BioWare defends its decision to not have individual SWTOR server forums

With the launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic
came a new and improved forum system for the community, and everyone
lived happily ever after. Right? Yeah... not so much. It turns out that BioWare neglected to include individual server forums for its many, many, many shards,
and this omission has rankled some players who were looking forward to
talking amongst their new communities on the site.

TOR-Talk got in
touch with BioWare to ask about why the individual server forums were
cut down to four ruleset forums. Senior Community Coordinator Allison Berryman
says the decision was a matter of practicality as there would be too
many forums and not enough moderators to go around: "Generally speaking,
server forums for many MMOs tend to be largely un-moderated and can
become unpleasant to visit."

Instead, BioWare hopes that server communities create and moderate their
own server-specific sites and forums. "This is also a great opportunity
for the community to come together in their own ways – on fan sites and
through other resources," Barryman said. "Of course, we want people to
visit the official forums, and will use them to provide information
that's of specific interest to the community, but we also love to see
the community coming up with cool stuff on their own."