quoting Kuro

>please, please, please. you have a lot of players who aren't on discord or don't like using it. please do not make discord the primary means of communication!

I think a big hindrance in this aspect is that we don't really have a good news page. :( The home page feels more like an ad than a hub zone. I do like these bar notifications but I worry that it will get cluttered and don't think that every news post needs to be alerted like this (the most recent announcement is a good example). A page with a nice visual of what is happening right now can help players who either don't play all the time or just aren't very social.

^^ agreed, the home page doesn't really feel like…a home page right now. i think if the full launch/development status stuff was taken away (as it really doesn't need to be there anymore) and the remaining stuff just got shuffled around a bit, that would be a good place to put news posts.

Adding the fact that I also hate using discord - particularly on busy servers - since it makes me extremely anxious.

I also noticed that the lack of news/updates, specifically on the home page was weird. On FR, major items updates go on the homepage as well as more minor site status updates. The newest updates are immediately visible on FR - I looked at LW's page and spotted a pre 1.1.1 patch news update BENEATH the full launch countdown. We don't need the countdown anymore, so why is it on the top?

The header bar seems like a good idea to get everyone playing to read about something new but you can't really use it for every occasion, just small ones.

I think it's best if we get one major news update saying there will be radio silence or minimal communication for x period whilst they work on various things the site needs. Clarity on the lack of clarity would be nice, and still allows for lots of free time to be put into the work needed on the site (rather than trying pile on more work to avoid hiring a community manager if money is tight). Maybe this is naive of me to think. I have no idea if one post would actually fix everything. But that's better than the not quite nothing, but totally slap-dash and messy situation concerning the state of the information on the site now.

This is my first ever launch but even I know the totally unchanged sticky post on the off-site trade forum is extremely strange. Surely at least the information on the site should be up-to-date on launch day? The lenth of the delay seemed like it was too short to be effective since all the info from early access is just there. That will be confusing and offputting to new players!

We all want Lorwolf to succeed and I agree that the lack of updates from EA is worrying in combination with poor communication on a basic level. I'm still really enjoying playing (it's all so so much fun and so exciting!) but at the end of the day Lorwolf is supposed to entice and engage a customer base and these two things are going to prevent new people from engaging with the site because they will feel totally lost and out of place. That's awful! More players benefits the rest of the userbase too!

Cross-posting this, I posted it in May's development update:

I'm glad you guys are hearing us, but please make it a priority to properly communicate news and patch notes postings. There's zero indication that this thread got posted, keeping it hidden on the front page (where there's no reason to even look at it right now) and getting lucky to see it in Recent Topics on the sidebar. My friends I saw talking about this update got notified of it through the Discord server, which cannot be the only way you notify users about threads like this.

Yea, the ONLY reason I knew there was a development update is cause in the discord server people suddenly started talking about the pity token again, completely out of the blue and I went looking to see if there was some update I missed. (Spoiler alert: There was.) It was nice getting actual information, but notifying the player base ON SITE would be very helpful.

The update yesterday were first post on tumblr before post on site and someone on discord saw it and tell everyone. I think it's just a delay in updating the news on the main website. they didn't update the news on discord first at all. It's a discord member who saw the news on lorwolf tumblr page and share it

^ I got an @ everyone ping in discord from Alaunis for it long before it made it onto the site.

the discord notification came long before the on-site notification, when it should be the other way around (i dont know that she needs to be doing discord notifications for routine updates anyways but thats beside the point)

I personally think a community team needs to be established, to be honest. From what I've seen, the main community managers are very few people. And it seems like the current community managers are also managing other things on top of keeping up with community.

I really feel as if having specific community staff team members who focus solely on community and communication could help in the long run and help any miscommunication and lack thereof.

just support. i get personal issues and delays caused by them. i also (sort of) get changing things to premium/irl currency cost when you hit a tough road finance-wise. (still think, that gameplay features should not, in any way, be charged with premium currency in a f2p game directed at younger audiences, you just tiptoe the line to p2p/p2w, which is… not good.)

at the very least that sort of thing needs to be transparent, for all users on the site itself.

a community manager wound really help here.