And here is where this argument fails: They have to deal with it no matter what. Have you looked at their homepage? There is a comment section. And if you take a look at the statements they released recently then you should come to the conclusion that they are well aware of the shit storm they created.

actually i think it doesnt fail.. what comment section... you mean one where people can leave comments? i wasnt aware of one. my interest is purely in the witcher 2 site and forum, ive never bothered to look elsewhere to get, or ask for, info for this specific game from the developers... more to the point, ive never NEEDED to look elsewhere before.

(edit: have since seen the section you're talking about, but theres no way thats even remotely as good as a forum... i doubt they even read most, if any, of those comments - more importantly, theyre tucked away nice and neat so they dont even have to acknowledge them)

and im sure many others are the same - thats why they ask here, or ask on other forums... the comments that they are getting are small compared to the number of people out there that need help but dont know the next-best place to ask, given that the correct place has been removed.

i think the argument stands. cdp shouldnt need 10 days to put a forum up. a CHILD starting their first free forum doesnt even need that much time.

for my part, like i implied above, i just cant fathom why a company that 'SEEMS' to care so much about their fans, about the community, would just shut the majority out in the cold and suddenly not want to know them, at the most crucial stage of a product launch... especially one they seem to care about so much.

its all just so utterly bizarre.. i couldnt even imagine an extremely UNFRIENDLY company like activision doing something this low... did cdp expect the game to be THAT badly recieved? did they really just not want to know about problems gamers were having? or worst, do they REALLY think we're all b**tards and not want to be around us? looking through the gog forums it seems like most people here are pretty well behaved and can articulate their problems in a mostly calm manner, so i really dont know why cdp would shut everyone out like this.

like i said... bizarre.

yeah this sounds really rant-filled, but thats not my intention.. im only expressing my shock and sadness at this situation given that i honestly believed at one point cdp cared about its community and would never treat them this way... yeah.. sad is the best way to describe my feelings on all this... not hateful or angry... just really really sad, and i guess disappointed in them AND their behaviour/actions in the week or so up to, and since, the launch.

Im going to have to agree with the crazy theory folks. Theres no excuse for not having a board up and running this long.

I hate to do this and compare. But BioWare's social board is way more complex then your regular message board - it interacts with EA account, games and social groups, plus more. And that was up and running just a couple of days befor the release of DAO.

The least they could have done was putt a temp board (which they already had befor release) and have fans interact with the creators (and a techboard), and not just some weird facebook like comment box.

Its either a ploy to increase traffic on GOG.com or a serious lack of web designers. ^_^

Well, that theory is flawed. Why would they come here to try and calm us and tell us they are working on it, if they went into hiding on purpose? Where's the logic in that?

And secondly, it might feel longer for you, since you are waiting and waiting feels always too long. But hey, release day was FIVE days ago, not 10 or 11, consult your calendar.

While I agree that they fucked up their timing (and I was actually asking about when the new boards would be implemented a week or two before), I also know from experience that shit happens and you run into trouble that you could've not foreseen at the time. Add to that the more pressing matters like budging servers, because of more players than they hoped to expect.

Cut them some slack until tomorrow and if the forums aren't up then as promised, and hopefully with a good explanation for the delay, you can bask in the satisfaction that your paranoid suspections were probably right. ;)

I think he meant 10 - 11 days since forum downtime not since the game release.

Yeah, this was the most important part of my posting and it sure made it neccessary to quote a whole wall of text you don't even answer to...

Yes in case you didn't notice its just easier to hit reply type the text and post a message than hit reply delete unnecessary part of your text and then post a message.

And again you comment on the "most important" part of my message... being easy does not equal being smart, you know. Or respectful enough to other forum users to not hog their time, with OT at that. This was about the official forums. Which hopefully will be back up soon. Sorry for misreading the 10 days.

What part of my first reply wasn't respectful ? I was just pointing you that you made a mistake that is all. Then you start attacking my way of quoting you with an answer that was certainly not OT >.> . Sorry for not being smart enough for your answers but lets keep the insults to ourselves please.

But to be more on topic I remember people starting threads on the official forum about the polish review that was published a few days before the game release and that started a bunch of rumors about the game length, consolization and what not at the time the forum was taken down.
So it does look a bit suspicious.

You know it could be as simple as thier web master started using a new forum system and is just crap at it.

who here has never got drunk or stoned and blurted out that they can make a better "sandwich",and the next day found a mess in the kitchen and cant fix the toaster for some reason ;)

Being a Moderator on another Forum and I have been through several Forun changes ( New Software, new servers ). At the changeover, there will be a shut down. This is done to transfer member files over to the new fums as well as to mrge the old member files with the files that were opened by existing members. They did put up a shadow or proxy forum of sorts and you had to sign up again, These accounts will have to be merged ( I used the same user name as I had in my existing account, so shouldn't be a problem ). Anyway, from what I've seen over there, they are most likely regretting having done that as things have been pretty rough to say the least. I have been unable to get the DLC stuff, but I figure it will be taken care of at some point. I am one that went through that buggy mess that they called Fallout: New Vegas. Like I said, change overs are never instaneous and takes some time and in this case, they have a lot to do. They will also be trying to debug it as much as possible before it goes "Live". We do that behind the scenes on our forum before the change over which could take 12 hrs or more of being down. I don't forsee it being under 12 hrs though, but who knows.

I remember a place (still visit, but not as active now) that got new servers and a new format, which we saw for exactly 6 hours before they were down for 3 months. It happens, and there's not a lot they can do about it when it does, sometimes.

My personal take on the situation is that CDPR wanted the new forums up at the launch but something went wrong. If you read, they say the servers are fine, but the forums are not shaking hands nicely.

Ever gone to a website where the text overlays the images? Sometimes, finding the coding error takes a long time, especially if the one trying to find the error is the one who made the code. It's like trying to see a missing word in a term paper when you've been writing it for 6 months. You're so familiar with what you think it says, you don't see what it doesn't say.

I suspect it's intentional. Bioware did the exact same thing with ME release and, in doing so, created the "epic fail" phrase.

"Let's release one of the most antisipated PC games ever, and at the same time we can completely rebuild the Forum. It won't need testing. It'll fire up without a glitch fersher!"

Just can't figure out why PR would want GoG to take the initial wave of forum posts. From a marketing perspective it doesn't make sense. But neither does simultaneously releasing your biggest game along with a brand new untested forum.

... especially if you keep in mind that they already launched a new one less than a year ago.

Well none of us has ever released a highly anticipated and highly rated game. CDPR isn't exactly a HYOOGE gaming company so with their first really big name release following TW1, I can see how some things may take longer. I don't know what their budget is, I don't know how much staffing they have.

The conspiracy theories don't seem valid to me because I see no gain at all from there being no forum at thewitcher.com. Maybe they have uber marketing geniuses that see a gain?