you're trying to get this message out to (i.e. the inactive vets) won't be the main group of people that will see it.
Anyways, just throwing out my three cents out there.
You need a big game to bring people to the forums. Sonny 3 will probably bring in lots of new users. With MMOs, people will just stick to the MMO chats.
I give my word when I firmly believe that I will be able to bring the Forums back into its former glory, no, but into a Golden Age. But I will need help from everyone. First, all I ask from you all (the moderators) is your blessing to carry this out.
Fellow Armor Gamers, I bring to your attention an impending crisis: the death of the forums. No, the forums are not totally dead, but it is dying
Jeez..we really do run in circles here. As Rip said..there have been countless of these threads..and they do well for a few days..in the thread itself mostly, but little translates to the forums themselves.
Likewise to Rip, I'm not saying this to deter you, it's great to see new people come in with the same fight as the rest of us, but there is a truth many of us have come to realize, and that is that threads and calls to action don't create activity...activity does.
And basically the only thing that was most effective out of all of them was a name change. The Forums was once called the Community and people thought that was the reason there was no activity, because apparently nobody knew it was a forum... and yet still people did not know there were forums.
I thought that maybe in the front-page, if we put in a good-sized forum button in there, it could attract some newbies. Or maybe when a user signs up there could be some sort of notification to tell them about the forums.
They may work, but what do I know? I'm a broken robot.
That was a typo, I meant to type negative Neil Patrick Harris.
We need the threads for every game, that'll surely bring in users. Also forum related quests will work too, they just need to happen ^^
And become like Kong? Oh god no! What's next, Armor Game equivalent Kreds? ;~; On a serious note, it's not a bad idea. It's just dubious whether or not it'll have any real effect on forum activity once implemented.
As Rip said..there have been countless of these threads..and they do well for a few days..in the thread itself mostly, but little translates to the forums themselves.
Likewise to Rip, I'm not saying this to deter you, it's great to see new people come in with the same fight as the rest of us, but there is a truth many of us have come to realize, and that is that threads and calls to action don't create activity...activity does.
Hey what you did there is called plagiarism if you're going to credit somebody, you do it right. You must create an MLA styled citation page please. =) Thank you, if you cooperate I will not sue you. Well, at least not for too much of your wealth, anyway.
