I wouldn't mind seeing the local boards disappear, and seeing the forum stripped down to a resource for announcements, help with the game and the Magistrates court.
Then again those functions could probably performed by the Wiki as well...
Also we might want to gather some opinions of people who aren't actually on the forums and why.
I think I may agree. The local boards do bring stuff that we did not really have with the d-list, and is probably the source of most inter-player conflict.
The Magistrates cases need to be made private. Whats the point in having dedicated volunteers, if everyone gets a say. May as well not have a council about it and put it up to a vote. From what I have seen the Magistrates have enough trouble being professional and decisive with their decisions anyway, without others muddying the waters.
Its not hard for someone to state their case, and if the magistrates want more info they can contact the defendant in game via the OOC and allow them to post their side of the story. Once both sides are presented the Magistrates can circlejerk about it all they want, without all the outside input, decide what is and isn't breaking the social contract etc and be done with it. Having every man and his grandma involved in a case, having a say, just muddies the water and makes bad blood.
The local forums can all go, it just brings up !@#$ about who started what war and why, and half the cases are because someone seemed to mix OOC from the forums and IRC and bring it ingame or vice versa. Roleplaying is about separating yourself from the character, not using it as a persona.
The helpline, Dev forums and roleplay forums could all be left, a long with anything that doesn't impact on Battlemaster, such as the other games forum. As long as those are moderated correctly then all is good.
The other thing about the forum is that the Dev's/Moderators/Magistrates are all volunteers (i believe) and they are not always professional. In all the times I have been a forum moderator/admin, there has always been one rule, no in-fighting. I understand people are all equal and what not, but when you see the Dev's openly disagreeing, either debatingly or almost aggressively with tom or another dev, it's a bad image. I don't know how the inner team mechanics work but from an outside observer it looks really bad, as if all the Battlemaster team does if fight with each other and circlejerk around issues. Its the same issue as with the magistrates. People can disagree, but its like a couple fighting about their bad sex life in front of their friends and family, its awkward and in bad taste.
Anyway thats my two cents.
This I strongly disagree with, however. I absolutely wholeheartedly
hate the titan system. Being secret, it has absolutely no accountability. I have not had a single good experience with the titans since I joined this game.
But back to the forum, and the talk that it leeches IG communication. I'm not sure I agree with this. I write a lot here... like, a lot... too much. But in any case, I'm never on IRC anymore. When I started playing, I was on IRC 100% of the time, or just about. And for quite a while. I write more and more on the forums, and less and less IG... but is that really the forums' fault, as some would suggest? I don't think so. IG, the realms are getting smaller and smaller. Whenever they grow a bit, they then often break up again. This is especially true for active nobles. Often, the general noble count will rise... but it'll be a bunch of people who barely ever (if ever at all) initiate discussions of their own or even reply to others. Though I still spend a lot of time on BM, I actually spend a lot less now than I did when I started playing back in high school, where I could easily spend the whole evening reading and writing letters, chatting on IRC in-between. But if so much of the time I do spend on BM is spent on the forums, it's because there's nothing interesting to say IG. On the forums, one talks with hundreds of people. IG, each character can write to 30 or so nobles, out of which only 3 or so ever really seem chatty, and in most cases even if agendas overlap for some things, they remain conflictual for many things. So who do you write to? You can try to reach foreigners to enlarge your discussion pool, but this faces the same problems. Getting rid of the forums would not magically transform all of that activity to the game, much of it would simply be lost or redirected to IRC (which is often said to be no less hostile than the forums).
