DiabloFans

I understand, Azriel, what you are saying about the forum software. Say what you will about vBulletin, but you gotta admit it was pretty clean looking and straightforward. What we have now is very cluttered. But in fairness to Curse, I clearly remember most of us complaining to no end about how outdated our forum looked and the shock, feigned or otherwise that we were still even using vBulletin.

I like our forum software now actually. I just think they should stretch it out a bit, make it less cramped, get rid of these fucking emotes (especially that stupid Star Wars one), and use less obtrusive ads. I know that last one sounds totally ridiculous. Cause yes, the ads bring in a lot of money. But I hate those ads where you get on the forum and and it takes up the whole page with a link in the corner that says, "Click here to continue to the site..." Seriously? I can click there and you'll let me go to the website I was trying to get to in the first place? Well that's a relief!

I also hate complaining about how certain things are hard to find around here. Or how we don't have a view Who's Online option anymore. Cause the ones that have figured all that stuff out are just like, "Oh it's easy, you just click here where it says.." Yeah yeah, I know it must be easy and all, but I'm admittedly stubborn about these things.

Ya, not having a User CP REALLY pisses me off.

Conceptart.org is by a far a much larger site, but over there we still use Vbulletin I think and it works great. I feel like the new software is trying too hard. It wants to do things it is failing at. For instance, I don't know if anybody else has this problem but at the top right of the page where your profile avatar and name are listed, the name is supposed to be a drop down menu. However, must of time it confuses itself and goes to your profile instead of dropping down the menu making it increasingly difficult to get to important things such as messages.

Siaynoq, I loved vBulletin to death. That's really the main reason why I liked this forum to begin with, it was just simple and it made sense.

I want vBulletin back...

Okay, I will pay CASH MONEY to have vBulletin back. I will donate 2 liters of blood, sweat, and tears to have vBulletin back.

Eh, really though guys. Now you're just getting into technical issues with the site. All of which the staff seems perfectly willing to try and help you with. And as much as I miss vBulletin, let's all just agree now there's NO point in trying to get it back.

Quote from Siaynoq

And then what I think happens is sometimes some of those older, once more active users try to return after awhile and test the waters a bit to see how well they can still participate in the new environment. It doesn't take much before they conclude that it's not worth it to them anymore. If you look to see who most frequently is updating their status, these are the people who have transitioned best into the new format of this site. They are the most active users on the forum and seem to spend the most time either updating their status or blipin' it up in spam section. Come on, we all know that's what it still is despite its new euphemistic term.

That largely seems to be the case. And as you say, most people will quickly realize that the forum has changed. And there's not much doing about that at this point.

And from personal experience, replying to your posts is often such a daunting task that I often find myself not knowing what to actually type out. But that might just be me.

Quote from Umpa65

Ironically I fear that D3 could mean the end of this site. If you go back to when we were first obtained by curse I went off on every thread I could about how useless the transition was. Mod's would defend the move by saying things like "the bills dont pay themselves" or "how do you think we got this cool background?". Firstly, the background is useless when it's covered by a huge fucking ad.

DFans has been run by Curse sine around September 08, maybe even before then. That's almost as long as you've been a member, and there weren't any immediate changes. Hell, even the staff were in the dark about it for a long time, and I don't have any exact dates.

I still remember asking Daemaro about, and he said something like "I think curse owns us, but I'm not supposed to know." It was quite confusing.

But however much you want to blame curse and use them as a scapegoat for this situation Umpa, it's not going to solve anything. The site is where it is because of several possible cases, and most certainly bad decisions, but it's not because all old members went "damn, we're owned by curse. I will stop posting."

Quote from Umpa65

Secondly, I never understood what was wrong with the site in the first place.

If you're talking about the site redesign, that was because all curse sites use it, and because vbulletin was just giving us headaches with permissions. Things just refused to work, and changes to settings sometimes didn't happen at all, sometimes happened on their own it seemed. IPB was needed to keep the site to work behind the scenes.

That being said, we should try and redesign IPB as best we can. But no one ever gives and concrete suggestions in the suggestion forum of what they want, it's always "vbulletin was better." Which isn't helpful.

Fact of the matter is, vbulletin is never coming back. So we deal with it and work to make what we have as best as we can. As always.

Quote from Umpa65

Curse put us in the coffin, Diablo 3 will put in the nail. Once D3 hits...the site is going to get so crowded and flooded with useless users it isn't even funny. I think that will drive away just about all the old users. I don't even know that I would want to stick around to even see that.

Your choice of words is funny... I remember discussions that raged on this site in the past. Must have been around 07-08. Many old users were complaining about all the new users, and how they were flooding the forums. The "oldies" felt they were special and needed a place of their own. So we tried a separate oldie forum which never took off, and of course many of those oldies have been gone for a long time now, much longer than before our current situation.

I think it's a fatal mistake to reminisce about all these old members. While we would all appreciate to get them back, the question isn't really "why are oldies leaving and not coming back" but "why is activity, or core use activity, not as great as it used to be?". Those questions don't necessarily have the same answer.

I don't really care about the new software. I've grown used to swallowing major changes and not really get ticked off by them. On the other forum, at which I've been posting for more than 2-3 years, the entire administration has changed around 3 times. Activity suffered when the active administration left, and now we're back to getting 1,000-2,000 posts per day. Do you know how many boards and members we have over there? It's just me, and another 8 or 9 members, 2 or 3 of which are the most active along side myself. We'd get up to 30,000 posts each through the summer. The winning formula is active discussion, and a personality to the forum. We have our own distinct personality there, out own set of inside jokes and gimmicks (which is, by far, the most broad I've ever seen on any forum), and we really care about the forum, and just go on discussing everything, and anything, in the most hilarious, intelligent, effective fashion. Things are just stale around here. No sense of camaraderie, no sense of personality to the forum, hardly anyone cares about anything, and it's just really hurting the forums. I've been trying to change some of that, believe me, but a task that takes well over 20 users in a place like this, simply can't be done by one person.

I'm posting in every thread on my subscribed topics list. Does that help?

Phrozen, I'm not saying Curse is the direct cause of the inactivity. I'm saying that ever since we were linked to all of the other Curse sites, once we were clearly owned by curse, THAT is when another wave of new members rushed the site. It wasn't the first time because the first time was during the Ice teasers, the D3 announcement, and then again at the next Blizzcon I believe. And, the reason thats bad is because the topics just get worse and worse. Thats why the old members left. In fact, I still speak to one of them who left recently and it was because there was nothing left to talk about, no new info, and terrible topics.

This thread manages quite well though I'd say. There's apparently very much to be said about the topic of inactivity for this site

I was thinking the same thing.Ya know what else I was thinking? I would wager that once D3 finally comes out we are going to see tons of old members come back to check out the site.

That's right! Keep your spriits up, and hope for the best :whistling:

Mmm, I've got no doubt in my mind that a LOT of people will resurface once D3 rolls around.

Personally, I've been going the way of Siaynoq as well (nice to see you back around here, btw. ES sometime?), the sheer length of time that it is taking D3 to be developed is making me pissed about the whole situation.

I know that it's going to affect my opinion of the game come release, as well. As I'll remember the countless terrible, uninformative posts by Bashiok (granted, he does have many good ones), the endless waiting, and the lack of news. It's really souring my opinion of Blizzard, which I fear will spoil a lot of D3 for me, where otherwise I could have fully appreciated the game had Blizzard treated the fanbase better.

Anywho, went in a totally different direction there, back on track...

Even IF there are a lot of people on here who spam, there are still lots of us who try to have meaningful discussion. But, sad thing is that we simply don't have any fresh faces around here. It's hard to discuss new and interesting topics when you..

A ) Aren't getting any interesting news updates
B ) Aren't getting new members, with new viewpoints
C ) Have exhausted most discussion, given that there are very few members out there who actually want to have long discussions.

Really hope this place gets back to how it used to be, and personally I've warmed up to the new software. Yes, it's clunky and ugly, but it has potential. I really wish Curse would devote more time to this website, could be made so much better.

I totally read that post with your voice speaking it out loud in my head. Now if you'll excuse me..I'm gonna have to..mas...mast...master Pokemon training. :|

lol is that a joke? theres nothing organised about the watch thread option; im apparently "watching" hundreds of threads from 2-3 years ago and havent got the time to go unwatch them, some threads i havent even posted in o.o

i miss the user cp as well.