Is this forum dying?

[vforvenator]

I remember when Warseer was a warhammer rumour-mill thing called Portent. First time I've logged back in in literally years, and it looks incredibly quiet. Many boards here seem to have had no activity since last year. Is Warseer dying?

[Lost Egg]

I don't think its dying but it has been much quieter since it went down last year. I think it was down for a few months and I guess a lot of people wandered off and found new forums. Also, given the wide range of games out there these days I guess people are spread out over multiple forums and Facebook groups too.

Of course the answer is to post your minis and start some threads

[Commissar von Toussaint]

I remember when Warseer was a warhammer rumour-mill thing called Portent. First time I've logged back in in literally years, and it looks incredibly quiet. Many boards here seem to have had no activity since last year. Is Warseer dying?

If you've been away, you're part of the problem.

I do agree with you, though. It may be that the topics just aren't driving interest like they used to. Also, social media is sucking in a lot of the younger kids so when the older crowd went away while this was down, less new people replaced them.

I guess the mods would be able to say how traffic is doing overall, but I've noticed that threads topics that once would ignite ferocious flame wars now languish. I do my part when I can, but it's also sad to see that the last comment on a thread came from me months ago. Still, I monitor the place in case something lively pops up.

[Angelwing]

During the shutdown, I think many just moved onto social media and didn't come back. I'll be honest I only check in once in a while now, and hardly anything is changed. And its not just warseer, other forums I used to frequent are pretty quiet too.

[Lost Egg]

I still check Warseer everyday as while social media is good its much more haphazard than a forum, the same posts and questions keep popping up every few days so I just find myself skimming through quickly for anything that grabs my eye. Forums are much more organised and easier to search through.

[Captain Brown]

I remember when Warseer was a warhammer rumour-mill thing called Portent. First time I've logged back in in literally years, and it looks incredibly quiet. Many boards here seem to have had no activity since last year. Is Warseer dying?

It is nowhere near as busy as it once was. Really it will depend on if members continue to post/update and new members join. After the crash and the loss of the original galleries many folks left. More left waiting for the site to come back as it was down for about half a year. Repairs and upgrades are slowly going forward, but new members could not join for many months.

However the more folks return and decide to post then the site will recover, if they do not...well then it will not...although when Portent first started there were only a handful of posters at first.

Cheers,

CB

[Commissar von Toussaint]

Is not GW's diminished stature also a factor?

Think about the GW presence 15 years ago. It was dominant and there were not nearly as many alternatives for tabletop gaming.

Now Fantasy is gone, and with that a strong link to the RPG market that used to use those figures to buff up their collections. I know that's how I got into GW - buying their inexpensive models to fill out my D&D campaign.

[Commissar von Toussaint]

It's kind of telling that three days later I can reply to myself on a thread about diminishing posting without having anyone in between.

[Lost Egg]

I didn't respond as I largely agreed with you.

GW has inadvertently spawned countless small companies from former employees as well as others who seek to emulate the games they dumped (Necromunda etc). It was in many ways inevitable. Of course Kickstarter has also allowed many small companies to start up and even if some do vanish a few remain and grow ever stronger. I think the whole gaming world has shattered into countless pieces, there are loads of ranges, genres and games out there and anyone who has an idea and enough capital or time can sell it. Some people consider it a golden age of gaming but I'm not sure...there may well be too much choice, the total gaming budget spread too thin and smaller companies are likely to suffer as their customer base spreads their money over more and more companies.

[mughi3]

I have been on these forums for what, a decade now, I guess I should finally comment here.

The warseer forums are one of the largest or were along with the likes of DAKKA DAKKA for general 40K and gaming forums. when it comes to the forum itself struggling I think having the site go down and have to be rebuilt hurt it substantially. especially with online competition from things like facebook, discord etc....

Part 2 would be the evolution of GW and 40K in general from it's original creation in rogue trader/second edition as a narrative driven crazy imbalanced narrative game more akin to war machine to it's 3rd-5th edition changing to a competitive -ever in search of game balance- army battle game thanks to GW pushing GTs and rogue trader tourneys . personally i think some of the best lore based army rules (not some of the core game rules) were in 3rd edition. before the great search for "balance" took over the hobby. it's why I still think BFG is the best game GW has made in the 40K universe because it never lost that narrative backbone.

Part 3 is a direct result of GWs business model. most people love the universe and stay in the game for that reason. the models have gotten very nice over the years but the extreme cost buy-in as well as the rules conflicts/writing in previous editions helped drive the creation of new game systems/companies to compete with GW. warmachine is the obvious one as people were jumping ship enmass with the release of the abomination that was 6th ed. Others have always had or have built a strong following-battletech has always been around and still has dedicated fans, infinity has maintained a strong presence with a host of other smaller titles still plugging along like mantics kings of war (now that it has replaced the spot left by WHFB), paolo's dust, X-wing, malafaux, just to name a few where the cost of building an entire force is equal to buying 2 or 3 basic units you would need for starting a normal 40K full army.

While we are passionate about our wargaming hobby rivaling even the most dedicated sports fans for example it is still a niche market with a very limited global market by comparison. (I WISH it was bigger but I am happy with an active local community).

Part 4 is video games. seriously easy, great immersion, graphics, hours of play and you don't even need to leave the house. most large titles have a budget as large or larger than some Hollywood movies.

[Captain Brown]

All very good points mughi3.

One additional is that we have to convert the site over to HTTPS now as many people get warnings when they visit or work sites block simple HTTP.

Commissar von Toussaint, I post updates on my painting logs all the time and there may or may not be any other members posting in between...but yes with an average of 10 members on to forum at any given time...there is not the activity.

Cheers,

CB

[Commissar von Toussaint]

All very good points mughi3.

One additional is that we have to convert the site over to HTTPS now as many people get warnings when they visit or work sites block simple HTTP.

Commissar von Toussaint, I post updates on my painting logs all the time and there may or may not be any other members posting in between...but yes with an average of 10 members on to forum at any given time...there is not the activity.

Cheers,

CB

I should be clearer - I think people are still visiting the site, but they aren't saying anything.

Has there been a heated discussion here in the last year? I mean old-school flame war where mods need to caution people.

I don't think so. My Conqueror design thread is now over 100,000 views, but people very rarely comment. I think a lot of threads are similar.

So traffic may be comparable, but the discussion isn't what it used to be. Maybe people are just mellowing out and don't feel to the need to argue about which army is broken any more.

[mughi3]

I see your point, I have many postings that have hundreds or thousands of views with not a single comment. I think the thing is- it has to be really important to a person now to make the effort to put fingers on keyboard. Of my 2 biggest threads, as far as number of comments goes, was a firestorm player base debate I started with 40K when we went from 5th to 6th edition and I voiced my displeasure with hull points (funny now since they basically went with a version of the HP/wounds we suggested in the topic about the number of them a model should have in the game. I still hate them even now and want my vehicle damage chart back!) . and my ongoing battletech blog that brings out the mech fans.

I think it is especially true now in the age of instant gratification and oversaturation of social media online compared to back when the internet was just getting going in the mid 90's when forums like this one were basically the only outlet.

[Commissar von Toussaint]

I see your point, I have many postings that have hundreds or thousands of views with not a single comment. I think the thing is- it has to be really important to a person now to make the effort to put fingers on keyboard. Of my 2 biggest threads, as far as number of comments goes, was a firestorm player base debate I started with 40K when we went from 5th to 6th edition and I voiced my displeasure with hull points (funny now since they basically went with a version of the HP/wounds we suggested in the topic about the number of them a model should have in the game. I still hate them even now and want my vehicle damage chart back!) . and my ongoing battletech blog that brings out the mech fans.

I think it is especially true now in the age of instant gratification and oversaturation of social media online compared to back when the internet was just getting going in the mid 90's when forums like this one were basically the only outlet.

My Conqueror thread added more than a hundred views over the last couple of days. Still no new comments.

I wonder if devices are also a factor. It's hard to type on the little screen, but easy to read and browse.

Back in the day, one had to have a desktop pc to access the internet with a full-sized keyboard right in front of you.

But now, you can use a tablet or phone. So people browse but don't comment because it takes too much time and effort to write.

I think that may be the answer because all the other suggestions were in place back when this place was hopping. Console games are no longer new, and online gaming has been with us for more than a decade.

What is different is how people access the internet.

[Bloodknight]

I wonder if devices are also a factor.

I would think so. Typing on phones and tablets is annoying.

[Commissar von Toussaint]

I would think so. Typing on phones and tablets is annoying.

Add into that the fact that much of what can be said, has been said.

GW price hikes have been going on for 30 years. At some point you either stop buying or stop caring.

My sense is that we aren't getting the same intake of new gamers eager to talk about their fresh, exciting hobby. This could be because GW isn't getting as many or the ones it is getting aren't really interested in talking about it.

Which brings me back to the lurker thing. Seeing the fall in traffic, I try to comment and stir the pot a bit, but it doesn't always work.

It is strange to go into a forum and find the most recent threads are by my in line after line.

One other thing I think would help: collapsing the site a bit. The subforums need to be deleted, especially the ones with zero posts. Too much empty space and less opportunity to stumble on a tangential topic that I normally would go looking for but still find interesting.

[mughi3]

GW price hikes have been going on for 30 years. At some point you either stop buying or stop caring.

Yeah pretty much this for me.

the last few 40K themed purchases I have made are 3rd party micro scale or mantic stand-ins. most of my 28mm gaming has switched over to dust or warmachine. the cost savings for using other manufacturers or other skirmish level game systems is mind boggling.
Just using my last game of dust axis for a decent 150 point game for comparison(mostly battlefront production runs so super cheap $$ )
.heavy command squad-$10
.X2 heavy fire support squads (they used to come 2 in a box)-$15
.gorilla assault team-$10
.command transport walker-$15
.luther medium walker-$15
.laser heavy walker-$25
.X2 blitz laser fighters-$30
total cost for a full army rounded off-$95
a comparable 40K force would equate to-
.terminator captain/apothecary/tech marine $20/35/45
.fire support centurions (3) X2-$156
.assault centurion squad (3)-$78
.damocles command rhino-$62
.dreadnought-$46
.doredeo dreadnought-$108
.X2 storm hawk interceptors-$110
total cost-$660

One other thing I think would help: collapsing the site a bit. The subforums need to be deleted, especially the ones with zero posts. Too much empty space and less opportunity to stumble on a tangential topic that I normally would go looking for but still find interesting.

That would make sense, spreading the player base so thin via sub-forums might work better if we had dedicated sticky topics inside a main forum like "general GW"

[sigur]

I would think so. Typing on phones and tablets is annoying.

And they suuuuuuuuuuck. But yeah, I mostly blame the downtime(s) plus social media (as sucky as smartphones) and simply the fact that GW took over the whole "rumours" thing. There are no rumours any more. Not for like 10 years or longer. Remember how in 2004-ish we basically had most of the codices a month before release. Now GW made this incredibly smart marketing move with that community site and took the wind out of the sails of anything rumours-related completely.

The main problem is Facebook. Which is a horrible site, but for some reason people view it as a useful alternative to proper forums. Not the least because GW stuff advertises to youngsters, who have a greater affinity for replacing proper forums with social media.

[Late]

A
One other thing I think would help: collapsing the site a bit. The subforums need to be deleted, especially the ones with zero posts. Too much empty space and less opportunity to stumble on a tangential topic that I normally would go looking for but still find interesting.

This, there are 50 different subforums here most totally useless.

[Arnizipal]

I think we lost a lot of folks to Dakka when Warseer went down.
That forum is still doing well despite the current rumour climate and GW's long history of price hikes.