Trench Wars Today

[Tyson]

TW forums' different categories and topics is a sign of a healthy community, not a sign of the decline of the zone. I would instead argue that this forum's wide range of thread topics have made this community stronger than if it were limited only to TW related threads.

Fun fact: of the 24 threads that Tyson has created since the name was registered in 2004, only 9 have been TW or SS related, and only 2 out of the 7 threads created in 2006 are TW related, including this one. Of the 24, 10 have been soccer-related, and 4 have been video game related (including one thread about the game FIFA 2004 which I included in both categories.) Now, I'm not trying to make Tyson to look like a hypocrit here; he's saying that's how these forums are right now, and he didn't say anything about being any different himself. Instead, I have a question to ask him: do you talk about other video games or soccer on the various in-game chats? If you do then these forums are only an extension of what you talk about in-game, and thus a reflection of the game itself and not really that "detached" from the game.

The above arguments (not talking about Troll Kings post here) are just people defending themselves. Still havent seen anything that is actually worth quoting.

Okay, now Trolls post is a little different. I wont defend myself, although I probably could if I went into my whole post history and picked out the itty bitty stuff and then lashed back at you and then you'd lash back at me etc... But that would run off topic and its really needless. Whats done is done. I would probably say that at some point on these forums I too got caried away in general discussions and other sub-categories. Its addictive but I did not allow it to carry me too much away from the game. You probably have not seen me inside TW though Troll but almost anyone that knows me will tell you how competitive I am and how much I try to win. I am always practicing and always trying to bring the competition to the enemy.

Alright let me move on. You say that the forum has expanded the Trench Wars community. Okay thats your view. How though? But can you also explain to me if and why I am wrong when I say that this very same TW Community has detached itself from the in-game community. GENERAL DISCUSSION alone has more posts and threads than Trench Wars, Trench Wars Leagues and Trench Wars Divisions combined. Do you not find that ridiculous? Seriously, and then we wonder why TWL's interest is at an all time low.

Whats my solution?
I dunno, but I am calling for a change and by the looks of some of these replies I doubt anything will happen. After all United Force would have never gotten its rematch vs Sk8 had there not been a shit load of posts in our favor. The forum is the driving muscle behind all decisions. Who cares what some Joe thats playing ?go base right now thinks. its all about who is online here, right now at this moment.

[Sleuth]

zOMGz OLD TW WTFZ COMZBACK old tw is old, it wudnt be old tw if it was new cuz new tw would be old tw why new tw not old tw becuz old tw is not new tw cuz new tw is new tw.

??? wtf

[Jerome Scuggs]

what dude

we spend hours in-game discussing threads (heh, like this one) etc... i dont see how it's detaching at all. shit, the only reason i play subspace is because of these forums, not vice versa.

if you blame the forums for the reason TWL is sucking...no, i can't even make up some bogus analogy.

[Troll King]

I didn't say this forum helped the community grow, I said this forum has helped make the community stronger. Because of this forum, I know a lot more about a lot of people here than I knew about them from in game. This forum has helped us learn more about each others' interests and personalities. That has helped to reshape and redefine how we view each other in the game.

If one of your concerns is that the TWL forum doesn't have enough posts, then you have to remember that Leagues are seasonal. Up until about a week ago, the TWL forum was very busy. Once the season ends though, there's a drop-off. There isn't much to talk about during the off-seasons except for the whining about why the next season hasn't started yet. Compare that to General Discussion where conversation can go year-round, and you'll have an obvious explanation for the discrepancy. Factor in as well the fact that TWL participants are a small minority of the entire TW community, it's no wonder that the average player has more to say in a General Discussion forum than a TWL forum. That still hasn't stopped TWL from being the third busiest forum, and even busier

As for the regular TW forum, my question to you is: what more can or needs to be said that's TW-related? There's only so much that people can talk about, and for the most part, they already do talk about it. There's only so much that can be said, really, whereas new potential GD topic crop up by the minute.

[Liquid Blue]

The above arguments (not talking about Troll Kings post here) are just people defending themselves. Still havent seen anything that is actually worth quoting.

So when you don't have an answer to something, you're just not going to respond to a post and claim it's people defending themselves? Who cares if general discussion has more posts, the amount of posts on a sub-forum in no way shape or form reflect the amount of people's interest in TW, there are hundreds that play in the zone that don't bother coming here. If everyone that was active in TW posted on this board, you wouldn't even have room to complain, because there would be dozens of rivalry topics, flame-wars and bickering all over this board. Your other points? I talked about those in my previous post, which had no mention of my life yet is supposedly still grouped in together with "defending myself".

[PH]

Fuck Trench Wars. Fuck it up its stupid ass.

[Tyson]

Sure OTHER FORUMS have helped strenghten, strenghten the relationship between 15-20 members that continuously circle that section that is. It hasnt really helped expand the popularity of Trench Wars. So what am I proposing? Cut down the whole OTHER FORUMS section but leave only General Discussions. That should be enough.

Start with that and move onto bigger changes.

[Troll King]

I had another response prepared but your post confused me a little bit. Could you clarify what you meant a bit first?

[Liquid Blue]

That idea will not do anything to help the popularity of TW, and you don't even give any reason why you think it would.

[Dameon Angell]

Giving people only one forum to talk in would cause disorganized chaos. The reason most forums seem "popular" is because you have 1 forum with people talking about: Sports, Music, Gaming, Nightlife, Politics, Spammy Junk, and etc*. When you have everything in one forum the threads that are made goto the bottom quite fast and nobdy is able to read them, except a select few. This, then leads to the act of trolling and bumping old threads, cause they never got their 15 minutes to be read and discussed. We, as a forum, are fortunate enough to have the luxury that we don't have to resort to bumping/trolling to get our thoughts heard to the forum playerbase. This is because we have a wide variety of discussion boards.

I know your idea is "Cut out all the discussion boards that aren't about SS, so we can only talk about SS which would make SS stronger." Basically, what would happen is you would just get people talking in 1 forum instead of 5 which would turn into a disorganized spam mess.

[Epinephrine]

Although I only ever check the TW forum, the General Forum, the TWL forum and the Staff forum, I don't see any harm by having other forums. So what if people want to discuss other stuff?

If they want to meet people here on forums so be it. I see the forum community as intrinsically different from the game community except for TWL forum. I'd never talk to most of the people in game that I reply to on the forums if it wasn't for the forum. Having the forums doesn't make me play less.

Actually I see it as the opposite because sometimes I won't play for weeks and I see something interesting mentioned on forums and I decide to play again to check out said interesting thing.

[Tyson]

There is really no need for all of these sub-categories for a group of 15-20 people who are on there constantly posting. World of Warcraft is massive when compared to Trench Wars and they only have General Discussions. And even there its filled with topics about World of Warcraft. If anything, cuting out the other sections of the forum such as Sport, Links for the young at heart, Musical Differences, Useless Crap will make it easier for the moderators to monitor things since they will only have General Discussions.

If it were up to me I'd only leave the following:

Trench Wars Leagues
Trench Wars
Helps and Hints
General Discussion
Trash Talk

But I am not the one who makes decisions, sadly everyone surfing this thread right now has more authority than the people that play this game. I already gave an example of that with UF vs Sk8. And this thread alone is an example of that as well. Look at all the negative replies, I am obviously intruding into someones niche. Hmm....

But dont worry, nothing will happen. The forum has spoken and thats that. From here on, the replies to this thread really dont matter. If your intention is to defend yourself there really is no need to. Majority of the forumers dislike this idea so nothing will happen. Heh, if you gotta fight this much to change something on here, than imagine how much of a struggle it is to change something in-game. I dare not ask why none of you have looked at my other two arguments. Now that would be something the forum would really have to look into. I'd love to hear what you Troll, Sleuth, Do the Fangoo, Jeannys and some of you others think about them. Some of you are from Toronto, we could even go out to Tim Hortons and discuss these massive changes over a double double??

[Jerome Scuggs]

World of Warcraft is massive when compared to Trench Wars and they only have General Discussions.

...and they are also vastly less personal that we are. I barely know 15-20 people on WoW.

Regardless, you are still wrong. They have an Off-topic section, and in almost every realm forum, the discussion is barely on-topic. Threads that ARE on-topic generally don't stay so, getting threadjacked left and right.

[Troll King]

First of all, get off of the "defending yourself" tack you've been on. You're suggesting major changes and you have yet to convince anyone that those changes are warranted. When I responded you challenged me to show that this forum has strengthened the community, but if you want to change things then the onus is on you to show us that changes need to be made. I don't see the alleged "detachment" you keep bringing up, and others like Jerome have described how this forum has done the opposite effect. I'm beginning to think that you have a certain negative perception of this forum and how it operates and that's clouding your view, while for many of us, that negative perception is far from the reality. You're seeing problems where none really exist. Instead of accusing us of being too far detached from the in-game zone, it sounds more likely to me that you are too far detached from this forum to make such judgements about it.

As for the other two arguments, I do agree with strengthening the naming system so that it isn't just a free-for-all for making alt-nicks. This would strengthen many aspects of SS, not just TW, and bring a much-needed sense of professionalism. Unfortunately, this isn't something that TW staff can do anything about. This would require a major change in the client and billing server.

For your third point, I think that changing the naming system in your second point would help. Stricter roster size limitations would help as well, but I don't think changes in that area would be popular. At the same time, however, I don't think the popularity of TWL is a good way to measure the health of the zone. TWL has always been restrictive in nature that it affects only a small portion of the zone population, and any negative symptoms we see now are not signs of a current downturn in the zone's quality, but rather a sign of long-standing problems, and I mean years-old problems. It's a trickle-down system, and a downturn in TWL is the final repercussion while other areas of the zone, such as my pet concern, the quality of pubs, show the negative signs much earlier. If people suddenly realize something's wrong just because of the effect on TWL then they have been blinding themselves from the real problems for too long already.

[Epinephrine]

1) Troll King is right as always.

2) The sub-forums evolved precisely because people were posting too many unrelated topics in the main boards. It cluttered up the main boards with stuff no one cared about. Now they have a home, and to those who really want to discuss about it... so be it.

3) I don't see how subforums or the forum takes away from the game at all. Just because people post on forums doesn't mean they play less. I post when I'm at work or in the library sometimes because I have nothing better to do.