Last forum standing

[Truscott Trotter]

FOW have just announced their closure and Bolt Action - Warlord is long gone.

Long live Lardies!

[Derek H]

There's still TMP

[Truscott Trotter]

Wash your mouth out Derek!

[MLB]

The Guild had a meltdown only a few weeks ago and is now lost forever, although I see Piers Brand has established a new one with a very strong Battlegroup focus. He probably didn't like all the good traffic the CoC posts tended to generate

[Travh20]

What is going on with the forums? Lack of interest in the format?

[Derek H]

Official announcement is at https://www.flamesofwar.com/hobby.aspx?art_id=5964

For many years the forum has been the cornerstone of our gaming community but now the majority of discussions happen not on our ‘Forum of War’, but across the world on third-party websites (such as Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and many other fantastic community-run websites), and it is up to us to change how we interact with our players.

[Munin]

Maybe it's the Luddite in me talking, but I personally detest the Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo newsgroup format for discussions, where crap is all jumbled together higgledy-piggledy in a stream-of-consciousness that makes search, archiving, and focused discussion virtually impossible. For instance, I don't play Bag the Hun or Dux Brittaniarum, so I can completely ignore those sections of the forum. I don't have to wade through discussions of games I don't play just because they happen to be posted with the #toofatlardies tag. And even when information is encapsulated in semi-hierarchical in nested comments a la Facebook or YouTube, it's still a pain in the ass. Those formats are like taking a giant step backwards to the listservs of the pre-web 1990s.

If you just want to shoot the breeze with like-minded individuals, those formats are fine. But if you want to support a community with actual information or support topical discussion, a forum is still (IMO) the best way to go.

[oozeboss]

I went onto Facebook late, but this forum is still my main go to.

Facebook is a bit like a sugar hit - short, sweet and to the point, but never of any real long term substance.

(And trust a diabetic to make this analogy!)

[Richard]

Well, we still have the Yahoo group, the forum, Facebook and Twitter. It IS problematic covering so many platforms, but if people like it then we have no intention of dropping any of them.

Facebook is MUCH easier for me to monitor, but because things are easier for me shouldn't be the main reason for doing it. The forum is a better format for gleaning information.

Rich

[Truscott Trotter]

Good to hear Rich. Apart from the obvious information finding issues forums also have another function - community.

Community = enthusiasm = spreading the word = more sales!

My games of FOW have dropped from 1 per week to 1 per year since leaving their forum. When Warlord shut their forums our weekly game of Bolt Action has no disappeared to once per 3 months and my desire to purchase new stuff has dropped to zero as I do not use faceslap, twatter or snapshut

BTW Lead Adventure Forum seems to have gone too despite it supposed to just be changing servers.

Will at PSC should set up a WW2 forum for Battleground and FOW refugees - he would corner the 15mm market!