https://www.specialist-arms.com/forum/index.php?topic=17028.msg94037

I guess while some stuff will be saved, download anything you need before the end of the month?

With the rise of Facebook groups, various Discord servers...

As a former Discord user who witnessed his European friends "pass" the ID check last year, only to be banned after posting Jake Paul crypto pics...... can I talk to you for a second.....?

... I have lost a lot of the appetite for website hosting....

They should've at least passed it on to someone else... whatever. Hopefully, when a forum like Specialist Arms goes, another like it will enter.... unless they got a C&D from GW(lilely not what happened, but also not outside a realm of possibility)

Man, I have not been there in years.

Sad anyway, but I get losing the urge to web host.

Well damn, SpecArms was one of the last successors of the Specialist Games forums, never really thought about the possibility of it going away.

I'm glad they have a continuity plan for the resources (not that it's stopping me grabbing everything I can get my grubby mitts on just in case.)

While I agree that Discord is insanely useful and has supplanted most, if not all the functions of traditional forums, I can't help thinking it's unwise to invest so much reliance in another company. Hosting your own forum and site affords you a level of freedom that allowed SpecArms (and Dakka!) to survive beyond the lifetime of any single piece of software

Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

Message board forums were once very popular but these days many people do not use them.

 Da Boss wrote:
Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

It's gotten way harder to discover "amateur" hobby content (by which I mean, average people, not stuff that's done by someone with a Patreon following) and I'm sure it's made the on-ramp for new hobbyists harder.

Considering a chunk of those pages haven't had posts in over a decade, could the place even have been considered alive?

Billicus wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

It's gotten way harder to discover "amateur" hobby content (by which I mean, average people, not stuff that's done by someone with a Patreon following) and I'm sure it's made the on-ramp for new hobbyists harder.

That and the prevalence of super high quality close up photographs. The best stuff floats to the top and it's all you end up seeing and it makes things seem unattainable. There is also a lot more tutorial stuff but the bar is definitely higher. And models are definitely designed to be viewed in super zoomed in pictures rather than at tabletop distance as a gaming token.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Considering a chunk of those pages haven't had posts in over a decade, could the place even have been considered alive?

This is the issue a lot of forum groups face. No one wants to see them die; but at the same time no one is going to them.
It's not like the late 90s-early 00s where a forum just had to exist. A lot of people use phones and apps now so they drift to app-ready sites and social media sites hoover up a huge amount of content. Throw on "doom scrolling" designs for eating up online time and people aren't engaging in hobby communities like they used too.


Thing is the internet isn't free and if your forum is seeing almost zero activity; no real buzz and community and just a handful of people dropping in now and then I can well see how both there's no desire to pass it on and also no desire to keep it going.

Damn shame. Their BFG rules were ace.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Damn shame. Their BFG rules were ace.

No fear! The Battlefleet Gothic rules hub I have been hosting at the forum has moved towards this website:

https://horizon-bfg.infinityfree.me/?i=1

that place, as many others, was already dead... they are just clearing things up...

And ... how in any dimension is Discord insanely useful? It's the worst medium I have ever seen.

SU-152 wrote:
that place, as many others, was already dead... they are just clearing things up...

And ... how in any dimension is Discord insanely useful? It's the worst medium I have ever seen.

Of course the old style forum has plentiful merits over the other media platforms but if those platforms start dying you need to find another place to gather. Quite easily. And since tabletop gaming is gaming the link to Discord is quickly made.
Main reason forums lost ground is mobile experience, which is just slower compared to other media.

As a platform has quite some good things going around like you can clearly name channels, thread options, pin files, good member management. Quick sharing of text and images. And speaking for the BFG one here: it is working. There is a structure where people can talk about all aspects of the hobby. And we still get things done like putting out a fanmagazine (yes yes warp rift still goes on).
Discord needs some active management. But that shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe it is a tad connected that the BFG resurgence and discord usage happened at the same moment. And since last year the BFG subreddit heavily picked up as well. Daily posts.

Where as on specialist forums nothing happened. And dakkadakka is also void of substantial BFG content last few years. Same as yaktribe which lasted a little longer than dakkadakka regarding that.

 horizon wrote:


Of course the old style forum has plentiful merits over the other media platforms but if those platforms start dying you need to find another place to gather. Quite easily. And since tabletop gaming is gaming the link to Discord is quickly made.
Main reason forums lost ground is mobile experience, which is just slower compared to other media.

As a platform has quite some good things going around like you can clearly name channels, thread options, pin files, good member management. Quick sharing of text and images. And speaking for the BFG one here: it is working. There is a structure where people can talk about all aspects of the hobby. And we still get things done like putting out a fanmagazine (yes yes warp rift still goes on).
Discord needs some active management. But that shouldn't be a problem.

Maybe it is a tad connected that the BFG resurgence and discord usage happened at the same moment. And since last year the BFG subreddit heavily picked up as well. Daily posts.

Where as on specialist forums nothing happened. And dakkadakka is also void of substantial BFG content last few years. Same as yaktribe which lasted a little longer than dakkadakka regarding that.

I want to believe it is just that: being at the right place at the right time.

Because all those features of Discord are already present in Telegram and WhatsApp, with a way lower memory consumption (for both computers and smartphones) and better search tools.

Not to mention a large amount of features are getting pushed behind a paywall every day.

With a server for a game series or even a local scene, pics are mostly posted for battle reports, painting advice, previews, etc. One update drastically shortened the size of pics for free users to 10 mb as an example; it sounds like I'm being selish in this regard but I don't want to pay to put up photos that end up past the limit, especially if they are all from a local tourney.

 horizon wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Damn shame. Their BFG rules were ace.

No fear! The Battlefleet Gothic rules hub I have been hosting at the forum has moved towards this website:

https://horizon-bfg.infinityfree.me/?i=1

I feel lucky to find this post because lately there's been an increase of players wanting to give BFG a go including myself around here. I'll make sure to check your hub.

M.

 Da Boss wrote:
Discord is just IRC with lots of extraneous bells and whistles. I don't see it as a replacement for a forum at all.

It's sad to me that all the good nerd stuff moved onto Facebook (which I refuse to use) and Discord (which I really dislike).

But I probably wasted too much of my life scrolling anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

An aging hobbyist base moving onto Facebook doesn't shock me. A lot of private hobby groups there.

Discord is nice but not something that replaces forums for sure.

I'll be honest, I consider myself more aware of forums than most and I have never heard of this one so they must have been a very small community.

I need to save all the specialist games rules kits before they disappear then.

Discord has its uses for ongoing developing conversation where the topic changes frequently but I've personally found it horrible for ongoing conversations on a single.topic compared with internet forums. It's more like a group text.

 warboss wrote:
Discord has its uses for ongoing developing conversation where the topic changes frequently but I've personally found it horrible for ongoing conversations on a single.topic compared with internet forums. It's more like a group text.

I agree and even though they put in a forum-like feature for channels its not the same.


The problem is forums are bad for "social media". Even Riddit, which is the closest you get, is terrible because each Reddit only has 1 mega-channel which means if its in any way near active as a group only certain kinds of post make it to the top, the rest fall down to the bottom very fast. Social Media drive on the net is all about super fast responses and interactions. Great for quick chatter but no good for in depth discussion.

Heck its a pain if you've questions because if the person who can answer isn't around and willing and able at the instant your question goes live - it vanishes with social media. Forum you'd at least have a chance

Sad that Specialist is going away, but AFAIK, the materials there are available elsewhere and for the most part the communities for those games have moved as well.

I'm into Mordheim and classic Necromunda and found all the original stuff and more at Broheim and Yaktribe for our campaigns.

 Overread wrote:

I agree and even though they put in a forum-like feature for channels its not the same.

I only used that once and found it more trouble than it was worth. Having the conversation shunted off felt more like being forced to go to the kiddie table at Christmas rather than a dedicated conversation. Plus it was very difficult for me to find organically when I wanted to return a day or two later.

 warboss wrote:

 Overread wrote:

I agree and even though they put in a forum-like feature for channels its not the same.

I only used that once and found it more trouble than it was worth. Having the conversation shunted off felt more like being forced to go to the kiddie table at Christmas rather than a dedicated conversation. Plus it was very difficult for me to find organically when I wanted to return a day or two later.

They've evolved it since then. That threadded system was indeed a pain. Servers can now have "threaded" channels where you can make a new post and it appears in a list just like threads on a forum. It still have a few little issues but its a LOT better.

That sounds better. With the other way I saw a couple months back, you basically silo'd the conversation only to the people who initially participated in it/saw it as few folks scroll way up to see what was talked about weeks or months earlier.

 warboss wrote:
That sounds better. With the other way I saw a couple months back, you basically silo'd the conversation only to the people who initially participated in it/saw it as few folks scroll way up to see what was talked about weeks or months earlier.

Yeah that feature is still there, its ok for an active channel wanting to splinter off a sub-chat for 5 mins between a few people rather than go to DMs; but yeah its messy as heck and very hard to find things.

The threadded channels is a lot better; however the server owner has to set them up as its a new channel feature.

I find it quite sad the forum is going. Whilst I was never a big user of Specialist Arms itself, I much prefer forums and it won't be long before the forums I do use for the specialist games I do play also go. It doesn't surprise me they are going, it must take a lot to keep them going both in cost and time and I've seen the traffic drop over the years as facebook and discord have replaced them.

Its a real shame, as there are some good groups for specialist games, but the information is so fleeting and not readily available long term on social media platforms.

I've hoarded what I can over the years for the games I play. I do suspect that when 'modern' specialist games become 'classics' they won't see the same kind of revivals that older games see currently. Epic 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions, warmaster, Mordheim have all outlasted their short GW shelf lives and have lived on via online fandoms. I do wonder once Legion Imperialis meets it inevitable End Times, if it will continue on with a dedicated fan base many decades later. I think the forums played a big part in keeping the games alive.