Solas! Do something, fix this!
Ahh yes. This place exists for conversations that can't be held outside them, yet now we're told to go to those other places and have those conversations instead.
It was two-faced PR speak then, it's two-faced PR speak now.
October 16, 2001. That's when the original BioBoards launched. I joined the next day, but Beerfish (who is also still here) joined on the first day.
BioWare started their own boards because a large BioWare fan community had grown on Interplay's forums (Interplay published BG and BG2). But BioWare was about to sue Interplay (for missing some milestone payments during NWN's development), so they set up their own forum to keep the community alive.
I just had to shed a few more tears after mentioning you and Beerfish in a message about people I thought about today after the news.
This is a sad day, but it is something that was going to happen sooner than later. Following the trend of Bioware games to appeal to a greater audience, it was a matter of time until we, the hardcore fans (the minority), will be left alone in order to focus in the casual gamers (the majority). From that point of view it is the proper decision to close these forums and focus in social media where the majority are.
One of the main reason I like Bioware games is because of the community which made them greater with lots of theories, mods and tactics, all of it in just one place. Now with the closing of these forums we will have to navigate through several different sites in order to get just a little fraction of what we have here. In my case, that is not going to happen, I personally only have Facebook and Youtube, but I barely use the former (I don't even have a profile picture 
) and the latter only to watch videos, not to have debates or read opinions and theories. I have no intention of entering in any other social media so, in the end, I will lose contact with this community and Bioware games will become just like any other game.
Thanks everyone for all these years and all the awesome content you have created in this community.
So in order to get closer to your audience you're going to shut down the direct line to your audience.
Sounds honestly like you're going to shut down the one place genuine criticism can be had and controlled by you.
This is not considering if there are those who do not partake in some of the communities on the other sites because of their potential toxicity being not controlled or hosted by Bioware.
Not to mention that places like facebook, twitter and youtube all have terrible capabilities in acting as a forum where people can actually talk to one another.
And their site rules can be easily swayed to limit any kind of critique.
What are we supposed to have 160 character maximum conversations with a developer or between each other?
How does that breed any kind of nuance or conversation?
How is that anything but disconnecting?!?!
And that's not even considering the three language differences you have on this site that are dedicated to them. What do they do now?
I wouldn't mind if you just said you can't be bothered to host the site any more as that would make sense, but by removing the best way to talk to a community of like minded individuals along with customer service, tech support and creative works all being propped up by those very people makes absolutely zero sense.
And this'll probably be the last time a criticism can be heard like this as if I were to tweet this then not only would I be over character limit but I would also be drowned by the thousands of other users before twitter auto-deletes the tweet.
This all feels like Bioware is trying to be trendy and niche again, pretending to be a "cool department" and sacrificing usability for trendy points...
lethallin I'm currently prepping to lead my people thru the red sea to a new home
I like reading your posts in Solas' voice.
Every communication Solas sends his people is written in your posting style.
Canon.
This is a shame. I know nobody from BW is even interested in reading this thread, probably. But damnit, I've come here in one form or another since KOTOR days and it is literally the only place you can have a discussion with other people about deep lore and the characters. Aren't these RPGs? What am I missing that BW seems to think Twitter is a great replacement for that kind of discussion? It plainly isn't and the excuse given rings very false.
Look, I know there were and are tons of trolls being pains in the ass. But nobody expected devs here anymore, seriously, so that's not a good excuse. Please just leave these boards for those of us who want the deep discussions about characters we love and the stories. Without those things, I'll feel pretty alone in my geekness. And I haven't felt that way for many years now. And BW, I thought you understood and wanted us to talk about your games and dig deep and love your characters? Now it feels like I've been wrong all these years.
Please don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Hurting real fans because you are tired of trolls shows us who is really disposable in your minds. Us.
I remember the KOTOR days. We had our discussions, often heated, occasionally with trolls. i was upset when we had to move here, but again, we had our discussions, often heated, occasionally with trolls.
Fans who cared, not necessarily agreeing but one doesn't have to agree in order to care about the characters, story and lore. Yeah, this was a special place and I will miss it, even the trolls occasionally made me laugh and if not I just ignored them. I agree, I do think they are making a mistake.
Oh no, this is a truly sad news indeed
BSN is the reason why I found out about and bought all the Dragon Age books including WOT 1&2 + all the comics (and then recommended the games & books to my friends!) It's the place where I could discuss the lore, the world and the characters with other fans who are as passionate about it as I am, where I could ask questions, learn new things and even share my suggestions and ideas. Having that opportunity to discuss the games with other fans is part of the joy. Do not take it away from us.
This is the only place for me where I follow DA&ME related news and get to know about new books or games, etc. Without it... I don't know. You cannot just replace this forum with sites like twitter or reddit where the threads disappear so quickly. There is so many pages of good discussion here. It can't be replaced. This place brings together people from all over the world and for some is the only place they can discuss their favorite games.
Bioware if you read this: please do not close this forum. It is important for your fans.
Well, I was not expecting this at all. Hmm, guess I will do that Mass Effect survey I have been thinking off in the next few days as opposed to waiting till later down the road. I will be here till the end, I will imagine it will be interesting to see the reactions in the coming weeks. I'll miss this place.
I think this decision is being driven solely by accountants.
"These forums are not useful as a marketing tool. These forums earn no money. These forums have no value as a knowledge base to the company. These forums cost money to administer and maintain. Therefore, we will shut these forums down as they contribute no income to Bioware and have no value to Bioware. Intangible assets? What are those? Good will towards the company? Community-building for a loyal fan base? Who gives a damn about those? Those don't appear on a ledger sheet. Shut them down. We'll save money and we don't care about annoying people who buy our games or about word of mouth anyway."
And here it end, my daily ritual to look up the forums everyday for personal reasons:
I enjoyed reading disscussions about game mechanics, i enjoyed reading different opinions about things and loved to learn about other gamers viewpoints. I enjoyed learning english along the way. I laughed about the hilarious conversations here, i enjoyed things like Biofans vids, all the fanmade interviews, all that work you put in fandom. Big thanks to all the fans out there who searched for every info they might find about games I like (and i am to dumb to search for) so Hrungr big thanks to you here 
I learned a lot about forum threading and english disscissions through people like Han or Kaisershep, Iakus, the mikefest, AngryFrozenWater, SKAR, Zip and all the other longtermers & masterraces out here . I didn't mind opinions crushing, hell i enjoyed even the trolling to a degree if i was bored and nothing got personal here.
I might be more of a forum lurker and not one of those, who vocal things in a loud manner. But now I have to.
I spend more than 6 years in the shadows of BSN and surely there was some toxic behaviour but overall we managed most of the forum disscussions in a fairly stable way.
It makes me really angry to see that fans got cut off and lose their possibility to share opinions, to share their projects, work and fandom in an appropriate way.
Twitter and Facebook my *#~. Don't give a damn about social media (might be a neandertal, but i don't like these sites and I don't like the reddit template either).
So thank you cutting off your fans Bioware just because you don't want to handle them and avoid them. Are you that afraid of us and our opinions? You don't give a fk anyway, I know. All hail the money bags. Very very bad decision. Very bad. It's downright censoring your own community - which makes absolutely no sense.
I lost all my respect here.
So i get quite emotional here, I know *steals all Ryncol, crawls in a corner and searches for a new home to lurk* But that's me, so...anyway thank you for all these years guys. I was happy to be a part of you as a fan
I just don't think Bioware has alternative to BSN. Twitter, Reddit and Facebook don't work like forums. They don't store discussion in similar way, they are much more fast-based and limited compared to forums. In all sense this is the perfect place for fans to discuss and also developers to take apart in discussion.
I'm fine with that. Let's release the BSN crazy people all over the internets.
I'm only concerned about one thing though: ME:A multiplayer. The forums were a huge help for getting and providing informations on ME3 MP: it was messy but really helpful, and I'm sure it also helped the devs to patch the game and to make the very good DLCs we had. Now that the best way to give concrete feedback is gone, I'm concerned about ME:A MP.
I've never posted there but it surely can't be any worse than the clique like splinter forums.
Good luck trying to discuss any Bioware-related topic there.
They've been not so subtly pushing us away for quite a while now. Hardly surprising they're giving the final push. **** em.
I'm sure he has PlansTM. Good plans. Foolproof plans. The planniest plans to ever be planned. Plans that have absolutely no chance of backfiring, ever.
How do you manage to make me laugh so hard with such a devastating context : exactly this, no matter what happens this place stays super heartwarming, even when everything is about to get destroyed
This is basically us trying to reach the redeem dialogue option to make whoever has the power over this decision reconsider this
Maybe this world didn't make any sense anymore to them but there were still people trying to live here ! And some of us were happy this way
As for me, this forum quickly became an absolute necessity to my daily life.
If this is about money just tell us, we can understand, but "it's was a hard decision" is the same exact thing Solas says to us and it isn't supposed to make us side with him at all -given our final options-
I'm fine with that. Let's release the BSN crazy people all over the internets.
I'm only concerned about one thing though: ME:A multiplayer. The forums were a huge help for getting and providing informations on ME3 MP: it was messy but really helpful, and I'm sure it also helped the devs to patch the game and to make the very good DLCs we had. Now that the best way to give concrete feedback is gone, I'm concerned about ME:A MP.
Which is why I find this news especially alarming. Forums are a big part of a successful multiplayer community.
Looks like they're hoping reddit will do their job for them.
The more I think about it, the more I agree that the reasons given really doesn't make sense. If it was about money at least it would make sense (though I would still hate it), but this business about closing this site down because their fans are important to them? There is no way that is not a contradiction. I think everyone here are well aware of twitter, facebook and so on, but choose to come here because maybe they prefer the more in depth discussions and the added passion. The people who come here don't just play BioWare's games, they are also fiercely passionate about them--there is more than enough proof of that. So, if this decision isn't about money, then you're just taking this place away from us for no real good reason. Nobody expects the devs to show up here anymore, yet we keep coming here because we get something out of coming here. Because we actually LIKE coming here. This place means a lot to a lot of people, so why take it away just because of social media?
And I was having such a decent day too, but now I am definitely reminded once again that life pretty much just sucks most of the time.
BSN is the reason why I found out about and bought all the Dragon Age books including WOT 1&2 + all the comics (and then recommended the games & books to my friends!) It's the place where I could discuss the lore, the world and the characters with other fans who are as passionate about it as I am, where I could ask questions, learn new things and even share my suggestions and ideas. Having that opportunity to discuss the games with other fans is part of the joy. Do not take it away from us.
This is the only place for me where I follow DA&ME related news and get to know about new books or games, etc. Without it... I don't know. You cannot just replace this forum with sites like twitter or reddit where the threads disappear so quickly. There is so many pages of good discussion here. It can't be replaced. This place brings together people from all over the world and for some is the only place they can discuss their favorite games.
Bioware if you read this: please do not close this forum. It is important for your fans.
People on these forums haven't been considered as "true" fans for quite some time now.
We're the toxic sludge at BioWares shoe that annoyed them and made the internet laugh about them and now we're finally getting scraped off.
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