As rumors of this have pretty well circulated, I think it's about time to let the cat out of the bag. So, right to the point:
In a few months the BF2S Forums will be closed.
BF2S has had an amazing run. I've seen a community coalesce, grow, and bud into something awesome. However, "BF2S" is stuck on a moniker. Namely, "BF2". No game last forever, and BF2 is hitting the end of it's lifespan. However, the community around BF2S has not hit the end of it's lifespan. Instead, I've seen it expand into more games and successfully diversify itself. Team Fortress 2 get togethers, Call of Duty 4 events, the D&ST forum -- all of these are prime examples of our community no longer being dependant upon the BF2 in BF2S.
As implied, the death of the forums at BF2S does not imply the death of the BF2S community, but a chance to properly set ourselves apart as a community of serious (and some not so serious) gamers.
Harkening back to the roots of it all, I've dubbed this new community trackr
trackr will be a new site, with new features that will let the community grow into other games and topics. trackr will also switch technologies behind the website -- a key to letting us expand more freely and transform to the next stage that I see this community is ready to take.
Here's some of what is going to change:
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In a few months the BF2S Forums will be closed.
BF2S has had an amazing run. I've seen a community coalesce, grow, and bud into something awesome. However, "BF2S" is stuck on a moniker. Namely, "BF2". No game last forever, and BF2 is hitting the end of it's lifespan. However, the community around BF2S has not hit the end of it's lifespan. Instead, I've seen it expand into more games and successfully diversify itself. Team Fortress 2 get togethers, Call of Duty 4 events, the D&ST forum -- all of these are prime examples of our community no longer being dependant upon the BF2 in BF2S.
As implied, the death of the forums at BF2S does not imply the death of the BF2S community, but a chance to properly set ourselves apart as a community of serious (and some not so serious) gamers.
Harkening back to the roots of it all, I've dubbed this new community trackr
trackr will be a new site, with new features that will let the community grow into other games and topics. trackr will also switch technologies behind the website -- a key to letting us expand more freely and transform to the next stage that I see this community is ready to take.
Here's some of what is going to change:
- PunBB is being replaced by Drupal
Pun has been amazing for everything it does, but we're more than just forums now we need more, and Drupal provides it. - Events/Calendar
Upcoming game release schedules and community sponsored events. - Groups
User created groups which can act as 'mini-communities' for the cliques in the whole. - Reviews & News
More specific than "[Current Event]" in a post title, this will let us put together presentable, themed reviews and news about the games we're rocking. - The Library
I'm personally VERY excited about this and the dev site already has an impressive start on it. The Library is like a collection of wikis. Instead of just covering BF2, we'll be able to aggregate and collect the best info on many games now. - Downloads
It returns! While not hosting the files ourselves, we'll be able to keep an organized collection of downloads for ourselves. - Forum
This is going to be a pain point for lots of folks and is one of the draw backs to the new software -- the forums are not as mature as Pun, so some things will be missing. - Unified Login!
One of the more annoying parts about bf2s was having to maintain multiple login systems which always broke (ask the wiki team...). Since the whole site is run comprehensively under one software, this is no longer a problem. - Advanced Polls!
Example: Vote on one or more items in a list.
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