What happened to these forums?

[DarkDude]

 

 

 

I still feel very sad that this place is deserted.

 

I'm not gonna leave RuneScape since I love that game. And the fact that it's one of my favorite games is exactly the reason why the biggest RS community being so deserted saddens me.

 

Is NOTHING we can do to make it lively again? There has to be something we can do.

 

There isn't anything to be done really. It's not like tip.it forums are dying and nothing else is.

Forums are a dying breed full stop.

Every fan site, every game, every forum out there is in a similar situation as the world is moving on.

The forum as a concept has had its glory day and now social media and reddit are taking the fore.

 

There's no point trying to cling on to it and force it to carry on, you just have to move with the times and realise nothing can last forever and as something birthed is the 90s (mostly) the forum has done quite well as a format. It's outlived Myspace, Bebo, MSN, AOL etc.

 

 

Forums still have their place, more to discuss topics in depth rather than just discussing what's happening at that moment.  Forum topics have a much longer life span than a reddit post and that has some merit, it's just about tuning your forum to that niche. But there is still a lot less appetite for that now than their used to be.

 

Tip.It hasn't been helped by the fact that the website is dead, if the website was still going strong than that'd mean there'd be more activity here (albeit not a huge amount, but still more than now). Tip.It did not adapt when the Wiki came along and that's what killed it. A lot of staff stopped playing the game and they weren't replaced, I mean look at how many of the current staff still play the game, not a lot. I think there's about two admins even who are still actively playing the game (maybe even only one?). Out of all the current crew members it's been over a month since a single one of them logged into the forum! The Moderator/Crew Leader hasn't logged in for over a year too.

 

This site needed people who still cared about the game in charge but that didn't happen. As they stopped playing the game those people stayed in charge instead of doing what those before them did when they stopped playing the game - step down and let others take control.

 

I am not certain what I can tell, but things are a lot more complex than that. What I can tell you is that we tried our hardest on doing exactly just that. Main problem with us versus the Wikia is, they can do it a lot faster as they use the power of the many. That is the very nature of the Wikia. You wouldn't believe how much work even a small update brings. Would it be possible to add them in a timely manner? Sure, but that would compromise our personal lives a lot. That doesn't mean that we don't care about the game anymore, far from it. We just aren't the teenagers anymore with a plethora of time to work on these things. Life happens. I myself am working on a Masters degree, which sometimes require me to be focusing an entire month on it without playing the game. Most of the forum base are at either studying at college or university, or working at a job as well.

 

There are a lot more things that all add-up to the state that we are in here now. And it isn't only us. Every RS forum shares the same fate, even the RSOF has taken a huge hit in the past few years. It isn't even restricted to RS forums. There are only a handful of forums that actually works. What do they do differently? Not much, just the luck of the draw.

 

 

Having been part of many fansites over the years I can tell you that the way Tip.It setup was not for expediency. I saw what happened with the crew from the admin side and I am extremely glad I was never a member of the crew, I really disliked the way it was setup as it didn't feel like it was voluntary. I have nothing but respect for everyone that worked in crew.

 

Tip.It did really well at making great guides and making sure they were accurate and were miles ahead of elsewhere in that regard.

 

You do not need lots of people to do things quickly, throughout the mid 2000s I worked on a site where there were two of us who provided guides for the recent updates (this was back when most updates were quests). Between the two of us we'd be the first site to publish a guide for new content (and I'd say it was of a very high quality), Tip.It would usually take a couple of days to get a guide up whereas we'd have it up in a couple of hours following an update. Of course for more complicated updates (minigames etc.) we'd not have anything but that's because we didn't focus on that. We did have a handful of people who did work on those kind of guides, but the majority of our traffic came from our day 1 quest guides.

 

When I left staff on this site (Mid 2011) crew were not really short of people, the wiki was just starting to gain traction but was not what it is today. Admittedly I stopped playing RuneScape as much around that time and wasn't keeping up with updates so had no need to use the wiki, so I can't accurate comment on what actions were taken here during that time, but given that most of the lead staff didn't change during that period I doubt there was a huge change in direction.

[Sy_Accursed]

 

 

 

 

I still feel very sad that this place is deserted.

 

I'm not gonna leave RuneScape since I love that game. And the fact that it's one of my favorite games is exactly the reason why the biggest RS community being so deserted saddens me.

 

Is NOTHING we can do to make it lively again? There has to be something we can do.

 

There isn't anything to be done really. It's not like tip.it forums are dying and nothing else is.

Forums are a dying breed full stop.

Every fan site, every game, every forum out there is in a similar situation as the world is moving on.

The forum as a concept has had its glory day and now social media and reddit are taking the fore.

 

There's no point trying to cling on to it and force it to carry on, you just have to move with the times and realise nothing can last forever and as something birthed is the 90s (mostly) the forum has done quite well as a format. It's outlived Myspace, Bebo, MSN, AOL etc.

 

 

Forums still have their place, more to discuss topics in depth rather than just discussing what's happening at that moment.  Forum topics have a much longer life span than a reddit post and that has some merit, it's just about tuning your forum to that niche. But there is still a lot less appetite for that now than their used to be.

 

Tip.It hasn't been helped by the fact that the website is dead, if the website was still going strong than that'd mean there'd be more activity here (albeit not a huge amount, but still more than now). Tip.It did not adapt when the Wiki came along and that's what killed it. A lot of staff stopped playing the game and they weren't replaced, I mean look at how many of the current staff still play the game, not a lot. I think there's about two admins even who are still actively playing the game (maybe even only one?). Out of all the current crew members it's been over a month since a single one of them logged into the forum! The Moderator/Crew Leader hasn't logged in for over a year too.

 

This site needed people who still cared about the game in charge but that didn't happen. As they stopped playing the game those people stayed in charge instead of doing what those before them did when they stopped playing the game - step down and let others take control.

 

I am not certain what I can tell, but things are a lot more complex than that. What I can tell you is that we tried our hardest on doing exactly just that. Main problem with us versus the Wikia is, they can do it a lot faster as they use the power of the many. That is the very nature of the Wikia. You wouldn't believe how much work even a small update brings. Would it be possible to add them in a timely manner? Sure, but that would compromise our personal lives a lot. That doesn't mean that we don't care about the game anymore, far from it. We just aren't the teenagers anymore with a plethora of time to work on these things. Life happens. I myself am working on a Masters degree, which sometimes require me to be focusing an entire month on it without playing the game. Most of the forum base are at either studying at college or university, or working at a job as well.

 

There are a lot more things that all add-up to the state that we are in here now. And it isn't only us. Every RS forum shares the same fate, even the RSOF has taken a huge hit in the past few years. It isn't even restricted to RS forums. There are only a handful of forums that actually works. What do they do differently? Not much, just the luck of the draw.

 

 

Having been part of many fansites over the years I can tell you that the way Tip.It setup was not for expediency. I saw what happened with the crew from the admin side and I am extremely glad I was never a member of the crew, I really disliked the way it was setup as it didn't feel like it was voluntary. I have nothing but respect for everyone that worked in crew.

 

Tip.It did really well at making great guides and making sure they were accurate and were miles ahead of elsewhere in that regard.

 

You do not need lots of people to do things quickly, throughout the mid 2000s I worked on a site where there were two of us who provided guides for the recent updates (this was back when most updates were quests). Between the two of us we'd be the first site to publish a guide for new content (and I'd say it was of a very high quality), Tip.It would usually take a couple of days to get a guide up whereas we'd have it up in a couple of hours following an update. Of course for more complicated updates (minigames etc.) we'd not have anything but that's because we didn't focus on that. We did have a handful of people who did work on those kind of guides, but the majority of our traffic came from our day 1 quest guides.

 

When I left staff on this site (Mid 2011) crew were not really short of people, the wiki was just starting to gain traction but was not what it is today. Admittedly I stopped playing RuneScape as much around that time and wasn't keeping up with updates so had no need to use the wiki, so I can't accurate comment on what actions were taken here during that time, but given that most of the lead staff didn't change during that period I doubt there was a huge change in direction.

 

 

From my brief time on the crew I definitely agree the way crew was setup wasn't that great - it was all boiled down into regimented jobs and if you didn't want to do what you were told you had to do then you were kind of cast aside as being a problem or not helpful.

 

There also seemed to be quite a lot of push back against things that would genuinely help the site. I distinctly remember I had to literally argue with admins for quite a long time whilst on crew to get them to even consider adding a ghostly robes miniquest guide to the site, which was insane considering at the time that very guide, which I had made in the AOW forum, was one of the biggest/most popular guides and every other fansite had already done a guide. If memory serves in the end it only got on the site in a sort of bribery arrangement in that I agreed to do some more item database menial work that I hated.

 

I also remember then after I had left crew and EW3 came out that whoever originally wrote the tip.it guide some how managed to mostly copy/duplicate my puzzle solution (I vaguely recall being asked if they could use my AOW guide , then very bemused they changed bits for no reason) but screwed it up so it did not actually work and it took well over a month to actually get anyone on crew update the guide to just use my puzzle solutions that worked - and that was with quite a few users beside myself pointing out the issues and asking for it to be fixed. And tbh the only reason I can fathom why it was an issue is because I was still kinda in the bad books with some admins after they booted me off crew because I'd made a fuss about the ghostly robes thing and about being basically told to do tasks I hated and in a volume that meant I'd either be skipping homework or just not ever actually playing the game for my own ends.

[Cheat]

I don't really Runescape anymore but I'm just curious and have a question for those that still do? How have people replaced forums? Where do people now have in depth discussions, advertise clans, share ideas and make friends? 

People always seem to cite reddit and youtube but neither of these are places capable of good discussion in my experience. I'm no reddit expert but it seems the turnover is just too large to have any kind of meaningful discussion. 

[Ammako]

I'm no reddit expert but it seems the turnover is just too large to have any kind of meaningful discussion.

It is, but also nobody on reddit actually cares about having any kind of meaningful discussion.

[Flodder450]

I think one way of keeping the community alive would be a Tip.It discord server

[Tusimo]

I think the reason why most of forums are dying out is because you can get most answers on Reddit, Quora or just ask your friends on Facebook. So there's less need to talk to strangers.

[AniseCookies]

I log in on here occasionally to see how active it is.  Logged on to RS today- last login was 565 days ago!

 

I'm on Reddit all the time and can definitely see how it took over.

[Eyrelex II]

All i can say is i'm happy to see that tip.it is still around even though the decline in active users is very apparent. Although I was active on other forums back in the day tip.it was always my go to and the one i was most active on, and with my current return to RS i'll try to do my part and be more active here.

 

On a sidenote it was like walking back in time reading through some of my old posts from my old account, oh the nostalgia...

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

I'm convinced that the site is completely dead now.

 

I can't even go to Help and Advice anymore to get great answers to my questions. Where else am I gonna get help with research and stuff like that?

[Rainy_Day]

I'm convinced that the site is completely dead now.

 

I can't even go to Help and Advice anymore to get great answers to my questions. Where else am I gonna get help with research and stuff like that?

Even the British Empire ended eventually.. 

 

It was a good run but people have grown up, moved onto other things, left RuneScape, started families and so forth. I can't see the site staying online for many more years, there's just no place for it these days which is a shame. 

[Yoko Kurama]

It's mostly Reddit, and the decline of players in Runescape itself. I still treasure this site as an archive, there's a lot of historical knowledge here still, and the memories are priceless.

[doomy]

I still have my old blog from 10+ years ago on here, not surprising that the forum died down, but it still has a lot of memories at the least! I still remember 'hyt' in world 99 edgeville!

[Miss Lioness]

 

I'm convinced that the site is completely dead now.

 

I can't even go to Help and Advice anymore to get great answers to my questions. Where else am I gonna get help with research and stuff like that?

Even the British Empire ended eventually.. 

 

It was a good run but people have grown up, moved onto other things, left RuneScape, started families and so forth. I can't see the site staying online for many more years, there's just no place for it these days which is a shame. 

 

 

It definitely will be a sad day, when that occurs. Myself have felt a decline in wanting to game in general and moved back to reading books as my go to form of entertainment. It also has to do with being on my last stretch of university before I got a whole new life to figure out. In general I think that people used RuneScape as a game to get away from, to merely pass time either as escapism or out of pure boredom. I was in the first category for a while, then late it got to the latter and now I probably even moved on in general :P.

 

And then there is this (roughly at least) quote by Chaucer (Yes, Geoffrey Chaucer): All good things must come to an end. I suppose that also applies to these forums, eventually. Let's just cherish the memories while we can.

[The Observer]

It seems to be a common trend it seems. Zybez is announcing their closure as of next month: http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1783583-exit-post-the-end/page-8?do=findComment&comment=17221283

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

It seems to be a common trend it seems. Zybez is announcing their closure as of next month: http://forums.zybez.net/topic/1783583-exit-post-the-end/page-8?do=findComment&comment=17221283

 

I'm glad at least Tip.It forums is still active, not very but still a little bit.

 

I'm never giving up on this message board. Discussions might be hard to find now, but I'm not giving up on it. It's a great place.

[Yoko Kurama]

 

It's mostly Reddit, and the decline of players in Runescape itself. I still treasure this site as an archive, there's a lot of historical knowledge here still, and the memories are priceless.

 

Its definitely reddit but also the fact that fansites did a poor job of getting osrs players.

 

zybez had a pretty healthy userbase when they were the site for trading before ge

 

 

It's the monopolization and centralization of the Internet. No one wants to go to multiple sites anymore, they want a one-stop place for everything, and for most people, that one-stop is Reddit, sadly.

[jrhairychest]

 

They were selected for their community participation, initiative, and maturity. Their personal opinions were their own. Implying that the staff were not only corrupt but actively trying to damage the community is highly insulting to the time they volunteered here.

 

If you're seriously proposing that the moderation staff should've barred people from sharing criticism on a game update, I vehemently disagree and question whether you were actually familiar with tipit at all. For every person who was a habitual whiner there were at least three active tipit users who simply used the boards as a place to talk about the game and its updates pleasantly and with good will.

 

If you never saw those people because the disgust of a troll or two, I am very sorry you missed out on a fun experience.

 

 

Oh, come on. The staff didn't merely criticse updates. They crapped all over the game and the company at every opportunity.  Many were here too long as staff members, especially when they stopped playing.  It was always obvious that it was a clique.

[jrhairychest]

Sure they're held to a higher standard and expected to be more mature than the average poster, but I think it's a bit silly to genuinely view them as "leaders" or "role models." It's just a fansite forum..................

 

 

It's a fansite, so yes you would expect them to set the standard for the community.

 

Anyways I'm rambling now. I'll close with: If you don't like TIF, then you can

:thumbup:

 

That attitude hasn't worked out too well for this forum............................

[muggiwhplar]

 

 

Sure they're held to a higher standard and expected to be more mature than the average poster, but I think it's a bit silly to genuinely view them as "leaders" or "role models." It's just a fansite forum..................

 

It's a fansite, so yes you would expect them to set the standard for the community.

Anyways I'm rambling now. I'll close with: If you don't like TIF, then you can

:thumbup:

That attitude hasn't worked out too well for this forum............................

Fansites are a relic of the past, made obsolete by Wikis. I will now double down on my post from two years ago and continue to suggest that you go somewhere else if you don’t like it here

[Saradomin_Mage]

dude ban evaded to come back to a dead fansite to reply to a 2 year old post, increasing our member count by one. who's winning now huh?????

[Yoko Kurama]

dude ban evaded to come back to a dead fansite to reply to a 2 year old post, increasing our member count by one. who's winning now huh?????

 

Judging from his posts, he seems like he'd be a great addition to Reddit: he can join the hordes of people there who have a meltdown anytime someone levies even the mildest of criticisms of the game or Jagex.

[jrhairychest]

 

Fansites are a relic of the past, made obsolete by Wikis. I will now double down on my post from two years ago and continue to suggest that you go somewhere else if you don’t like it here

 

Doubling down hasn't worked out well for you. Think it's what got this site into this mess in the first place.

 

dude ban evaded to come back to a dead fansite to reply to a 2 year old post, increasing our member count by one. who's winning now huh?????

Banned or account deactivation at my own request...........

 

 

dude ban evaded to come back to a dead fansite to reply to a 2 year old post, increasing our member count by one. who's winning now huh?????

 

Judging from his posts, he seems like he'd be a great addition to Reddit: he can join the hordes of people there who have a meltdown anytime someone levies even the mildest of criticisms of the game or Jagex.

 

At least they still care about the game.

[muggiwhplar]

I think you’re more attached to TIF than I am

[RpgGamer]

Something about posting in this thread awakens the porn bot posters. Weirdest thing.

[Sentry_Wolf]

Hello from an old member who doesn't really do anything much with RuneScape these days.

 

Its really sad the forums are dying, but like many said - its just what happens and how the community changes. Regardless, I credit a lot to TIF. It sounds bullshitty, but getting to work and play alongside people to build the community through general means of just playing the game, organising events with TET or doing crew work, it gave me a lot skill-wise in order to deal with people as someone who considers themselves an introvert. It sparked the interest to get involved with tech as a career as a programmer, doubt it would of turned out the same without the influence the game and this community had on me.

 

Long live the memories!