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im inclinde to agree with you also the role playing forum dusent show new posts on the main forum so not many people go there :( i think it should some way show when people have posted on it

I´m completely against closing it .
I´m more for making them more attractive to use and trying to get the few active RPers we have to DO something other than just sitting around and blabbering away.

Players of all communities demanded "separate RP boards" and now that we have them, all most of us do is complain about them.
I know, many of us don´t use them, but for the live of me I can´t really say why.

And separating the InGame boards of the three servers didn't help either in my book.

Now the three communities are getting more and more separated and having no inkling of how things are on Arispole and Aniro, I don´t now if there is any RP on these servers anyway.
Which I personally find very disappointing and sad.

The only thing I know is that on Leanon the so called RP Boards are mainly used for "semi OOC/RP" Word battles about OP-Fights between folks who aren't really into RP anyway, some very questionable posts by certain other players and a few "announcements" by the player councils.
Sometimes I think I´m the only one,apart from the Event Team, making regular and serious use of them. :(
Just like only me and very few others used the "old" ones...

If you must close something, at least leave the Lore-Wiki.
The RP-Boards weren't used for whatever reason I can´t figure out. So be it.

Dividing the RP and normal boards was a mistake in my book anyway. Just like these boards were.
How the hell are we supposed to show potential new players that we DO have an active RP community if nobody even truly uses the tools given to us? The RP Boards here included.
Mircha, you do speak "changing things" for the better InGame a lot. To help new players.
And now you want to delete the only RP visible to potential new players? Great!

Why don´t you post there, if you think they´re "out of date"?
Because its easier to post here, right?
But, oh... waitaminute... you don´t even post here, don´t you?
That´s sad, I think. Why?
Because RP is only InGame and not on a board. Am I right?
I even agree, in a way. I don´t much like board RP sessions, with long drawn out conversations and such.
But as tools to announce events and things we ourselves made up, they´re great.
So, why don´t you make use of them?

At the moment potential RPers interested in looking at our RP have NO WAY of seeing any activity at all if these boards over there are closed.
So, either potential new players get access to these (Ingame) boards somehow, or we can completely forget luring anyone interested in RP into this game, for lack of transparency.

These InGame boards have drawn players from all other boards and these are in horrible decline. Showing nothing of the once active community we do have.
On mmorpg.com people do state things like:
"They´re official boards are dead. Don´t bother going there."
Bravo!
So let´s close our last window to the outside world too and snuggle up in self imposed hermitage.
We´re more and more excluding other potential players from our Forum activities. And that just can not be good.

And anyone saying that "Other official boards aren´t that active as well" had better take a second look. For he is badly mistaken.

I say, leave the "old" RP boards and make them more attractive!
If possible, merge them with these here. Or as above poster said, make it so that we can see that something DID happen over there, apart from he few announcements shown already.

Just deleting a symptom, won´t solve the problem!

CU
Acridiel

i didnt say close them i siad make people know that there there by some way or another when you go on to the forums all areas show new posts the rp sections dont

Meh, we've been over this a million times already. All it boils down to is WG being too cheap and too stupid to realise people don't want to have to sign up to and check 5 different services in 5 different locations to find out what's going on. They've already got guild, alliance, and fan sites to worry about...

Centralising everything here is the way to go, but as usual it's been poorly implemented and isn't really fit for purpose.

As for the RP situation, well that's a whole other (even bigger) problem. There's no direction from WG, and therefore no point in the events, at least here on Arispotle.

Uhm, actually I agreed with you.
Did you read my whole post?
Sorry, it a bit long, but you´re defending yourself where it isn't necessary ;)

CU
Acridiel

my mistake i didnt read it all in one go befor i answerd forgive me :)

Only this one time *eG* ^^

I agree with Lylanea. Removing the off-game RP forums would only make the game more invisible to the outside world. However the problem (as already stated countless times on multiple places) is that we have 3 separate forums (IG, "old" off game, and RP off game), so the posts are scattered all over the place.

Ideally the IG forum would be the only one and visible to the outside world. There's no point in spreading ourselves thin when the player base isn't that massive. And also no point in hiding all our forum activity from the outside world when we could use more players coming in.

However, if things are staying how they are, then leave the RP forums. Like Lylanea, I also use them. =P

Hmm ..
We need to seperate the two aspects of this topic ..

The first is to have an active forum as some kind of "bait advertising", i.e. a forum to draw the interest of potential new players that prefer fine roleplay.
They'd see that they'll find an active and up-to-date RP here.

As second aspect I'd mention the practical benefits that would arise from using a central forum instead of multiple seperate ones.

Both ones lead to different "target designs" - that can be combined, however.
To fulfill the latter one, it "only" takes a Dev that merges all forums in a sensible manner into the ingame forum. It's usable from outside, too, so it fits the purpose.

To fulfill the first aspect, it needs someone to declare, which parts of the (merged) forums will be visible and browseable from outside by anonymous people.
Additionally, one needs to create a seperate interface, that only displays (and "wraps") the forums. As one can see, the ingame forums software is designed mainly for ingame browsing, and doesn't only contain the forums, but all the other "apps", and need a login.

Last but not least, roleplay also happens in the seperated sub forums, i.e. kara / kami / neutral and fyros / tryker / zoraï / matis / neutral. Especially the latter group seems to be designed with roleplay in mind, and is, as you know, only visible to citizen or members of the specific country or faction.
If you decide to keep the seperation, you'll hide rp content from interested viewers from outside.
If you on the other hand decide to open it up, it'll render the seperation and mutual concealment useles.

Either way, it's not sure if the community as such will benefit from it. It's quite questionable, if an active roleplay forum will give more initial impact to new players, than for example a good ingame experience.

I'd rather recommend to make the free trial account like it was when I joined the game in aug '06.
Completely free, open, without levelcap.
When I joined back then, I found a great community on Silan. It was literally alive, one could meet new interesting people everyday and have much fun, without the severity of "pro players" that noticably starts to come through after playing on mainland for a few weeks and months.
Silan was great. I spent 3 Months there before upgrading my account and porting to Pyr.


Which finally reduces to:
A great time on Silan will IMHO have much more impact on people's decision whether to stay and pay, or leave and lose, than any forum will ever have.

But for what about the mentioned practical reasons I'd agree with the previous speakers. (-> merged forums)

Edit: Just corrected some mistakes

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I think he's referring to the lore data at http://atys.ryzom.com (which though structured like a wiki can't be edited by the community).

It's a good resource, and should indeed be left in place.

ryzomnomnom.com isnt property of WG, its run by fans and players of the game, so that won't close anytime soon :P