The Class Discussion forum section

[stormlord]

I see that it says Tanks, Melees, Priests, Casters. Now, this is nice and orderly and doesn't consume much room on the forum list. For those with the aesthetic requirements, it has the perfect touch.

But I came here not to give praise.

1) Every post has the class jammed into the subject line - this is something else for posters to worry about
2) With several classes sharing the same thread you have to do a search to get a fuller list of topics about your class, but this is hit/miss because it's searching for keywords in the subject and body of the posts

What's so wrong with just adding a section for each class? It may not be as pretty and elegant, but it's functional because it reduces the reflexive use of search and doesn't require us to pepper our posts with our class name. I mean even with 16 classes, that's not very much forum space.

Ideally, we could have specific class sections AND sections for tanks, melees, casters and priests. This way players can do what they like to. And sometimes a paladin will have a general question about defense/offense that's better asked in the tanks section. This way everyone gets to see it and it's not repeated as much.

But more than all this, Paladins are Paladins. They're not warriors. They're not shadowknights, nor are they rogues or rangers. There're many fine points that distinguish classes from each other. Repetition of posts happens no matter what anybody does because players do not always use search when making a post. And secondly, repetition is more likely if the different classes have more things in common than things that make them different. So jamming them all into one place gives the impression that there's little distinction.

Even more ideal than bunches of sections, we could keep it as is, but allow players to add a class tag to their post, as in: "Please select the class(s) specific to this post->". Or just have a tag(s) edit control.

This way, I could select Paladin from the dropdown list to show only those posts with the paladin tag. Could do all of that within the forum section. It would reduce the labor intensity by cutting away searches on the subject or the body. It would also remove the need to add the class name to the subject or body.

But, personally, I'd just add a separate section for each class. I don't care if nobody reads em. It's an easy way to keep it functional and reduces the database searches. It's naturally conserving.

Here're some MMORPGs that have distinct class sections in their forums:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/
http://forums.lotro.com/
http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=13

That's just a taste.

And you know what gets me? Is that the longer the forum stays this way, the worse the problem becomes. Full searches become even more(!) labor intensive, and the ability to switch to a distinct section for each class is more difficult because you cannot reliably relocate old posts so you're forced to keep an old archive. Distinct class sections are revertible but indistinct sections (as it's done here) are not (or not nearly as easily).