Friday 12 March 2010

DISCUSSING TACTICS


It hadn't really occurred to me before, but I was struck recently by a huge difference between the European (Codemasters) and Stateside (Turbine) forums: there is almost no discussion of tactics on the CM forums. Which is quite strange, when you come to think of it.

By far the most popular sub-forum on the Turbine forums is the one called "Instances and Raids". Though it shelters a certain amount of grumbling and nit-picking, it also includes a lot of careful and serious debate about the strategy and tactics of the principal raids. Currently, there are several well-established threads about the Barad Guldur 12-man raid; one of them, "BG Strategy - Gauntlet and Boss 1 (Durchest)" includes 133 posts, many providing either detailed tactical proposals or feedback on possible changes since the latest patch. For a characteristic example of a recent post, see the illustration, above.


There are no remotely similar threads on the CM forums, whether for Barad Guldur or any other raid. When I did an advanced, post-by-post search for "Dürchest"on CM, the only posts of any interest which turned up were under the Warden sub-forum. Admittedly, a substantial thread was started recently about increased resistances since Volume III which includes some useful feedback, but nothing much more.

I'm curious about why this should be. Obviously the fact that Codemasters don't provide a tactics and raids sub-forum is one factor, but that can hardly be more than contributory. Are European players less interested in end-content raiding and/or less determined (or, of course, obsessive)? Are they less prepared to share experiences, preferring to hoard what might be regarded as hard-earned information? Or is it simply a general lack of interest in debate and discussion of matters tactical?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It may be partly that those Europeans who are interested read the the US forums & get their ideas there - but you won't see their replies as we cannot post there. Having said that, we did have discussions back in the Rift days, and even with the Moria instances up to a point at least.

Anonymous said...

Also the codemasters website is horrible and I personal spend as little time there as possible.

-warhammermer

seanas said...

we read the Turbine forums for theorycrafting, basically. CM's forums are pretty basic: the quest, raid and tactics forums either are supremely basic, or just don't exist.

theory-crafting when it gets done either gets done in the main discussion threads (where they get swamped by chatter), in the class-specific forums (for class-related theory-crafting) or, in my experience, in the server-specific forums. check some of the threads started by the user 'Alash' for some of the better posts in the general forums; check the posts by theuser ArKile in the server and class forums for good examples of these latter types.

but the simplest answer is that those of us interested in theory-crafting read the Turbine forums almost religiously. i just wish i could post on them as well from my CM account, without having to make or acquire a Turbine account...

Isy said...

I agree with the previous comments. I wouldn't choose to use the Codemasters forums to check on raid strategy - the Turbine forums would always be my first port of call. Is just a shame European players cannot give feedback or contribute to the discussions on the US forums :)

Anonymous said...

The cm site is a bomb site, I don't touch it at all, in fact I actually abandoned the European site and servers entirely and started a US account, it just seems to work better, for me at least

Fingolfinfelagund said...

I'm famous hehe.

Yeah it is interesting how the CM forums don't have the same discussions (and heated arguments) about how best ways to run BG and other raids.