Muppeteer

I hope they havent all jumped ship already but since this is my last chance to ask and when I previously did this via a PM I was told there was no help available, so I will try asking publicly in case there is someone who can help. Just like the other volunteer mods on this forum, I am also part of the Privateer program due to being a moderator on the WoWs Steam forum. Myself and the other couple of volunteer mods over there seem to have been forgotten by the program and havent received any of the normal stuff that other Privateers have. We cant make contact with the WG manager on Steam (yes we have tried), our direct contact is in Russia and hasnt been seen online for months (and rather worryingly is of an age to be drafted) and when I contacted support about this I was told "speak to your WG contact" (and yes, we mentioned that the issue was we couldnt reach our WG contact). Myself and the others have been mods for over five years and put in a lot of effort and hours helping new players and managing the forum. Recently we are feeling like we are invisible and are unable to get any help from the company that we have supported for a long time. So if any of you other volunteer mods, CMs or ST coordinators can lend a hand here or at least point us in a direction that would get us some support then it would be gratefully received. Also please anyone who happens to look at this - by all means link any people's tags who you think might be of help. Cheers.

While we are all mourning the loss of the forum I thought we should also remember that there are far far worse things in the world than losing an internet message board. I know @Migantium_Mashum hasnt been online for a while but personally I hope hes still fighting and still maybe sometimes checking in on things here. I hope hes had a laugh at the goings on this week :) Nothing more to say. Peace.

Farewell all. Speaking as someone who has been involved in the game since pretty much the beginning and who always kept an eye on these forums during those years this is indeed a sad day. A wealth of advice, guides, tips and discussions that have helped a vast number of players improve (and in many cases probably kept them actually playing the game) is about to be tossed into the digital abyss for reasons that have been explained but still seem tenuous at best. Thank you to all the helpful and knowledgeable people who have posted over the years and to those who I have encountered in battles. The last days In particular have shown the very best of this forum - people who are passionate about the game coming together to bemoan this poor decision and to send their best wishes to comrades they would never have known if it were not for a game with pretend warships in it. Its really highlighted why closing the forum is such an ill thought out idea - it shouldnt be about whats best for the company, it should be about this community (who have outdone themselves this week) who made the game the success it has been in the past. I will continue to play and I will continue to moderate on the Steam WoWs forum (at least for now) if any wish to pop in and say hello, so I have no doubt many of us will meet again, even if its down the barrel of our gun sights :) Best wishes to all. Mupp out.

I did speak to him previously about this but worth a try. Many thanks.

Many thanks. I actually PM'd @YabbaCoe earlier but its only been a little while so wasnt expecting a reply as yet. I hadnt seen him there before but his Steam alias actually posted in our Events section earlier which is what prompted me to try and make contact with him. Sadly its rather easier to do this here than on Steam. For now. If you could PM me the Privateer discord then that would also be appreciated. By all means check my account first - you will see test ships being previously added and maybe even my moderator flag :) Appreciate the help and please let me know if you have any other thoughts on this. All the best and thanks again.

Completely agree and judging by Ahskance's tears during the NA stream tonight I think a lot of the CM's/WG mods probably do care. The question is whether they are willing to give up their jobs due to caring. Probably not and I cant say I blame them. With that in mind they could still probably communicate the reactions of the community to those who actually make the decisions, and the best reactions of the community are the ones that are thoughtful, intelligent and passionate. And we have that in abundance here and and on NA. I doubt it will make a difference but honestly if someone like me who has been accused of being a "shill" for WG in the past is this disheartened by the whole thing then thats a fair indication that this is an incredibly bad piece of decision making. Its telling that someone like Flamu is being agreed with by pretty much everyone with his take on all this. I personally find him obnoxious at best but his video addressing the forum shutdowns was pretty much on point. Anyway, rage and abuse wont fix anything. Nor will impassioned and intelligent argument I suppose, but its got a better chance. o7

I would love to know what you are suggesting we could do that would actually have any chance of working. Its not like we can march on the WG headquarters or ask our MPs to intervene or bully the mods until they change the minds of the people who have made this very poor decision. I feel that the incredible amount of well thought out, reasonable, passionate and emotional responses to the forum closures here and on the NA forum are really all we can do. This change has forever blackened my opinion of a game and company that I have supported for years and I think some of the CMs have noticed the community reaction (and more than likely feel the same way too privately) but sadly there is very little they can do about it.

Its nice to see one of you guys actually saying how they feel about this rather than following the company line. Completely agree with your observations about the unneeded changes. All the best for the future.

Completely agree with this. @lup3s gave a lot to this community with the Christmas competitions (and everything else ofc) and @Leo_Apollo11 could always be relied upon to keep us updated with the latest news of note. Everyone else on the list also made a huge contribution to the forums over the years so they should all be saluted. I am sad you didnt add @SteelSharks to the list however since his videos and posts did often have me rofl'ing :)

They stated in the stream earlier that the volunteer forum mods have or will be offered the chance to moderate on discord so they havent been consigned to oblivion with the rest of the last 8 years of posts, guides, historical discussion and comedy. I suspect some wont bother judging by what I have seen from some of them but at least they have the option to do so if they wish. It was also interesting that while they mostly stuck to the company line about this ("its a good decision for the company" while conveniently ignoring the fact that it should be about the community and not the company and that a resource like the forum actually helps new players and aids player retention), Ahskance didnt seem completely sold on the whole thing and at one point was seen to be wiping tears away. I assume not from laughing too much. Boggsy however just laughed and joked and bragged about being the top played on NA in WV44 while seeming to not give a damn about how the community feel about all this. I gave up watching the stream after a while since the stream of consciousness chat was giving me a headache. People asked valid questions which were drowned out by spam and people saying "lets move on from this forum thing its boring" and others saying "I never used the forum so I dont care" and so on. Not at all like discord. Or something.

Personally been more active in WoWs forums elsewhere but I have (soon to be had) this one pinned on my browsers toolbar and would tend to check in most days to see what was going on even if I didnt logon to post myself. Its a great shame but I hope we will at least continue the tradition of saluting fellow forumites we encounter in game. Best wishes to all and thank you to everyone who made this forum what it was. M. o7

Well its good to hear that the volunteer mods havent been completely forgotten during all of this. The fact remains that the most important group have been completely sidelined - the players (customers) here that have supported the game for many years. While many have been critical of changes to WoWs, the fact that people even bother posting about these things shows that they actually care about the game and its direction. This thread is also a fine illustration of that. The overriding feeling I get from reading through these hundreds of posts is confusion and sadness about this decision. People care about this forum. People have made friends (and probably some enemies) here. This is a community that is being arbitrarily wiped from the face of the internet. Discord might work out but the early indications are that it is not fit for purpose as it is now, not to mention the many legitimate concerns people have raised about using a third party platform. I dont pretend to be an expert, but I do take notice when a venerable and respected member of the community such as LWM (who has frankly done more for the game than any WG employee) posted this yesterday: "The shut down doesn't make any kind of sense to me beyond someone higher up not wanting a message board for aesthetic reasons. It's not a "look" Wargaming wants for World of Warships anymore. And the more I look into the reasoning and replacements being suggested by their representatives, the more ignorant they sound. It appears Wargaming simply doesn't want there to be an official World of Warships forum. Discord doesn't replace the message boards. You don't burn down a library because people can read a book on their phone." She also discussed why this cant be a cost issue in her post but thats been covered and we have been assured its nothing to do with overheads. Ive been a supporter of the game pretty much since the beginning and while I havent always agreed with the changes that have been made Ive always thought that the good outweighed the bad. Until now.

Just got my first solo warrior in a while but doesnt seem worth the bother of posting it in the "What were your greatest games" thread. I wont list names but theres a lot of people who regularly post here that I will say hello to when I see them in game - all people I wouldnt have known from Adam without this forum. I think thats the saddest part of all this. Regardless of the outliers there was a lot of knowledgeable, friendly and helpful people who posted (and moderated) here. All those sub forums will be gone and not replaced as well - game guides, ship guides, clan recruitment (good luck with that working as a discord topic), historical discussions and even the news and devblogs that could be easily accessed without the bother of logging into a third party app via a quick click or two from your browser. Its all such a shame.

Yeah between the main thread on NA and this one we have over 12000 views and 800 or so replies in the last 6 hours or so. On a platform that is lacking in engagement. Heres the one from NA: https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/268019-end-of-the-forum/ I noticed LWM posted about this a little while ago stating - "Having played with Discord's "Forums" feature, it's not a viable place to post anything but short-form stuff." which is a fair indication that her detailed and valuable guides will also be a thing of the past. Also thank you @_Lupastro_ o7

Actually this is a fair point. There seem to be a whole lot of people saying they have no interest in joining the glorified chatroom that is Discord and the WoT and even WoWP forums still seem to exist. Why not a sub forum in one of them for those of us who want an actual forum rather than a place to spam heart/aubergines emojis.

The Steam forum tends to be rather more quiet than here, although it does have flurries of activity. All this has been posted about but not been properly commented on as yet. The worldwide WoWs Steam forum is there if you wish to engage :) https://steamcommunity.com/app/552990/discussions/0/

Thank you by the way @Seraphice and other WG people for the answers. I would be interested in knowing what you personally feel about all this but I suppose you have to keep to the company line in relation to this discussion. I do have a question you can maybe answer however - what happens to the volunteer mods like @Excavatus and co who have dedicated 100s if not 1000s of hours to trying (and mostly succeeding) to keep this and the other regional forums civilised? As forum mods they are obviously part of the Privateer program and as such are given test ships for their moderation work (freely available info so dont think im breaking any NDAs there). Will they continue to be appreciated for their past efforts? Is the Privateer program going to be scrapped as well? I do hope that these people who have given so much to the community wont just be chucked out with the rest of the forum with barely a chance to say "bye!".

This seems fair enough when looking at it from the point of view of the company. I very much doubt that many of the people who post/posted on this forum (ie the customers) share this mindset. For most of us it was about engagement with each other, whether that was sending a salute to a fellow forum member we encountered in a battle, or sharing advice to newer players, offering congratulations to people on their epic matches or generally just having a chat. The other players are very important in a multiplayer online game. They are what keep it alive, not "official responses and contact with the company". Also has to be said that official news from WG will become less visible after this. I didnt find out about the forum closure from Discord.

I doubt that engagement numbers on Discord will be > Discord + official regional forums (including people who just click in for 5minutes to "read the headlines" without logging in while on a lunchbreak or whatever). With that in mind you are narrowing not increasing your potential audience. Ifs its been under discussion internally for a long time then once again it seems at best thoughtless to only give three days notice of it happening with zero consultation with the people who actually make the forum what it is, ie the posters and contributors. Or to put it another way, your customers. As others have mentioned, there is a whole lot of content and information that has amassed here and on the other regional forums over the years, and honestly in addition to everything else this is an archive of the games history both good and bad. While its all very well to say that "people can transfer it to the new platform", do you really think its likely that this is going to widely happen? There will be a vast amount of lost user made content and the game will be poorer and less informed as a result. Finally if its not a cost issue then whats the problem with keeping this place alive for those who still wish to use it. The volunteer mods are more than capable of policing the discussions. Destroying nearly eight and a half years of your customer's discussions, guides, suggestions, arguments, boasts about great matches, bad jokes and all the rest of it seems an extremely unwise business decision.

Honestly had to check the date to ensure it wasnt April 1st when I saw this. While I can sort of understand the reasoning behind it if engagement with the forum is dropping, its still a pretty weird decision to make the announcement a whole three days before the forum closes without any prior warning this was going to happen or any discussion with the community about a proposed change like this. Also has to be said that personally I often dont bother logging in daily but I will check the forum regularly in case of any interesting news or whatever appearing and im sure many others do the same. While a few people who post here only do so to have an argument or flex their ego, the vast majority do so because they love the game despite its many flaws. Pulling stuff like this is a massive middle finger to those people who have supported the game for many years. Genuinely saddened by this. Since I assume the forum infrastructure is quite closely tied in with the other things on the WoWs regional sites was it really that much of a cost or hassle keeping it running, especially since a lot of the forum moderation was done by unpaid volunteers? Very strange decision WG. Wont be joining you on Discord.

Yeah maybe. From what ive seen the majority of the CVs playing the mode would take 2 good strikes to kill them with Colossus as they sit unmoving at spawn but I suppose any decent CV player would have a fair chance of this if they brought a techtree or prem carrier instead of one of the support ones. Will have to give it a try anyway :)

You really should have added a "Do you think the concealed maneuvers trial is a success?" question after the "will WG think it is" question :) I wonder if anyone has taken a Collossus into the mode yet to murder the support CVs. Kind of tempted personally. Overall it seems an unnecessary addition and while I agree with the people who are saying its "not too bad" thats hardly a sweeping endorsement and is worlds apart from an actually positive response. CVs arent going anywhere so I suppose adding slightly weaker but (in theory) more team orientated ones into the game will maybe reduce the hate directed at the class as a whole. Probably not though.

Finally got round to trying the Concealed Maneuvres thing and having seen some people recommend Shimanto I took mine out for a spin. Cant say the new support carriers are particularly engaging to play with or against but I suppose some people will welcome slightly weaker CVs being in the MM mix if they make it through this test. Oh and while im here, I did this on NA last night :) Still less base XP than the Shimanto game though. Edit: Amused at the downvote for "boring" from our resident curmudgeon @Aethervoxx. I suppose for someone as skilled as him a 3.2k base xp game and a 7 kill game are "boring". I will try and do better. Get a life lol.

Even got a load of resets on the enemy sub when alone at end vs him and the enemy CV. Sadly time was against me and too many had suicided earlier in the match :(

Had a similar thing in a game on NA a while ago in a random battle. There was a division on both teams from the same clan and mid game my DD was being chased from a flag by an enemy Weimar. Our "friendly" WV44 (when it was still in test so this guy was a CC or ST) was right by him on the cap circle but didnt shoot his clanmate and instead shot at some guy 15km away who was on pretty much the same bearing as his friend. He also turned off his formidable secondarys (I double checked this part in the replay afterwards). The Weimar while being at point blank range for the BB didnt bother torping and instead continued to focus me as I dodged fire. I got away and helped secure the win but they were plainly not trying to kill each other due to being in the same clan. Its a real shame since I always enjoy facing clanmates and trying to sink them plus its plainly unsporting conduct. Is it against he rules though? Edit: I remembered I did upload the game in question to WoWs Replays so here it is: https://replayswows.com/replay/181997#stats