Forums as a player sampling?

[Sagittarian]

How representative do you think the forums are of the player base as a whole?

What percentage of players do you think look at / post to the forums?
Do you think forum posters represent a fair sampling of the total players? - in terms of casual/hardcore, experience with mmo's, # characters, what they think of the game overall .. whatever

The statistician/sociologist in me is just curious.

[Lyrinn]

Game forums are almost always a biased minority. Majority of players don't care to visit the forums and do so only when there's a serious enough reason to.

[misterdapi]

Game forums are almost always a biased minority. Majority of players don't care to visit the forums and do so only when there's a serious enough reason to.

This. This. This. This.

[Zaels]

Very minor. Generally the people that have something to complain about will show up here, while the people who have no problems won't leave any feedback. That's usually how it goes.

[darkstarpoet1]

i'm wanting to say the past player poll showed only about 3% of the games population comes into the forums and only close to 5% go on the lodestone. the question is does the 3-5% accurately represent the overall players in the game in general?

that's one answer i do not have. i know the majority of the people i speak to in game feels one way, but that's only people in the circles i play with. i cannot say whether the circle of players i play with is related to the general attitude of the players that started arr.

[Kiroh]

The forums are filled with a small group of people, evenly split between those who love the game but want it to change for the better, and those who love the game and want it to stay the way it is.

The people who outright hate the game, or those mildly satisfied with it usually don't come on the forums at all.

[Billie21]

There is no way to give any numbers, but as far as representation is concern, I don't believe the forum population is accurate.


As someone said, it would make sense that the population encountering problems within the game would be more representated than the players having no grievance.

Other common reasons for players to visit the forums:

- Those seraching for "technical advice" concerning game mechanics: people interested in maximise their performance, their exploration of game mechanics, and interested in getting other players input
- Those very invested community-wise (though these forums don't have a very strong sense of community, there are only a few threads sharing ingame practices/ideas/etc... and the server forums are mostly filled with FC ads; I don't believe this part of the players is very well represented on these forums as I've seen in other MMOs)
- Enthuisiasts who want to share their hopes/fantasies about the game (all those suggestions/what if/future-prediction threads that are quite numerous here, though it is to be expected on such a new game)


The practice of using forums in itself tells something about the players in question; I don't believe it can ever be taken as a "fair sample" of any game population, except if it is a integral part of the game experience by design.

The people who outright hate the game, or those mildly satisfied with it usually don't come on the forums at all.

I'm not so sure about this. There may be a smaller percentage of these people, but those who post their opinions usually feel strongly about the game, one way or another. Indifference and hate are two different things, and the later is more likely to provoke a reaction than the former.

[Doo]

Don't underestimate the power of the forums. It should be troubling when there's a lot negative threads. They play the game and can sense the general feel of players in their lses/fc.

[tymora]

Very biased (negatively) small group of people.

[Hycinthus]

i'm wanting to say the past player poll showed only about 3% of the games population comes into the forums and only close to 5% go on the lodestone. the question is does the 3-5% accurately represent the overall players in the game in general.

Agree with this. From everquest polls also from MMO dot com polls, only 5 % goes to the forum, and only 3 % of them makes a post.

The other 95% of players are flying blindly and never know whats going on in forums. A majority of them are casuals. So in my opinion, the forum is not a good representative because those who visit and makes a post are generally not casual player.

The casual player could not care about making a post because they just dont care about anything too much. Unless it hurts them and the game is too hard, and they just hop to another game without making a fuss. This is why this crowd is so dangerous because their demand is very elastic in economic terms.