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[UPDATE: 15.05.2015]
We've started importing the old Private Messages into Chat. :) It's a process so you will see them gradually being added to your conversations.

[ORIGINAL]

Hi all,

Many of you probably already know this - from the various hints we dropped here and there - but for quite some time now we have been hard at work on the brand new My Account section.

Since this is a very vital part of your experience at GOG.com (basically the one place that's 100% yours), and its release day is approaching pretty fast, I wanted to give you some heads-up and a brief overview of the changes that we have in store for you. Read on! :)

New things dedicated to your games:
-- Shared user wishlist. Yes, this highly requested feature will finally make its debut along with the new My Account. With just a few clicks, you will be able to decide whether your wishlist is private (viewable only by you), shared with friends (viewable only by you and people from your friends list, which is the default setting) or shared with everyone (because why not? ;)). You will get a handy link to your wishlist that you can share wherever and with whomever you like (a GOG.com Account is not required to view a wishlist shared with everyone). :)
-- Advanced filtering. We decided that, since your collections are getting bigger and bigger with each passing day, this is the perfect time to introduce some robust filtering options to both the Library AND Wishlist. Now, finding all your RPGs with Polish localization and co-op will be… well... finally possible. ;) It’s worth noting that the filtering options are based on your collection (so if you have no games with a Polish localization, you will not see the Polish option in the language filter).
-- User tags for the Library. With the new My Account, you will be able to create your own tags (up to 50), assign them to your games and movies and later use them to even better navigate and filter your collection. You will be able to assign multiple tags to each item in your collection and doing so will be possible from both your shelf/list directly or from the game/movie details.
-- Orders history. As part of the transition into the new My Account, we are retiring the "gifts" section, but in its place we are giving you a list of ALL your past orders and ALL your gifts, including the ones that have been given to you (finally). The orders history can be tailored and adjusted to your liking with a few clicks (for example, you can change it to list gifts only).
-- Changelogs. You will be able to view game changelogs directly on the new My Account page within the game details overlay. Of course, not every game will have it, but we will be keeping the changelogs up to date for the most popular, latest titles the same way we are doing right now on the forums.
-- Better organization of the downloads list. We improved the way downloads are organized on the game/movie details overlay. It will be easier to download the correct OS and language version of our installers and see which goodies are part of which DLC.

New things dedicated to communication:
-- Friends list. Already introduced in GOG Galaxy, the friends system is making its way to the GOG.com website as part of the new My Account section.
-- Chat. Old and weary private messages are retiring and are transformed into a new, live chat system. Chat will be available from both GOG Galaxy and My Account. Don't worry, all your past conversations that were conducted via private messages will be imported and preserved in the chat (and you will now be able to continue them live!).

Smaller but notable improvements:
-- Proper game versioning. With the new My Account, we will start to display the actual game version in the downloads on the game details overlay, so you will be able to easily identify if the version you have on your computer is the latest one, or it needs updating.
-- Improved navigation. Now it will be easier to jump straight into the store page, support, and forums relevant to each item in your collection.
-- Locale settings. Change your preferred currency and website / newsletter language directly on My Account to have them stored within your profile.
-- Pagination. We brought back the much requested, tried-and-true pagination view to the new My Account. This change is dictated mostly by your convenience but also by performance / stability for accounts with bigger collections (and with better performance, we are improving your convenience at the same time:)). The default size of each page is 100 items, but we believe that with the myriad of new filtering options it won't be a problem.
-- Text titles. The new My Account will display game/movie titles in text form, both on the list and shelf views. No more deciphering the logos on small boxes! :)
-- Mobile device support. Yes, viewing My Account on your mobile device will no longer be a chore.
-- COMING SOON: Proper graphics and links for all titles. We are conducting a little clean up in this area. Pretty sooan all games should have proper graphics and links in place.
-- COMING SOON: 5 new shelf skins. We are starting with only 1 skin (the classic wood), but soon after release we will add a bunch of new styles. It's purely a visual thing, so we didn't want to focus on that before release. Since many of you requested new styles, we will be introducing them pretty soon.
-- COMING SOON: Improved searching. Soon, finding desired titles will be easier thanks to the search improvements that we'll be implementing on the new My Account. Also, as part of the solution, we will be changing the way that titles from a series are ordered (i.e. Broken Sword should always show up before Broken Sword 2).

Of course the full list of changes and improvements is much longer, but highlights should give you a nice overview of what is coming. Hope you like it already, and that you will love it when we release it in just a few days. :)

Lastly, I wanted to point out the two important things that all of you should keep in mind:
-- The change is mandatory. We love freedom of choice, and we love giving it to you whenever it's possible, but unfortunately in this case it's not possible. Maintaining two, completely separate products dedicated to the same things would negatively impact both of them on all fronts. Performance, scalability, our ability to improve and expand them, but most importantly your convenience - as some of the new features were not possible to implement on the old My Account - would all be impacted.
-- Manual sorting is no more. We have decided to skip this functionality because it was beyond our reach to deliver the quality we wanted to. We decided it would be better if we were focused on the numerous other options requested by you.

Hope all of this gives you a clear vision what to expect in the coming days. Also please rest assured that we already have plans on how to develop the My Account section in the near and distant future: what to add, what should be changed a bit, etc., but we are always open to your feedback - so jump in and share your opinion. :)

Take care,
Chamb & The Website Team
Post edited May 15, 2015 by Chamb
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Hi all,

Thanks for all the feeback and keep it coming! We are carefully reading every post in this topic and making some notes (but please understand we cannot respond to each of you ;)).

As for the chat replacing PMs - which seems to be to most hot topic - here are few more details:
-- By default you will be able chat with everyone on GOG.com - they don't have to be your friends.
-- You will be able to change you default privacy settings to "friends only" or block it completely.
-- You will be able to start conversation the same way you did with PMs - by finding specific user on GOG.com. Previously it was limited only to the forums, but with the new My Account we will be extending that to product reviews, community wishlist, GOGmixes (basically to every place user avatar and name appears on GOG.com).
-- You can chat with multiple people at the same time, but each conversation is 1:1. There are no rooms and/or group conversations.
-- The new chat interface look a lot like the PMs, so it will feel pretty familiar.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by Chamb
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Brasas: Sometimes I think GOG does not understand its core market demographic...
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mrkgnao: I actually think they understand their core demographic very well. It's just that you and I and most of the people posting in this thread are no longer part of it.
If I ever become part of any company's core demographic, please just shoot me...
OK, so now we know what's going to happen with your account, Chamb, but what about accounts of the rest of us?
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stg83: Well perhaps people would be less cynical if GOG took the time to gather proper feedback from the community beforehand instead of implementing changes that are to the detriment of the users like the half hearted library undbundling which caused a myriad of issues which are still unresolved. And now with the removal of manual sorting which is clearly important to many users that do not appreciate the lack of their preferred sorting option. So prior experience along with the general vagueness and lack of clarity in announcements, followed by non communication regarding specific decisions that are imposed without consideration in most cases, is what causes people to question every "improvement" even if it is well intentioned.
How do you gather proper feedback without making the changes? Just saying you can list what something is going to do all day, but you won't get any real opinion or feedback until you see it in action. Also I'd argue there getting feedback right now before making the changes yes? As far as the manual sorting, I get that... but some people should realize that sometimes features have to be removed for various reasons, doesn't mean it will stay gone forever.

For some of those people the improved searching and tags might be enough to replace that, they won't know until they use it...

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stg83: GOG assured everyone that the introduction of Galaxy would not affect the user experience on the website yet now it is constantly giving 500 internal errors along with some other glitches like hidden lower threshold posts for some users since the day the GOG Galaxy beta launched, which does not exactly inspire confidence that the implementation of the new My Account section will go without any hitches. I do sincerely hope it does go really well and drastically improves our experience by providing useful features that are actually beneficial to all the users whether they use the optional Galaxy client or not.
I wouldn't go that far, I mean they made it clear it wouldn't change how GOG does things on the site... which I'm willing to say that have been true to for the most part. They never said Galaxy would be issue free.

The 500 internal errors are likely related to increased traffic which could have happen with or without Galaxy. The implementation probably will have a few hitches though, but that is how development works... were all human after all, and we make mistakes because of that.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by user deleted
Hopefully with proper versioning and changelogs, they let us "sort by last updated", and also have fixed all these features so they work inm the useful list mode and don't restrict us all to the craptastic shelf view.
Sounds great! Looking forward to seeing some of this stuff.
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Every change that has been implemented on the website has been to accommodate GOG Galaxy including the unbundling which no one really asked for, as Chamb mentioned in the announcement that "Maintaining two, completely separate products dedicated to the same things" is not ideal. This is what should have been made clear from day one as it has and will change the user experience on the website to mirror Galaxy, now whether positively or negatively depends on the implementation and is subjective as there are people that have no desire to use the client, preferring the way things are at the moment.

As for the website errors, based on prior experience GOG should have known and taken some precautions to handle the heavy increase in traffic for the beta launch. Not to mention they should be aware and must realize that the website servers will be heavily hit once The Witcher 3 launches so I hope that they are better prepared for it. No one expects everything to be perfect, knowing that development and implementation of new features is prone to errors but they do expect GOG to be more open and communicative about it which this announcement followed by a subsequent clarification was a step towards.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by stg83
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Chamb: As for the chat replacing PMs - which seems to be to most hot topic - here are few more details:
-- By default you will be able chat with everyone on GOG.com - they don't have to be your friends.
-- You will be able to change you default privacy settings to "friends only" or block it completely.
Thanks a lot for the clarifications Chamb. Please just make sure all those options are available from the get-go rather than being implemented along the way. Considering the rather long-lasting waves of stubborn spam bots invading GOG things could get rather ugly if the chat function is introduced while certain options remain works in progress.

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Chamb: -- You will be able to start conversation the same way you did with PMs - by finding specific user on GOG.com. Previously it was limited only to the forums, but with the new My Account we will be extending that to product reviews, community wishlist, GOGmixes (basically to every place user avatar and name appears on GOG.com).
That sounds great! Might it then enable us to view all the reviews written by a specific user?
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stg83: Every change that has been implemented on the website has been to accommodate GOG Galaxy including the unbundling which no one really asked for, as Chamb mentioned in the announcement that "Maintaining two, completely separate products dedicated to the same things" is not ideal. This is what should have been made clear from day one as it has and will change the user experience on the website to mirror Galaxy, now whether positively or negatively depends on the implementation and is subjective as there are people that have no desire to use the client, preferring the way things are at the moment.
Well as said above, they said they wouldn't change how users experience the site and that that wouldn't change. And what Chamb said makes sense, why keep 2 things that do the same thing, increasing your work and hurting your level of support? If you can keep that same experience but combine Galaxy and the site were possible that makes a lot sense.

As far as the unbundling, not everyone was against that... I actually like some aspects of it.

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stg83: As for the website errors, based on prior experience GOG should have known and taken some precautions to handle the heavy increase in traffic for the beta launch. Not to mention they should be aware and mus realize that the website servers will be heavily hit once The Witcher 3 launches so I hope that they are better prepared for it. No one expects everything to be perfect, knowing that development and implementation of new features is prone to errors but they do expect GOG to be more open and communicative about it which this announcement followed by a subsequent clarification was a step towards.
Fair enough.
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stg83: No one expects everything to be perfect, knowing that development and implementation of new features is prone to errors but they do expect GOG to be more open and communicative about it which this announcement followed by a subsequent clarification was a step towards.
Precisely, well said stg83. :)

I just hope they will continue to provide some kind of feedback and information rather than abandoning yet another blue thread. First and foremost, they obviously want to focus on the task at hand (after all that is their job) but even the shortest update every once in a while would be greatly appreciated.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by Lemon_Curry
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Tripas: Also, maybe add in the option of letting people use whatever username they want, kind of like what Steam does. Because I know a lot of people didn't really bother giving themselves an "Internet nickname", just used their own name or something and now when they play online or want to add friends, that's what they're kind of forced to use.
I'm not familiar with the Steam approach but it sounds like it could easily be exploited by scammers.

Honestly, if, when signing up for the service, people don't consider the possibility that one day they might want to participate in the active community then it's their own fault. Besides, I know of at least one instance where GOG's support team changed a username by request.
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Lemon_Curry: I'm not familiar with the Steam approach but it sounds like it could easily be exploited by scammers.
Not really, no. It just lets people call themselves whatever they want. Oh, and Origin also has that option, forgot to mention that.

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Lemon_Curry: Honestly, if, when signing up for the service, people don't consider the possibility that one day they might want to participate in the active community then it's their own fault. Besides, I know of at least one instance where GOG's support team changed a username by request.
That's a big harsh, isn't? First off, you're entitled to change your mind on your preferences and secondly, most people wouldn't care about the community if all it revolves around is forum posting (like it is now), but if suddenly their name can be used in something they actually use (like, say, an on-line game), then they really can't be blamed for making a decision they made before the "rules" got changed.
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Lemon_Curry: I'm not familiar with the Steam approach but it sounds like it could easily be exploited by scammers.
Yep. Impersonating other people is one of the reasons you can report people for on Steam.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by madth3
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Tripas: Also, maybe add in the option of letting people use whatever username they want, kind of like what Steam does. Because I know a lot of people didn't really bother giving themselves an "Internet nickname", just used their own name or something and now when they play online or want to add friends, that's what they're kind of forced to use.
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Lemon_Curry: I'm not familiar with the Steam approach but it sounds like it could easily be exploited by scammers.

Honestly, if, when signing up for the service, people don't consider the possibility that one day they might want to participate in the active community then it's their own fault. Besides, I know of at least one instance where GOG's support team changed a username by request.
GOG support will change your name by request... but that's kind of a crappy way to go about things in this day an age. Some people might not have ever expected GOG to be more than a place that sells installers.

As far as scammers, there is an easy solution really. Allow changes on a limited time frame, maybe once every 6 months... and include a section linked to account/profile that shows maybe up to 5 or 10 past usernames. Limiting it it should limit the ability of scammers to scam with the same account. On top of that ban reported scammers.
Post edited May 09, 2015 by user deleted
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Lemon_Curry: I'm not familiar with the Steam approach but it sounds like it could easily be exploited by scammers.
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Tripas: Not really, no.
How so? Would you care to explain? :)

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Tripas: That's a big harsh, isn't? First off, you're entitled to change your mind on your preferences and secondly, most people wouldn't care about the community if all it revolves around is forum posting (like it is now)...
You're also entitled to think twice... and though I can't speak for the majority I do believe you're wrong about the last part.
By the way, I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to change their nickname. I simply don't think it's a good idea if they can do it on a whim as long as it remains the only means of identification.

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Tripas: ... but if suddenly their name can be used in something they actually use (like, say, an on-line game), then they really can't be blamed for making a decision they made before the "rules" got changed.
I certainly agree with that but like I said it's possible to contact support if the need arises.
I'm disappointed GOG is removing the manual sorting feature on the game shelf. Looking at is gave me a great deal of satisfaction and produced a lot of *warm fuzzies*. I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but filling out an arranged shelf was a factor in many of my purchases during sales.

I can certainly use 3rd party software, but it will be a shame to have look elsewhere (not GOG.com) when I want to admire the games in my collection/ library.