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.
I was reading through the posts (trying not to ask redundant questions, haha) and I saw one about being able to see what we've posted recently on our profiles...
Would this just be a new feature? Or would it be something optional to change? Personally I have no issue but I could see some people having a problem with their, I dunno, poetry or something available for random people to harass them about as opposed to forum treaders who actually are there for that particular purpose.
Again, I wouldn't have a problem, but it did make me curious.
@Cormyn: So in AG3 it may or may not count posts in the newcomers forum? Well, if you do give posts to people in forums games and the newcomers people. Armor Games will have many more people with a lot of posts. From my perspective, I don't see anything bad from it, I just wanted to point that out.
@StrategyGamer: If we are able to see recent posts, then I'd like that. About the harassing part: If an individual does get harassed over something, then they can report it to a moderator.
I haven't been following this thread very closely, so I don't know if this was discussed yet or not, but I think that a PM (private message) feature would be a good touch. I saw that you could already send private messages, but I think it would be good if there was a button on the forums.
By button on the forums, do you mean a button near the user so that you can send a private message to them? That would be a little convenient, but I like to have things simple. So I think that there should only be a message button on user profiles instead of everywhere they go.
So in AG3 it may or may not count posts in the newcomers forum?
It will, because posts will have the ability to gain reputation if users like it, instead of EVERY post gaining points.
I saw one about being able to see what we've posted recently on our profiles...
We haven't decided whether that'll be an option, but if we did allow it, we might also hook in a privacy control where only friends/followers could see it.
I think that a PM (private message) feature would be a good touch
I guess you're not following the *forum* very closely then either, because this topic has been discussed several times and is already implemented in the AG3 beta. It won't have anything to do with forums.
This has already been thrown out, I believe. It would cause too much confusion among the members and I could imagine that it would be annoying to see so many colors.
Or even larger text, or different font?
Being able to make text larger and smaller would be good, but not font. Example of what I want: Read here. Adding the strikethroughs, underlines, and making larger and smaller text would be nice. With the underlines and making text bigger, it would look better when you're heading something. Example: Forum Rules(with big text and underlined) [insert rules here] When you make something like that it gets the readers attention.
Or like smilies? Like when you do this "" it would be an actual picture?
Smileys isn't a good thing to add to the forums. The text smileys are fine, and if you want to use a picture smiley, you can just get one from Google Images.
But the color BB code might not work, since some people might impersonate a mod or an admin?
Correct. And anyway, I prefer not to see a whole bunch of different colors in the forums. It'll make me not want to read things due to how sensitive my eyes are.
Adding the strikethroughs, underlines, and making larger and smaller text would be nice. With the underlines and making text bigger, it would look better when you're heading something.
This would be brilliant, breakthroughs could help the concept of sarcasm in the forums :P
I prefer not to see a whole bunch of different colors in the forums. It'll make me not want to read things due to how sensitive my eyes are.
GoM is right, the colour format should 100% stay as it is, with the only colour alterations being that of mods/admins.
I really like the idea of the forum achievements and how these would be maybe shown in the forums - would this be like placed where our armatar is n the forums, or underneath it?
Yeah, I love the idea of strikethrough and underline. We probably won't do font sizes though.
I really like the idea of the forum achievements and how these would be maybe shown in the forums - would this be like placed where our armatar is n the forums, or underneath it?
Er, we're not giving Achievements for anything in the AG3 forums. We're thinking of giving Achievements for your forum post count as a 'legacy/AG2' Achievement of some sort though.
Will the threads be migrated over? Or will we be notified that AG3 will start anew thread wise? I have a thread in the AMW, and if its not going to be in AG3, I'll have to C/P the stuff to word.
How would you show the highest AG2 legacy achievement for forum posts?
Wrong thread. Post in the Achievements thread if you have related questions.
Will the threads be migrated over? Or will we be notified that AG3 will start anew thread wise? I have a thread in the AMW, and if its not going to be in AG3, I'll have to C/P the stuff to word.
We've already said that migration will depend on the new forum engine we select. Until we select a new forum engine (or build our own) we cannot answer that question. We've also stated that if we do NOT migrate the forums, we may keep an archived version online for a while to allow users to copy some content.
I honestly think that outside of the AMW and stickies there are very few, if any, threads that need to be archived.
Referring to the lounge thread idea discussed much earlier, I do support this as for the first few months it was active the "The current topic is:" was immensely popular and a lot of fun, although I suppose if you're including a chat, it would be about the same thing.
