Open poll on the State of the Forum.

aandrethegiant · October 2012

Instead of asking a series of questions, I'd like to break format and have a "Town Hall meeting" style poll. I'll simply state the topic, and ask the community to come up with your own questions. Now, if someone asks your question first, please ask it anyway, so we can get a pulse on how many folks wish to see that question addressed. Please, keep it clean & polite.

If Stormshade were to introduce us to Joe "the Web Designer" today, what questions would you ask him, that you feel could improve our Neverwinter forum site, to the enjoyment of the vastly dedicated and info-hungry community we are now becoming? Please keep your questions, at most five, focused on what Joe could do to upgrade our forum to make it better than it is today.

Thank you!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

iamtruthseeker · October 2012

Weren't you a plummer four years ago? Kidding!

Why aren't there better filters to block Spam messages?
How difficult is it to replace the similes, and could we have it as a revamp or polish without taking away other MMORPG game resources so we could have D&D themed similes?
Can we change the background color from black to another color? It's difficult to read certain text colors.
Can you look into why some of us have lost our signature pics?
Can we have the ability to delete our own posts restored like it was when we first converted over to the PWE site?

aandrethegiant · October 2012

iamtruthseeker wrote: »

Weren't you a plummer four years ago? Kidding!

HA! That's exactly where I got "Joe" from

See well the economy was so bad that he changed careers. It was a 2 1/2 year journey and now he's saddled with $80,000 worth of student loan debt, but he's much happier now. He says it was worth it, because he now has his dream job. Three cheers for Joe, the common man's web designer!

PS: GOOD questions Truth!

aandrethegiant · October 2012

I think we are kicking spam asses, but more might appear later. Keep on em! Free ale for all! Pass the brews, tip the harlots! Ask a few questions. What a resilient community we are!

Oh, did you just ask me what is a harlot? Enjoy some D&D lore as we enjoy "Ignore a SPAM Day!"

The table below caused much snickering amongst my Dungeons and Dragons-playing peers in high school:

http://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/random_harlot_table.jpg

Is it a description of Jarvis Street south of Carlton at night, or perhaps a random sampling of H&M's clientele? Actually, it's the Random Harlot Encounter Table from the Dungeon Master's Guide, First Edition, written by the late Gary Gygax. It's part of the section on random encounters in cities and towns. One of the possible encounter types listed was 'harlot', and stickler for details that Gygax was, he wrote this sub-table which described the sort of sex trade worker one could stumble into in a Lord of the Rings mileu.

http://www.joeydevilla.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/dungeon_masters_guide.jpg

Here's what it says:
Harlot encounters can be with brazen strumpets or haughty courtesans, thus making ti difficult for the party to distinguish each encounter for what it is. (In fact, the encounter could be with a dancer only prostituting herself as it pleases her, an elderly madam, or even a pimp.) In addition to the offering of the usual fare, the harlot is 30% likely to know valuable information, 15% likely to make something up in order to gain a reward, and 20% likely to be, or with with, a thief. You may find it useful to use the sub-table below to see which sort of harlot encounter takes place:

00 - 10 Slovenly trull
11 - 25 Brazen strumpet
26 - 35 Cheap trollop
36 - 50 Typical streetwalker
51 - 65 Saucy tart
66 - 75 Wanton wench
76 - 85 Expensive doxy
86 - 90 Haughty courtesan
91 - 92 Aged madam
93 - 94 Wealthy procuress
95- 98 Sly pimp
99 - 00 Rich panderer

An expensive doxy will resemble a gentlewoman, a haughty courtesan a noblewoman, the other harlots might be mistaken for goodwives and so forth.

All in all, Dungeons and Dragons prepared a lot of us for business in the high-tech world.
Needless to say, some of us didn't quite get what this table was until we looked up 'harlot'. You have to remember that this was the late 70s and early 80s, a decade before the World Wide Web, when you had to scour the woods and ravines for free <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font>. (For some reason, Toronto's ravines were full of discarded <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> magazines. I've heard that's why Toronto guys my age are pretty good hikers. heh heh heh)

Back to our regularly scheduled Town Hall meeting!

darren0kitlor · October 2012

iamtruthseeker wrote: »

Why aren't there better filters to block Spam messages?

I wish there was--I can't even find report post anymore.

How difficult is it to replace the similes, and could we have it as a revamp or polish without taking away other MMORPG game resources so we could have D&D themed similes?

Replacing the similes would be like replacing an old newspaper.

However, replacing the smilies seems of greater importance.

zebular · October 2012

On the BB forum communities I ran back in my days with UO, it was extremely simple to upload and enable new smilies, taking like 10-30 minutes tops. The most difficult thing would be finding smilies that they can legally use or creating smilies from scratch. As well, since this is an official site, they will probably need to get some approval from whoever reviews such change proposals.

I know from official experience, such things would first need approval via consensus by the Administrators, then those Admins take their proposal to the Managing Editor who then turns to his boss, who gets it done via the Web Staff. Such things generally took weeks and sometimes months to process and complete. I'm not sure the hierarchy structure of PWE, never-the-less, I'd expect an official site to be similar in such a regard to getting new things implemented.

surf13 · October 2012

I've built and run forums bigger than this. Spam is actually pretty easy to control, but you have to be willing to add a little "extra spice" to the registration page. And PWE isn't very active with their forums, I'm afraid.

gillrmn · October 2012

zebular wrote: »

On the BB forum communities I ran back in my days with UO, it was extremely simple to upload and enable new smilies, taking like 10-30 minutes tops. The most difficult thing would be finding smilies that they can legally use or creating smilies from scratch. ...

Smileys aren't that hard to create from scratch. The following were made in gimp by me, and it was my first attempt at these.

EDIT: most of them are animated so you would have to use "view original"

aavarius · October 2012

iamtruthseeker wrote: »

Can you look into why some of us have lost our signature pics?

Hey, Truth, I had some signature problems a few months ago. Try what I did and maybe it'll fix your problem.

1) Go to the Edit Signatue portion of your CP
2) Delete everything in your signature box
3) Delete your uploaded image for Option 1 (if you have one)
4) Delete the URL in the box for Option 2 (if you're using that)
5) Save your signature (Which, of course, is now blank)
6) Go back in to Edit Signature and re-upload, re-link, re-type in all your signature stuff, then save it. Don't forget the "[SIGPIC]" code!

If that didn't work for you, then I'm not sure your problem can be fixed on the user end. Good luck!

ambisinisterr · October 2012

gillrmn wrote: »

Smileys aren't that hard to create from scratch. The following were made in gimp by me, and it was my first attempt at these.

EDIT: most of them are animated so you would have to use "view original"

All zebular meant with his comment was that it's harder to make the smilies than implement them in his (an my) experience. In other words it is, in theory, very easy to alter the smilies to something other than bears.

But since this is an official company driven site most changes of such magnitude would have to be approved, if not personally done, by the forum administrator and other supervisors for various reasons.

I feel bad that I don't have any further questions to add but I do know stormshade is working to improve various forum features. I'm not sure on any specifics but it was posted on the forums that he is working on improving the forums.

zebular · October 2012

gillrmn wrote: »

Smileys aren't that hard to create from scratch. The following were made in gimp by me, and it was my first attempt at these.

EDIT: most of them are animated so you would have to use "view original"

ambisinisterr wrote: »

All zebular meant with his comment was that it's harder to make the smilies than implement them in his (an my) experience. In other words it is, in theory, very easy to alter the smilies to something other than bears.

But since this is an official company driven site most changes of such magnitude would have to be approved, if not personally done, by the forum administrator and other supervisors for various reasons.

I feel bad that I don't have any further questions to add but I do know stormshade is working to improve various forum features. I'm not sure on any specifics but it was posted on the forums that he is working on improving the forums.

Indeed, that is what I meant Ambisinisterr, which I thought I reflected in the rest of my post that was omitted from the replying quote. My apologies Gillrmn, I didn't mean to make it sound like making smilies were hard, for as a web artist myself, I know they can be quite simple.

iamtruthseeker · October 2012

Thanks for the signature pic suggestions. Didn't work so put back the sigpic brackets to show still an issue until somebody comes up with other solutions up in Helpdeskland.

zebular · October 2012

iamtruthseeker wrote: »

Thanks for the signature pic suggestions. Didn't work so put back the sigpic brackets to show still an issue until somebody comes up with other solutions up in Helpdeskland.

Are you uploading the image?
--If yes, does it show you a preview to the left of the link to "insert signature picture?"

Or, using the box to link to an image on the web?
--Is this image uploaded anywhere? If so, please post a link to it.

Does the image conform to the size restrictions stated on the signature CP page?
--What is the file-type of the image?

aandrethegiant · October 2012

Also, you have to actually make a new post to see your new sig. It doesn't retro fit otherwise. I hope the help desk finds a solution for you soon Truth...

Great conversations so far. Looking forward to hearing more suggestions/questions....

iamtruthseeker · October 2012

All of the above done site link perfectly fine same old image multiple site hosting, fail.

PWE Knows of it and I'm not the only one apparently. Not going to bring up other case files without other people's consent and there may be proprietary setups that goes beyond a simple "redirect loop" error this time. But PWE/Cryptic have been told, and I'll let other users decide what to say and not about their signature situations.

aeroth001 · October 2012

only 4 questions.
1.why doesn't joe make an account and post here ?
2.what can be done about our emoticon problem ? (it's unBEARable)
3.when the game is relesed will we get new forum sections like item section, quests sectionts etc. ??
4. will we have an wow like armory after the game is released ?

muzrub333 · October 2012

No questions from me, just things I'd like to see:

1). The ability to have my own Avatar, rather than a Blue Dragon.
2). Smiley faces with a more D&D based feel, or just basic smileys.
3). A notification when you have a friend request.
4). More Developer interaction
5). a "Dev Tracker" see above. (I see we actually have this one...carry on)

gillrmn · October 2012

More art like this

Letting us know whenever you introduce new feature in forums so we can use it (Unlike the way displaying 100 posts a page, displaying latest post first, etc. were sneaked in).

Smileys without any rainbow vomit

Better organization of folders.

Addition of suggestion sub-folder section when game is launched.

bitterwinter · October 2012

1. More interaction with the community from the devs- i.e. Wildstar Wednesdays

2. Being able to click on a username to search for their posts

3. Some other avatars (as mentioned)

4. Biohazard type symbol for reporting spam

5. and same as number 1:)

aandrethegiant · October 2012

Excellent feedback so far! Thank you to those contributing your input. Looking forward to hearing more feedback. Remember to keep comments on task and respectful.

Love the lighthearted humor in some of the responses as well... lol!

Open poll on the State of the Forum.

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