And so it begins...

The new FFXI and FFXIV forums opened today, and I have to say it is a lot better and worse than I expected.

Better: It is very comprehensive. General discussion forums, update information and even job forums. It should be easy for people to see where they want to post and post the correct information.

Worse: It's going to be a huge cluster fuck. People are going to whine 100% of the time, and beg for stupid shit like forcing people to go back to old XP parties and buffing the hell out of PUP.

On-balance: It is for the good. Even with all the idiots out there that just don't understand that some (most, if not all) people like the game the way it is right now, I believe that the NA community leaders are quite capable of ignoring what they know to be bad for the game.

I don't think it is going replace other forums like BG or even some of the smaller forums, but it is a new place for some people to contribute and some people to whine like children. And since the whiners care about posting most often than the people that want to contribute, the official forums will sometimes be a shit fest. Though, that doesn't mean that their won't be good threads too. While BG is obviously for more advanced players, it can still be rather off putting to even me at times. There are certain players, some thankfully banned, that would posit nearly insane damage calculations and scream down anyone that didn't agree. Hopefully, this situation will be less likely to occur on the official forums.

More stupidity for less negativity? It's a trade off and it is definitely the reason I believe that places like BG will be largely unaffected by the new official forums.

The thing that I really want to see is SE letting Matt Hilton and the guys on the NA community team actually make comments about the state of the game, planned updates and bug fixes. I don't expect them to be as active as say Blizzards moderators, but actually responding to a post instead of just adding a new post to the announcement forum would at least provide the perception that they are actually participating, even if they aren't in reality.