You know, there's a real problem on the forums.

[Inspiration]

I completely agree with Googi in all aspects on this topic.

However, while I believe Googi attempted to avoid any blatent subjective views on the topic, I have a few I'd like to state.

When moderating a forum, it is your job to ensure the most enjoyable experience for the forum user base. The logic behind this is quite simple.

If you have 20 forum regulars who all enjoy your forum, this number will do nothing but increase.

Why? Well, there are a few major reasons.

First off, the active forum regulars will most likely advocate forum usage to their friends, and other people they meet.

Secondly, they themselves will more actively post, and be more inclined to debate and discuss any and all topics.

The position of moderator; especially a forum admin or a super moderator, should, in all ideals, be given to someone who represents the user base in the community and has an interest in the forum growing and prospering.

Clearly, on the Graal Online forums, this is not the case.

The moderation here believe it is their job only to enforce rules, delete and remove what they decide is either spam, off topic, or in appropriate, and punish users. They have very little interest in community development. They do not activly take parts in debates, they rarely start topics of interest, and they rarely post at all besides to tell us when we're wrong.

They represent a ghost community of posters who wish for a friendly forum without any debating, any disagreements, and heaven forbid, a little bit of playful namecalling here and there. They site this community as a majority.

This ghost community does not exist, needless to say, and yet it is catered to more than the few highly active posters left on this forum.

The ideal is maintained, while the reality is ignored.

Basically, the moderation here chooses to ignore the fundemental nature of any public forum, of any MMORPG userbase, and attempts to create a forum that would be more suited for a Christian Youth Group.

The result? The fourms lose users on a daily basis. People defect to other forums. Or they lose interest in the community in general, and thus in Graal Online in general.

Community is what keeps games like this together, yet the administration cares nothing for their community. They care for ghost players. Ghosts that will never come alive because they do nothing to actively draw players onto these forums and into the game.

There is no reason to use this forum besides habit.

People wish to be able to debate anything and everything.

People wish to be able to publically question moderation, and publically recieve respect for their questioning, and answers to their concerns.

People wish to have moderators that they view as peers, not as parents. They like feeling that they can forum PM a mod and have their concerns and issues listened to with compassion and truely cared about.

They recieve none of this here.

I've never seen a forum where so many people have strong dislike for the people who run it beyond this one.

As Googi pointed out, the people are so desperate for heros fighting the administration they will even rally behind a corrupt, immature kid crying out for attention, so long as his corruption is aganist the administrations wishes

[PrinceDark]

There is no reason to use this forum besides habit.

Very true. There are very little threads of interest. And the ones that are interesting get locked or deleted even when triggered by 1 random offtopic post. Too many times the idea of "oh the thread has served its purpose or the answer was given so now lets lock this thread". What if there is more information other users can provide to further help an individual or help other individuals.
For example. Lets say someone needs NPC help and a couple users post some tips. Do you just lock it because the individual has been helped? No, not a good idea, because what if others have better tips and suggestions. It helps not only that user, but others in the future that may search for similar problems.

Now I know the scripting section is not all like that because majority of mods know jack squat about development, but it would help in other sections of the forums if threads would be allowed to stay open longer where more users can participate in giving their input.