The problem I see with more “forums” is that means it becomes more difficult for moderators to lock down inappropriate content and more difficult for the community team to accumulate feedback. Also how would the culture change for all of us in the forums? Each of the current forums tends to have the following personality to them (based on my personal observations):
- Announcements - To be frank, this forum is now a graveyard. If anything this forum is now pointless since Patch Notes are formally documented on the official website and any informal announcements are made on the General Discussion forum.
- General Discussion - A very happy and social community for the most part. You are all passionate and most of you do deliver good honest feedback about everything and anything in the game there. Complaints overall do show up there, and we get the most developer responses replied to there. This forum is a staple of our community.
- Competitive Discussion - This forum sadly has become the “Complain about Competitive Mode” forum, when it is really intended to discuss competitive strategies and about the Esports scene for Overwatch. I personally feel this forum needs to be closed down and two forums (a strategies discussion forum and a esports forum) need to be made.
- Story Discussion - This forum is serving its purpose. There is a lot of constructive lore speculation about Overwatch and I love responses from Michael Chu there to help give us morsels of tasty lore to sample.
- PTR Feedback - I think this forum serves its purpose, if anything the latest PTR patch notes is a testament to that (Junkrat minor nerf). It was originally introduced back in late 2017 on the old forums to sort out feedback from more critical bug reports related to PTR patches.
- PTR Bug Reports - Serves its purpose, helps find game crashing bugs for the QA team to resolve before patch releases.
- Technical Support - Very much serves it purpose. This is my domain and here is where I make the greatest impact as a forum MVP. Of course, this forum is not directly managed by the Overwatch Community Team but by Blizzard Customer Service, lately Blizzard CS has been very proactive resolving the tech issues that players encounter.
- Bug Report - Sort of serves its purpose. It’s important to remember that posts made here are NOT likely to get a response by Blizzard. I myself am dealing with a frustrating bug involving my hero gallery, and I can only hope that the Blizzard Quality Assurance team (who controls that forum) is taking most of the feedback to heart. I often find myself checking for threads in that forum that should have been filed in technical support. (Disconnections are NOT a game bug!)
- Looking for Group Forums - Sadly these forums did not pan out well. They were placed in April as sort of a layover before the in-game Looking for Group tool was released. Sadly like the Looking-for-Group tool, there is no incentive to stay with the groups you form. Again I feel we need a clan system if we truly want to play together under a common banner.) Today they are a bit of a graveyard and I feel are no longer needed.
So what forums do I want to see added?
- Strategy Discussion - As mentioned I want to transform the “Competitive Discussion” forum into a forum themed around “Strategy”, it could also better serve as a venue to look for long-lasting teams (rather than the current LFG forums). It could also serve as a place to start Wiki articles (something I have tried in the past to do), but what it would not be is a place to complain about Competitive Play just to complain about it, keep the feedback like that to the general discussion if anything.
- Cafe Forum - This would be the equivalent of World of Warcraft’s Lounge forum (which is open to Trust Level 3 users or higher). A place to share fan art, creative projects, or just hang out among other members of our community. I suppose this would be a place where the OverEmoji Cafe thread can comfortably rest. One thing for sure, ours would need to be available to all levels of our community, I feel we are too social and expressive regardless if we can post images or not.
- Esports Forum - Place to openly discuss Overwatch League, Contenders, Open Division, and all the other intimate levels of the Overwatch Esports Scene. Simple enough. I would post my match discussion threads here if such a place existed.
I hope I made sense of this. I will always be around to be an active community member regardless of the presentation of the forums, but I do wish we had dedicated places to express our desire to play the game, our creative endeavors, and passion of esports. Regardless of platform, I always pursue more ways to be active with the community.