That should clear up everyone's questions, right? Good ...
As a development team and as a company, we know that the forums are extremely important to some of you, and we know that some of you have put a lot (!!!!) of effort into building up the community here, especially those who have written the more creative poetic stuff. C'mon, how many of you have > 5,000 posts, raise your hands. That amount of effort is *staggering*. Seriously, I think the highest post count I've seen was ~8400? Over 2.5 years, that'd be like 10 posts EVERY DAY since AG2 launched.
The effort of migrating that much data from AG2 to AG3 is almost as staggering, since the guy who wrote the AG2 forum software didn't make it terribly efficient, and the way we're linking accounts, etc., between the two systems might cause problems. Trying to migrate it to AG3 will be a pretty big job, and it will probably fall in my lap since I'm sorta the database guru around here, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's up to me whether I want to do it or not. If Dan says do it, I do it.
Whether we start over, and wipe everything, and build a new forum engine, or implement someone else's forum software, remains to be discussed internally because it's not a critical feature for us yet. That doesn't mean it's not important to us, it just means we have to get core features working like, y'know, logging in.
Will we migrate old posts into the new forum software? It depends whether we can find an easy way to make the old forum data compatible. Nothing's *impossible* but it's also not practical for us to spend development time (read: dollars) for us to spend a big amount of effort trying to sort stuff out so it's all perfect and pristine.
If we start over with forum posts, will we archive the old forums? Again, nothing's impossible, but I can't answer that right now.
What will happen to your armor points for forum posts? Well, since armor points are also up in the air regarding the same sort of "wipe vs migrate" discussions, I can't answer that question right now either.
Please direct people asking about the future of AG2 forums to this thread if they start asking questions in other forums/threads. I'll post updates to this thread as I have more information.
Personally, I think we should be able to keep our post counts (yes, I do have a rather high one and I don't want to part with it). If the forums are swept clean, all our posts will be deleted (duh?), but our AG3 post count should start off where it left off in AG2.
But give some kind of badge of recognition for participating in the AG2 forums.
OR, combine the two. Have some sort of badge or medal on your profile, and under it, your AG2 posts, then, your total posts.
A lot of people have put alot of time and effort getting their AP and post count really high. I think that it would cause an uproar of upset people if they were both reset. Reset the Forums, just keep the post count and AP.
AP is already being reset. That's a sure thing. The post count should be reset, just because everything else is, why keep that? Just earn it back, shouldn't be difficult if you are active.
it will be a shame to lose all these good discussions....oh well
I agree, but about 80% of the forum topics are dead or pointless. Probably more like 88%. Still, a lot of good threads that will need to be restarted or let go.
I agree, but about 80% of the forum topics are dead or pointless. Probably more like 88%. Still, a lot of good threads that will need to be restarted or let go.
Good threads being? The WERP needs a massive cleaning, and we all know each others' views more or less, seeing we go round in merry circles. Won't hurt to start afresh.
The only threads that should stay are the AMW Contest threads, and the WoM.
Hey it would be cool if you could maybe 'like' a post kind of like in Facebook I guess just to show appreciation for it.
that would be nice! though it would get a little confusing. I had to agree to nichodemus, their arn't many good threads out there. The nonsense ones get deleted, but some of them is just really unpopular.
