"GW to close their forums 15 Nov 06" Topic

GW to close their forums 15 Nov 06.

Interesting news! Comments?

For a company that doesn't believe in listening to their customers, I'm not surprised.

*shrug*

I don't recall ever visiting their forum unless deep linked from somewhere else.

where did you hear? link?

I thought this was an error, but it says it on the message board page from GW. Don't know what they are thinking.

The forums were a mess, anyways.

For the curious

link

link

It is right on the front page to thier forums.

I agree with Tangofan.

Chris

Seems to be a general thing, just the US. Heres the UK message.

uk.games-workshop.com/forums

Never visited them, so no impact.

If you go to the boards now, it is complete chaos. No moderators at all and everyone is posting and slamming the place. I believe it won't last until November 15th the way the populace is acting.

I used to visit to read stuff periodically. Got some helpful suggestions over the years. I hate to see something that could be a resource end and the way it is degenerating in the last few hours is pathetic.

They need to close it down now so this isn't a 2 week period of trash. How sad.

Erik

Looks like the place has been tainted by chaos.

Trash for the trash god.

See you in space cowboy.

You have to wonder why the GW leadership feels the need to close their own forums (fora?). Granted, theirs was one of the worst on the Intarweb, with poor design and functionality, but it just seems odd that such a useful PR and marketing tool would be yanked. Putting on Mr. Conspiracy Hat™, I can come up with some possible rationales:

1) Bad times at GW means that the £20,000 or whatever they pay a person to administrate and moderate the forum was just too much. Personnel costs are often high on the CFO's list of things to cut in order to right a listing corporate ship.

2) A newer, better version of the forums is in the works and will be announced soon. Since pretty much anything would be an improvement over what they've got, this might be the case, but if so, why not wait until the new forum was operational before putting the hammer down on the current one?

3) The Right Honorable Thomas H.F. Kirby and associates are sensitive to criticism and wanted to close this possible avenue of it. Of course, any post critical of GW was nuked in seconds anyway, so I'm not sure why the forum itself would be closed down.

4) GW lost the source code to the forums in their last office move, so older "collector's" threads cannot be recast and re-released for the public. Wait…

So. What could be bubbling below the surface here? Do we have any Nottinghammers in the house who could give us some inside info?

Could it be the age of the posters? I think TMP is a pretty mature audience. And I use mature in the actual "age" sense of the word.

Typical GW – the expected useful life of any of their products or services seems to be rather limited.

At least, they didn't insult readers' intelligence with some flimsy excuse about why they were closing them down, although the lack of an explanation is nevertheless rather arrogant.

Businesses with at least some notion of good customer relations tend to at least try to explain major changes …

There are several decent 40K forums out there, I haven't visited the GW ones in years.

It's the Specialist side that worries me. A unified front against the mishandling Epic and BFG are getting at the hands of ForgeWorld was *already* difficult. Now it will be impossible.

[…] the lack of an explanation […]

If we're talking about the US site, I agree. If you look at the UK site, it appears that they're saying, "There are better forums out there, so we're not going to spend the money on ours any more."

Or I could be reading too much between the lines.

Apparently the SG ones are to remain open.

link

Well that's a *little* good news, then.

They had a forum?

Best answer yet on the GW forums (sadly, not by a mod):

"There's a tax on poor English coming, and they can't afford the posters here."

There's a reason we called them the "Eye of Terror" over at Dakka Dakka.

I bet they will start a new forum that you will have to pay for and will basically be all adds for their products. You will also have to submit a post to be approved and edited before it shows up on the forums. Also every few months a new updated version of the forum will come up and you will have to pay for the upgrade and will not be able to use the old messages on the forumns.

I do feel like the specialist games will be forced to close also after some people go over that forum and start bashing GW.

Anyway, it is no great loss.

I wrote my last post on those forums a year or more ago, when I wrote a suggestion in the form of a question on the suggestion forum.

The mod., apparently using his English-as-an-Nth language, immediately locked the thread because he claimed that it was a question, hence was on the wrong sub-forum …

Wow. Yet another example of their contempt for their customers.

Is a new, better forum coming?

I would think it's likely, but if so, why not announce it, not just say "we're closing the forums"…

Geez…

Then again, Javelin's other reasons seem possible, too…

Well it saves them the time to lock those topics and posters they do not agree with.

My persoal feeling… I could not care less. Although I would have been happy if the words "their forum" had been missing from the title!

Cheers,

Burkhard

GW anything – who gives a .

Stuff them, really…

As if there was anything worthwhile in there or in the overall attitude by the top brass.

Let them kill their PR, "home away from home", "a place where like-minded individuals share and expand their views on the hobby" and all that b.s., for it's all bottom-line thinking here:

T.B.1: "The fora don't work as the propaganda machinery we expected them to be, and they have a cost for maintennace…"

T.B.2: "Stuff'em! Close the damned things and save the company some money."

I could not care less, frankly.

T.B.2 would have to be in the Cobra Commander or Skeletor's voice, though, and would have to include "…you fools!" at the end. Then it would be just perfect.

More trouble than it was worth I expect.

Show me the money!

Javelin 98 said: "T.B.2 would have to be in the Cobra Commander or Skeletor's voice, though, and would have to include "…you fools!" at the end. Then it would be just perfect."

T.B.2: "You foolsss! Clossse the cursed things and ssssave the company sssome money! Cobra!"

Good ridence is all I have to say.

just to say i ing hate GW!!!!! ING KICK ME OUT FOR SAYING LORD OF THE RINGS IS !!!

@teboj17 – I think you may be hitting the nail on the head.

To be honest I didn't use their forums as I find there are better forums out there that don't contain lots of "ub3r l33t!!1!!1!!1!" posts and they're not rediculously moderated.

I think GW felt that the forums would be a good idea initially for people to stroke off their egos and also for market research. They didn't get what they wanted so now they're closing them down.

I almost feel dirty because I'm buying some Chaos Black spray from my local GW on the way home from work. To be fair it's to undercoat my EM4 minis! :)

They appear to be cutting back all round. My local independant retailer said a goodly wedge of their trade sales staff (in the UK) went last year.

If you ran a small club in your store you used to be able to blag a few free minis off them for it but now it`s next to impossible.