[2022] New SWTOR Forums are coming!

Hi everyone,

I have news to share about changes that will be coming to the SWTOR Forums in that we are moving away from the current platform and will be utilizing a brand new forum platform beginning September 29th!

This migration will move out in phases as we build out a forum space that is uniquely SWTOR. First and foremost, Im sure all you are wondering about what will be happening to the current content on the forums. They will remain as they are, as all are being converted over to the new platform. As with any project of this size, there could be things that may not appear correctly or may be missing, so if you notice that happening with your content, please let us know. And just like with the current forums, the new forums will still only be available for use to Subscribers but will be viewable by anyone.

The first phase
Launch will focus on functionality of the platform such as all of your normal day to day functions. Itll be easier to create posts, follow topics, format posts, and add images/media. Note about the latter, there will be slight restrictions. A setting will be in place that a user must have 1) an active forum account for longer than 14 days and 2) have made at least 10 posts on the forums in order to upload any media. Additionally, should the system flag your media for any reason, it will be withheld for review. Only once it is approved will it be viewable by everyone.

Key features that will be immediately available after launch:

Streams aka Personalized Feeds + Tagging
One of the coolest features that will be available to all of you off the bat is the ability to create Streams (not in broadcasting terms). Think of Streams as Feeds. You will have the ability to customize what content you follow whether it be of specific topics, people, or even specific tags. As an example, you could follow my account, JackieKo, and see all the posts I made which will include game update info, bug report follow ups, and Off Topic posts. However, moving forward any post I make pertaining to the game itself that provides additional info to you all will be tagged as #gameinfo, #devupdate, or #update7.1.1 and you can customize your stream to only see posts with those tags.

Optimized Mobile View
We know navigating the current Forums on mobile is a bit of a hassle, so were looking forward to seeing how you all feel about mobile view post launch of the new Forums. As with any visual change, we encourage you to play around with the new format, and provide feedback of your experience.

Announcements + Alerts
We will gain the ability to place banners on the new Forums that will highlight unique Announcements. As an example, these could broadcast info about an upcoming PTS phase.

Alerts are more immediate pop ups that will be shown on your screen that can be dismissed easily. An example of when we will be using this feature is a reminder that a dev stream is about to go live.

As I wrote earlier, the above features will be live once the new Forums launch. I do want to stress that this is a space that I want all of you to feel a part of, so please offer constructive feedback on the best ways we can utilize these features to better serve the community.

In-Game Event Calendar (wont be available until October/November)
Once this feature is ready to launch, you will have easy access to info about active Game Events! A calendar tab will be easily accessible on the Forums that will take you to the Event Calendar, so you have easy reference to event info at your fingertips. This will also be a space where we will add info about future contests and dev streams.

The second phase
The focus for this phase will be on the aesthetics of the new Forums outside of the general layout of it. We will be adding ways for players to earn points the more you utilize the Forums such as creating posts, browsing, liking posts, etcThose points will earn you badges and ranks. Devs will even have the ability to reward unique badges to players whose posts are helpful, constructive, and informative. We are particularly excited about this feature and its ability to highlight high-quality posts that contribute to our community.

This will also be the time when we update the icons next to each sub-forum category.

Ill have more info on the schedule of these additional features at a later time. We want to ensure the quality of the first stage and give players a chance to get used to the new format before adding more features. If youve frequented the Forums for a while, youre probably wondering when these points will start accumulating for you. They will be applied retroactively from the time the new Forums launch. For new accounts made before the second phase rolls out, you will begin accumulating points after the first time you log into the new forums.

Whats the timeline on all of this?
The new forums will be live on September 29.

Beginning September 26th at 10am CT / 3pm UTC, the Forums will go into a read-only maintenance mode for 72 hours. This is to ensure that everything is imported correctly, and will give us time to do necessary testing. Theres 10 years of info thats migrating over and an entirely new platform being deployed, so we are allocating 3 days to make sure everything is working correctly before opening it back up to everyone.

Should there be any unexpected and pressing updates to share with our players such as the new Forums going live earlier than anticipated, we will be updating everyone on our Twitter account.

The new Forums have been a long time project of ours and Im really happy that we get to share this with all of you soon!

Best,
Jackie

This will also be the time when we update the icons next to each sub-forum category.

Regarding the rest of the site, we don't have anything to share right now. But know that we're always having conversations around what we can update/improve.

Good question! So, there are two primary reasons that we are updating the forums:

1. Modernizing our game and supporting systems/platforms remains a goal of ours and the forums are just one example of that! By updating it to an entirely new platform it introduces a host of new functionality (for you and for us) and future proofs us so we can continue to update it going forward.
2. With our forums being a very old and very custom version of vBulletin it was simply on its way to becoming unsupportable. Between choosing to stop supporting the forums (which would inevitably shut them down) or replacing them, we chose the latter.

Hope that addresses your questions, thanks!

-eric

Constructive criticism is welcome and always has been. We've stated that multiple times. If criticisms were entirely removed from the forums, the vast majority of the threads that currently exist would be gone, and we certainly wouldn't be moving forward with a new platform. I'm always on board with reading and gathering feedback that is helpful and constructive. My only ask has ever been that people are respectful to us and to each other.

Perhaps there could be a Preferred players section so it doesn't feel so.. exclusive?

I have every intention of seeing that thread get to 1k pages.

Hey there!

Ok yeah, let's talk about polls and the forums. This is a decision that might even predate me as CM but I know the philosophy was shared over the years. Polling is something that is, generally speaking, a great engagement feature. However, part of the challenge is that players will often look at polls on the forums and their results as "supporting data" for things as opposed to a means of conversation.

The forums are an excellent source of feedback and discussion but it is worth understanding that the forums represent a very small fraction of the playerbase. And even then, forum-goers tend to only fall within the most engaged of our player types. That is a bunch of words to say, the forum community is excellent but it is not always an accurate representation of the full breadth of our playerbase.

Now, it is for that very reason that the forums are valuable, to get that feedback from our most engaged players. But is also means that polling is not going to always be accurate outside of that understanding. Which is fine for us, but can make it challenging to have meaningful conversations coming from polls if players take those very limited numbers as fact.

That is why we have leaned towards keeping polls disabled in the past, but I will let Jackie speak to any plans for the new forums.

-eric

Hey there!

Ok yeah, let's talk about polls and the forums. This is a decision that might even predate me as CM but I know the philosophy was shared over the years. Polling is something that is, generally speaking, a great engagement feature. However, part of the challenge is that players will often look at polls on the forums and their results as "supporting data" for things as opposed to a means of conversation.

The forums are an excellent source of feedback and discussion but it is worth understanding that the forums represent a very small fraction of the playerbase. And even then, forum-goers tend to only fall within the most engaged of our player types. That is a bunch of words to say, the forum community is excellent but it is not always an accurate representation of the full breadth of our playerbase.

Now, it is for that very reason that the forums are valuable, to get that feedback from our most engaged players. But is also means that polling is not going to always be accurate outside of that understanding. Which is fine for us, but can make it challenging to have meaningful conversations coming from polls if players take those very limited numbers as fact.

That is why we have leaned towards keeping polls disabled in the past, but I will let Jackie speak to any plans for the new forums.

-eric

The forums are the place that we primarily get player feedback from even more so when it comes to PTS. We also gather it from a number of other places both official (social media, content creators) and unofficial (Discord, Reddit, Twitch) but the forums is the place we engage the most.

That, of course, is speaking specifically to feedback. Data, design goals, etc. are all a component of our decision making that goes beyond player feedback. These are things are working to be better about communicating as well to help drive better feedback.

Circling back to polls. If players like, or do not like something (or both), it is usually pretty apparent from the conversations around it. Polling adds little value from a feedback gathering standpoint since the "data" itself isn't usable to validate it. But on the flipside, forum-goers might take a poll as that data validation, which is only true in a vacuum. (Note from Jackie: That isn't to say that staff won't be using polls to gather snapshot insight. When we do use them for the sake of feedback, they will have a very direct and intended purpose.)

As stated above I think we can help here by being better about communicating our intent for things we do and changes we make. Along with being better about communicating what we are doing (or not doing) based on feedback.

-eric