Basically everyone in the IRC is grumbling about how shit the forums are, until TET joins then we're grumbling about how he's to blame for all the problems ever. THANKS THEENIGMATICOBAMA.

Okay sometimes we talk about games too I guess. There's certainly more GOG related discussion there than on GOG's own forums.

Must admit to feel less inclined to post on the forums of late as most threads seem to be more anger related than game related not like when the forums just started. Hopefully things will improve.

Yup. I only recent came back because... I don't remember why, actually.

I have to agree with this. I'm not the most frequent poster but I've been reading the forums for years and the level of hostility around here lately is very disappointing. I'm not saying there wasn't hostility here before, but it used to be pulled off in an intelligent enough way where debate could follow based on it. Now it's just raging.

I'm not sure it's something which can be fixed with stricter moderation either, at least not without changing the community in a different way.

+1

I only check the Gaming deals thread and maybe the first page of General discussion, and that's about it.

They will once GOG get off their butts. The trouble is it's that it's first of all too easy to register and post. Your forum account is tied to your main account and your main account is an account in a store. So anti-spam checks and the like would be inconvenient. But since you can post as soon as registering with no prior advisory messages of any kind, GOG hasn't been able to craft their community in any way.

Secondly GOG's liberal approach to this place is doing more damage than they realise. "Post what you like so long as you don't swear in the title" is simply not an acceptable way to maintain a community that isn't 4chan. It doesn't place limits on people being hurtful in threads nor does it place any limits on the type of threads which are acceptable (Smut hut, Roman5 spam, Bionicman). It could be an acceptable cornerstone for an off-topic section but this place is at the top of the community tab and GOG seem to fail to realise that it's General Discussion which is representing GOG.com far more than the main page is. Hell, RPG Codex has a problem with this place.

Thirdly the forums are hard to navigate. Having one sub forum per game isn't a terrible idea at all but the reason they're so underused is because they're sorted alphabetically, have tiny icons and are in a very long list. There's 500+ games in this catalogue and so 500+ subforums.

So the result? With no obvious rules, guidelines, advisories or proper categorisation, General Discussion is a dumping ground of villainy, whining and all round buffoonery where once it was a buzzing (but smaller community - growth, and GOG's inability to deal with it, is a factor here) that liked to talk about games and general happenings (without the weird editorialisation that seems to happen now).

The way to solve it - and bring back some of those old names - is as simple as implementing a grid view for game-specific forums and splitting General Discussion into "GOG.com Discussion" and "Off Topic". And Off Topic can be the dumping ground that doesn't represent the website.

It won't happen though. Not for a looong time. The exploit that allows you to pre-empt news entry titles still exists. The informal word being "I asked the devs about when it'll be fixed, they said probably never". So basically, the development department at GOG pretty much doesn't care about the forum. The design and maintenance of this place is fundamentally flawed and it's attracting a lot of negative company.

I honestly believe this place could be hurting sales by way of damaging the site's reputation. The worst side effect of it all of course is that it makes me moan a lot when I should be doing some thing far more productive with my time. But what can I say? I want to love this place. I did once love it and then it started to stink.

Sorry, GOG. But you suck.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Also, I now bought The Guild, just because of you :)

I wonder what happen to orcishgamer, have not seen him even during E3.


If he stop posting on the forums entirely I will miss him, he was a cool guy.

Last time I saw him was a few weeks ago I think

and the most important thing... Where's Waldo?

Right, that's it.
Behind you.

I think it's just a sign of GOG becoming more popular. It's kind of bittersweet. :/

I've never seen a web forum survive popularity intact. Fortunately cool people will remain cool no matter where they post. You just need to find them.

Ones that aren't afraid of tough rules and give ample space to run around in. The forum would not be in the state it's in now if there was an off topic section from day one.