Thanks to my amazing reading and comprehension abilities, I am able to come up with a short summary of the highly accurate post above:

– the real problem isn’t the RP bashing, but the lack of activity

– a forum demands interaction to be appealing, but people don’t really interact with each other anymore

– there is no real relationship network anymore, no “soap opera”

– the lack of activity is not the community’s fault, it’s not because Flamebate was too “troll-crowded” or anything: there were times with lots of **** on Flamebate (draginz, and much much more), still it worked well

– the lack of activity appeared because, for most players, Forumwarz isn’t very attractive on long terms, so they eventually leave (which is normal), but too few new players are ready to replace them (-> ‘lack of relationship network’...)

– there is no incentive to improve your character further (e.g. items, .moar files, ...) as there is no competition in this regard (character strength isn’t that relevant for Dom)

– Domination and the buildrs aren’t interesting for many people due to various obvious reasons

– INCIT turned ****, but it might have been better if ET started rewarding each winner with 1 BP (and no, it wouldn’t result in too many noobs ruining it, the rewards would have made them put effort into it – and there wouldn’t have been anything wrong about giving BP to players, it does not automatically mean that ET would have made less money)

– in general, ET did not work hard enough on establishing a real BP “culture” because he did not implement additional BP features, especially ones that are based on interaction like pranks (he also suffered from the disappearing relationship network mentioned above)

– furthermore, he could have used BP incentives to improve creativity- and community-relevant aspects of Forumwarz, which he didn’t except of a few contests

– what is left is some people whining about “Flamebate = ****” and others whining about people saying “Flamebate = ****”

– it isn’t possible to change anything about it, it’s already too late (but if you want to do what you can, just interact more actively)

Log in to see images! Mathew Jonson edited this message on 03/09/2010 9:52PM