- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Here are my thoughts.
Back in the day, when Bungie was relatively small and unknown, the community was small and tightknit. Even in the years after Halo game out, there was little reason for folks to come here UNLESS they wanted to swoon over the coming Halo 2 or appreciate Bungie. It had a small town feel where the community moderated itself for the most part. Volunteer moderators were fine because it was a "we all help each other out" type world.
But Halo 2 expanded the online issue many many fold. Now, anyone with Halo 2 and XboxLive will come here to check out all the cool features. They are great and expansive. However, the forums have continued to crumble under the weight. As individuals and groups have used Nungie.net to create mini-communities and factions, the control of the forums as been as it was before. The leash was very very loose. And of course maddness has insued.
Don't get me wrong. I am not bagging on the moderators. They try. But they are volunteers and apparently given little direction. One never knows if a post might be off topic (Should it be in Zanzibar or Optimatch? Should it be in Underground or The Sept?). The policies on when to lock, delete or move seem extremely arbitary. Some one can flood a forum with a hundred spams full of hate and end up with a 7 day blacklist, and a humorous if mildly off topic post can get someone a 6 month ban. Moderators, not being Bungie employees, are given no real control to give actual answers if it is more complicated than "Who is Ling Ling" or "How to I link my GT," and often answers must come from the random users who often don't know what they are talking about. One never knows exactly who to PM when there is a trouble on the site because you never know who is around.
I have heard it said this is NOT a customer support site. Which is fine, but they DO NOT have a customer support site. 18004MYXBOX is supposedly it, but unless you have a connection issue they are alll but useless. And the portions of the site that are there for customer support are neglected (see multiplayer map guides).
Don't get me started on the webcam.
It seems that they don't have the staff to handle it. It is too big and unruly not to have fulll time moderators (hint: interns) who you can count on to handle issues in a standard way and can give "official answers." These answers may very well be, "Bungie has no opinion on that," but that is better than "I don't actually work for Bungie so I won't be able to tell you but here are my thoughts...." They could also handle banning questions by actually looking the information up, which, when it happens, currently falls upon Achronos and that is not his job.
Bungie is no long small town. It's fan base is in the leagues of EA and UbiSoft and should probably start acting like it. I realize this would take a lot ofthe personality out ofthe place, but currently the personality is maddness and hate and yelling and complaining. Perhaps there are places for private groups where Bungie can invite those long term fans or ones who have earned a place. Yes, it is elitist. But right now it s mob rule.