F2P Forum Abilities

[Arishanya]

Many of you are frustrated with the restrictions on Free-to-play users and their abilities within the new forums. Some of you are questioning why you could post in the general boards in the old forums, but here you are limited only to the Free-to-play section.

The setup was always planned to be that Free-to-play players have this forum to ask questions or discuss with others. In the past that technical setup did sometimes now work which resulted in some players that were Premium at some point and then went Free-to-play kept having access to the other forums as well. But that was actually not intended.

Keep in mind:

If we see for some reason a change is needed in how the forums are setup access wise, we will of course reconsider. For now it seems to work well but we will, as mentioned, keep an eye on things to see if it works as intended.

There are subforums to the Free-to-play forums. Premium and Free-to-play players alike can post within these subforums so conversations by the entire AoC community can easily be had.

• General Discussion
• PvP Discussion
• Classes (including the possibility to flag new threads with the related class name for better overview)
• Technical Issues and Solutions
• Off-topic

All of the above still has some of you unsettled. And I understand that, as I am sure does Tarib and the others at Funcom involved in making the forum access decisions. However this is what is currently set in place.

I do not want to discourage anyone from discussing these restrictions, as it may appear, but what I do want is for you to discuss these restrictions constructively.

We do have Social Guidelines that apply to each and every board within these forums. If you have something to say regarding your limits (or the limits of others) within the AoC forums, please be certain you are adhering to these guidelines before you post.

If you have a suggestion, please back it up with the advantages of implementing said suggestion. Stating you have a problem with something, but not providing a solution, or a valid reason why you have the problem to begin with is not advantageous to getting a resolution for your problem.

But please remember the rules/restrictions are in place intentionally, and respect them as they are. You do not have to agree with them, you do not have to like them, but to keep the community moving forward, you do need to respect them.

If you have anything you would like to share regarding these forum restrictions for Free-to-play users, post them in this thread. Please, keep your posts constructive.

And always keep in mind that it is up to Funcom, or more specifically the Senior Community Manager, to determine if the access, structure, and setup of these forums should change.

[Kurt2013]

If you keep to this policy, please consider the following small suggestion:

Right now (no matter if premium or not) an unlogged user can see every other thread and subforum, but NOT the "free to play" one. To see it, i have to log in. This seems to me like undermining your intention of that subforum as question- and helppool...since any user just checking the forums for anything new, will not see that forum (unless logged in). And many users just use a bookmark and don't use autologin or log in just for checking.
So, maybe make the "free to play" forum as visible as the others?

[HaremBunny]

First I have a request: Can you make the Social Guidelines available on the new Global Forums?
It seems they are not available here. Atleast i can't find them.
Edit: I can't find any posts older than this one: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=42
The date on the Social Guidelines: 15th May 2008 until 15th June 2100
So maybe it is a date or access problem?
But Social Guidelines SHOULD be Stickie anyway

Second is the reason for the above question:
Don't you think you are forcing people to break Social Guidelines?
I can't quote but I will copy/paste my point.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Don't

Spam. Spamming is posting the same thing several times, or posting without any real content. "Bumping" (posting to move a thread up on the forum list) and cross-posting (posting the same thread in several forums) are examples of spam.

Before starting a thread, take a look around the forums and see if the issue is being discussed elsewhere. There'll usually be one or two threads with most of the activity there, and spin-offs that don't merit their own thread will be closed quickly.

-----------------------------------------------------------

By splitting up forums this harshly I am afraid we will see a lot of double threads.

[Kurt2013]

One of the reasons I didn't want to state my personal opinion is because I don't expect you to like it.

Strictly as a player of the game, I can see where you're coming from and I get it. I wouldn't like being restricted to the F2P section either.

As a past guild leader, managing my own guild's forums, I know how technical segregating players on the forums can be.

As a moderator, I get more information from the Funcom side of things, and what they're doing makes sense on a large scale.

It's kind of like a 'don't shoot the messenger' situation. I see all sides of this, and I'm a bit torn on which side I personally want to stick with. I did post this thread for discussion on the F2P account forum abilities (so we can keep it all in one place) in order to help everyone. Hopefully we can come to an understsanding - whether that means the forum abilities change or not, I cannot say.

This limitation is not restricting f2p players...it also restricts premium players not logged in and just browsing and every other one, who is interested in the game!

The purpose enforced by the f2p invisibility can only be to blind everyone considering subbing or playing (but without a login yet) to what is written inside the f2p section (because this is what the current approach does now). This approach is so wrong in countless ways imo...

Do you really think people are going only to troll and write bad things here??? Don't you think the people who got a login and gone premium and got somehow a bad impression are not going to troll and post bad things in the premium sections???

Have the ones in charge considered the impression this "hidden" forum creates to new players? Why can f2p players not even edit their posts?

Another example...why make it so hard for premium players and f2p players to communicate with each other? communication does not always include bad things...you are risking to create a self-fullfilling prophecy here.

Even if your blending out and seperation policy would work...you are still creating an immense and unnecessary workload of moderation (since in worst case you have to watch three threads containing the same discussion (on TL, on open forum and on the "private" f2p forum)).

The whole topic brings up some questions, i would like to see answered, if possible:
- Is it allowed to copy/paste contents of the f2p forum part to the according "open" forum discussions and vice versa?
- If i post the same things here and in the "open" section, will they be moderated and deleted as "double posts"?
- Is it allowed to link contents of the f2p forums into the "open" forums?

[Arishanya]

A few updates/notes. I will reply to other mentioned concerns shortly.

F2P users should now be able to edit their own posts. This was not intentional, so it has been corrected. If you continue to have issues editing your own posts, please PM me.

The Social Guidelines can be found here: http://forums.ageofconan.com/announcement.php?f=2&a=1 or by clicking -> Social Guidelines.

[Arishanya]

So, maybe make the "free to play" forum as visible as the others?

Currently this is working as intended. If necessary, this can be reviewed. For now this is about all I can say on this issue.

By splitting up forums this harshly I am afraid we will see a lot of double threads.

I do see your point about splitting up the forums and double posts, however it is something we had to work with on the old forums, and will continue to work with here.

The whole topic brings up some questions, i would like to see answered, if possible:
- Is it allowed to copy/paste contents of the f2p forum part to the according "open" forum discussions and vice versa?
- If i post the same things here and in the "open" section, will they be moderated and deleted as "double posts"?
- Is it allowed to link contents of the f2p forums into the "open" forums?

Moderators know that if something is posted in both a F2P section and a Premium section, it should be left as is. No one would be given an infraction/ban for 'spamming' like this (and if someone does....I got some re-training to do! )

I don't see a reason why you can't copy/paste/link something from the F2P section to the 'open' section, or vice versa, as long as that discussion isn't already being had in the location you want to carry it over to. (IE if a disscussion is going on in F2P about let's say a quest how to guide. Posting that in the 'open' section as well is just fine - as long as that quest guide isn't already posted in the 'open' section.) Having that discussion two places in the 'open' section would be considered the double post.

[Ophyra]

First things first:

Thx Arishanya for creating a thread to deal with these f2p forum issues.
And thx for fixing the editing^^

Now to the issues themselves:

When we say that we would like some changes or we propose some changes, pls don't answer with

'it's working as intended atm'.That doesn't mean anything.

Example:

User: Can you give f2p players access to other parts of the forum as well?
Mod: It's working as intended atm.
User: No s***, i didn't ask whether it was working as intended, i asked if it was possible to

change the way it is working.Huge difference there.

Moving on...

-You are finally bringing two communities together, and yet you are creating a new division.

-Former premium players could post on the forums for months and months, and FC knew about it and didn't do anything.That in itself is not surprising, but the point is that it didn't hurt anything.It proved to be working nicely.

-Ppl looking for class discussions will surely not go and read about it in f2p forums.Check the difference between the class forums.It is staggering.No1 wants to write about the same things in two diff sections of the forum.And when one section is full
of activity from the start while the other one has 4-5 topics altogether, guess where ppl are going to go?
Also check 'PvP discussion' thread on f2p and on premium forums.Need i say more?

-You are punishing former premium players with this.For the time and money we invested into this game, we deserve to have the full forum access at least.I was looking forward to discussing my two fav classes with US players, but i guess it wasn't meant to be.

-Sub should be bought for AA\Khitai\Raids, not for forum access.

-Having more foum activity surely will not hurt AoC, as our population isn't exactly large.

-Trolls will always be there, names that tend to gather some notoriety can easily be banned, if i'm not mistaken that's the part of moderators job.

-I could go on and on, but if you don't see how wrong the current system is, no ammount of arguments will help.

[cins]

Speaking personally, as a paying customer I hadn't even looked at these forums until today. My eyes automatically glaze over them after seeing the term "f2p". While I'm not the ultimate authority on forum usage, I'm sure I'm not the only one and it's probably a bad sign.

[Argantes]

while mentioning Forum Abilities, Private Messages sent items shows 0 and I can´t see any, even after I´ve sent a few of them... bug or feature? (premium)

[Arishanya]

while mentioning Forum Abilities, Private Messages sent items shows 0 and I can´t see any, even after I´ve sent a few of them... bug or feature? (premium)

This is an easy fix. Go into your User CP and make sure you have the box checked to save your sent mail in your outbox.