New Forums: Features and Improvements

Since the launch of Overwatch, we’ve been listening to your feedback about how to improve our forums experience. Our goal is to make them easier to navigate, foster more engaging conversations, and reward those who contribute in positive ways.

Today we’re rolling out our new forums, which we hope will accomplish our goals. Please keep in mind that the old forums’ posts and threads will not be migrated over to the new forums. These are available in a read-only state for a short period of time. As such, be sure to save your favorite conversations elsewhere if you plan to revisit old memories in the future. Official “blue” posts from us here at Blizzard will remain however they will be in a “read only” state. New posts will automatically be directed to the new platform.

Features:

Trust Levels

  • We want to reward users who are positively contributing to the forums. Over time, these players will be rewarded with the ability to post more often, embed images/links, and more.

Tracking and Updates

  • There are now “Blizz Tracker” and “Dev Tracker” options to quickly find official posts.
  • You can now easily find threads that you’ve previously viewed
  • Preformatted text
  • Threads now update in real time without needing to refresh
  • Threads now infinitely scroll as the “pages” system has been removed.
  • The forums will also remember what you’ve read, where you left off, and how long you’ve spent active on the forums.

Sorting and Search

  • A new “Advanced Search” feature will make looking for older posts easier.
  • You can now sort posts by “Top” or “Latest” with configurable timeframes.

Notifications

  • You can now enable notifications for when you are tagged in posts and replies.

Flagging

  • We’ve removed the “thumbs down” button and replaced it with a flagging system with multiple options.

We think these changes will help strengthen and deepen our forum community and the conversations that occur within. We hope you like it and please leave your feedback on how we can continue to improve.

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