Bye Bye Official Class Forums, Hello Official Role Forums

Kenzi October 30 2008 1:18 pm 15 Comments

Come November 6, the official class forums as we know it will no longer exist. Instead Blizzard will be going to a role specific forum system.

Tanking
Healing
Damage Dealing

Here is the blue post with the announcement. How do you feel about not having class specific forum? Will this further strengthen the community developed sites, like this one!

Netheara
With the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King and the many changes the expansion brings to classes and mechanics, we have decided to update our forums to make it easier for players to hold constructive discussions. To that end, we have created three role-based forums — Tanking, Damage Dealing, and Healing. Why?

Common ground for common roles. The new structure provides central places for players of diverse classes and specs to discuss their common roles. Until now, there was no one obvious forum for a holy paladin to discuss Arena healing tactics with a restoration shaman, or for a protection warrior to talk tanking mechanics with a feral druid. This often led to splintered, fractured, and redundant discussions. In addition, the original class forum structure never properly took the impact of talents into account, lumping together a shadow priest and a holy priest (for example) when that didn’t necessarily make sense.

Celebrate diversity! While a tank tanks and a healer heals, the specific ways each class and talent build go about these roles are very distinct — and the addition of new abilities in Wrath of the Lich King will continue to add even more ways to play. The new forum structure will still be a place for a frost mage (for example) to discuss tricks of the trade with other frost mages, while at the same time facilitating an understanding of the unique tools that rogues or other damage-dealers have to perform similar functions.

Help us help you. The new forums will also allow the community team and developers to follow discussions and gather feedback more effectively as the game continues to evolve — which, ultimately, translates to a better World of Warcraft for you.

The current individual class forums will remain active for now, but this may change. You will be able to use the new role forums tomorrow via the links below:

Tanking:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=7287131

Healing:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=7287130

Damage Dealing:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/board.html?forumId=7287129

This also hold true for the EU forums, or course. Here is the link to that post.

Spread the DK:

15 Comments »

Uchorhu said:

I can see their logic, but the class forums are also useful. Why not have class forums AND role forums?

# 30 October 2008 at 1:20 pm

Janus said:

Probably because no one would use the role forums if there are class forums. Bad habits are a bitch :)

I can see a big mess though in the DPS Forum, you got more than a dozen specs in there, could be very messy if you’re looking for something specific.

But then again i don’t go to the live forums anyway since people do don’t post anything worth reading there anymore

# 30 October 2008 at 2:02 pm

FadedC said:

Hmm….it does seem kind of silly. A rogue and a warlock dps so differently that a post which is useful to one is useless to the other. All it does is make it much harder to find useful posts.

# 30 October 2008 at 2:12 pm

Gravity said:

Kenzi, I can see an argument to use similar structures here. For example the 5-man forum is very quiet and could be removed possibly, and its content moved into the raid forum.

We have a tanking forum (thanks!, that’s my home).

We don’t have a clear ‘dps’ forum though.

# 30 October 2008 at 2:36 pm

Zumlin said:

Doesnt seem like their best idea..

Maybe im missing the bigger picture, but this is just going to make it painfully awkward when looking for threads that help with your class directly.

I can see their reasoning i guess, maybe it’ll be easier for them to moderate .. but im sure most people aren’t looking forward to drudging through 5 pages of threads just looking for the ones that have helpful info about their class.

Personally im looking forward to 1 class in the role forum getting a nerf and all other classes in that roll having to deal with their Thread spamming \o/

# 30 October 2008 at 4:28 pm