I think there is a very real burnout/distressing effect from toxicity from forums when you're a creator. Even as a person extremely critical of Bioware (especially later titles) and who considers that shutting down these forums is a sign of Bioware being Borged by EA and transformed into a soulless factory up until they don't bring enough money and are mothballed, I still find a large number of answers toward the dev to be unacceptable, childish and needlessly antagonistic.
I think Gaider, being rather snarky and direct, has endured a lot of, to be frank, downright abuse, and might have ended up feeling the forums were just a channel for toxic behaviour, and deserving to be closed.
I disagree with his conclusion (I find the idea of a game company not having forum ludicrous, it's basically cutting yourself from direct feedback, hence why I consider the closure a real sign of a deep change in management and a probable foretelling of death), but I certainly can understand from where he's from - to sum up : plenty of people posting on the forums are agressive and entitled dicks holding dev to ridiculously perfect standards of behaviour and then wondering why said dev lose desire to interact with them.
I think the problem that highlights, is that there's no wall between creators and fans. Direct contact sounds great, but it can lead to horrible stuff as well.
The blame for that lies at Bioware's (and EA's) feet. There should be a very clear and public policy for how creators engage with fans. When creators start Tumblrs or Twitter accounts, there should be clear guidelines around what they can share and how they engage. Maybe personal Twitter accounts shouldn't be places where Dragon Age or Mass Effect are discussed. The forum should have professional and consistent moderation to ensure that most of the employees aren't subject to the horrible stuff the sometimes get said.
Instead, there's nothing, no protection or support from Bioware, and employees are left to deal with fans on their own. No surprise then that they want to move to means of communication that allow them to block.
And instead of sitting down and taking a hard look at how they handle social media, Bioware simply carpet bombs the fandom.
Close, but no cigar. Unless ME:A is revealed to have a set protagonist who is always a 6'4, muscular super sexy handsome badass man who is the best and the funniest and nobody can beat and whenever the protagonist isn't in a scene, everybody is asking "where's protagonist?"
70 pages of reply so far. Kind of shows poeple are not taking this very well
Naturally.
Wouldn't be surprised if Vince McMahon was secretly running Bioware.
I think if Vinnie Mac was running Bioware they would have made the elven Inquisitors in DA:I look less emaciated. Iron Bull would have gotten a bigger push and Cassandra would have gotten buried in favour of someone like Leliana. Cole wouldn't have even made it to the main roster.
I'm not saying it would be better, far from it, but there also would have been some strange angles with women giving birth to giant hands and butt kissing clubs. 
OT, but anyone knows how to archive whole private conversation? I only get few first pages 
I think if Vinnie Mac was running Bioware they would have made the elven Inquisitors in DA:I look less emaciated. Iron Bull would have gotten a bigger push and Cassandra would have gotten buried in favour of someone like Leliana. Cole wouldn't have even made it to the main roster.
I'm not saying it would be better, far from it, but there also would have been some strange angles with women giving birth to giant hands and butt kissing clubs.
We would've actually gotten that Bethany romance in DA2.
No, they're actually unwelcoming. Literally preparing to ban people who show up.
Frankly the fact that Bioware's closing its official forums is a joke. Their posts on other sites should lead people HERE, not the other way around.
Exactly this. And that's precisely what happened with a lot of us in the Tumblr branch of the fandom - the forums were at the root of a lot of the info and advice we gave.
For what it's worth, if anyone decides to give Tumblr a try, feel free to drop me line. You're welcome in my space.
We would've actually gotten that Bethany romance in DA2.
I think if Vinnie Mac was running Bioware they would have made the elven Inquisitors in DA:I look less emaciated. Iron Bull would have gotten a bigger push and Cassandra would have gotten buried in favour of someone like Leliana. Cole wouldn't have even made it to the main roster.
I'm not saying it would be better, far from it, but there also would have been some strange angles with women giving birth to giant hands and butt kissing clubs.
You would know, Undertaker circa 2003.
70 pages of reply so far. Kind of shows poeple are not taking this very well
That's barely the amount of posts the Talimancers conjured up with their black magics over a coffee break. I think a lot of people simply don't know it yet. Weren't for a news article on a gaming site, it would have missed me aswell.
Finally, with massive influx of SJWs/special snowflakes these past years, these forums are way beyond saving. So may it burn like the cesspool it has become.
Finally, with massive influx of SJWs/special snowflakes these past years, these forums are way beyond saving. So may it burn like the cesspool it has come.
man your opinion is ironic because the real SJ-types contend that these forums are way beyond saving because they're a cesspool of sexism, bigotry, etc 
@BioWare --
I've read all the BioWare employee posts in this thread and a few important details weren't addressed by those posts or the original blog post:
1.How is this closure going to impact the DAO Toolset and wiki? These are both your products. The toolset is hosted on the BSN Project pages, and the wiki is also tied to the same URL. Where will this content be migrated to? I hope you aren't seriously thinking about pulling this content from your customers.
2. Where will all the Patches, DLC, and other downloads be hosted for old games? DAO, ME1, ME2, DA2? These are all things your customers still use when they migrate PCs. Not everyone has the old games on Origin and not everyone *wants* to migrate their old games to Origin. How will you be dealing with this?
I lurked the forums for a while before joining back in 2009.
At the beginning I just came for information about future releases, but I stayed because a found people as passionate as me about Bioware works!
It was such a joy for me to come here and share my love for the characters and stories Bioware has crafted over the years... and what better place to do all this that THE OFFICIAL BIOWARE FORUMS?!
At this moment I can't understand this decision, at this moment this decision makes as much sense as Bioware announcing that all cafeterias in their HQ are going to be removed and employees have now to use the ones in the local area. Yeah, they are still getting their coffee, but who knows when will be the next time they run into that other employee that works in another department and only saw every now and then, but with who they had a great chat every time they met?
This is the place where we gather, and I want it to be at Bioware's 
@BioWare --
I've read all the BioWare employee posts in this thread and a few important details weren't addressed by those posts or the original blog post:
1.How is this closure going to impact the DAO Toolset and wiki? These are both your products. The toolset is hosted on the BSN Project pages, and the wiki is also tied to the same URL. Where will this content be migrated to? I hope you aren't seriously thinking about pulling this content from your customers.
2. Where will all the Patches, DLC, and other downloads be hosted for old games? DAO, ME1, ME2, DA2? These are all things your customers still use when they migrate PCs. Not everyone has the old games on Origin and not everyone *wants* to migrate their old games to Origin. How will you be dealing with this?
That's not even mentioning how all the DLC isn't even on origin.
man your opinion is ironic because the real SJ-types contend that these forums are way beyond saving because they're a cesspool of sexism, bigotry, etc
Of course you'd say that. I'm sure you were one of those who upvoted the, "Bioware are racist because we don't have afros in Mass Effect" kind of threads. But GG it's all going down in flames now. 
What on earth? I understand the forum rules still apply as long as the forum is up, but it's like they want our community to scatter and fragment and have a hard and unwieldy time picking a new forum to migrate to or banding together to create a new one.
They want us gone, that's for certain.
That's not even mentioning how all the DLC isn't even on origin.
I've checked Origin this afternoon, all I'm missing are some DA2 promotional starter items.
BSN and VSN at first were kind of like Abradolf Lincler from Rick and Morty.
But the anti-SJWs broke off from VSN and made their own forum so VSN became full on SJW.
So now VSN is Lincoln.
While the other place is Hitler.
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