In game forum

[Rimmy]

Do any of you have a forum built into the game or do you just have a separate forum elsewhere? I know that I personally like in game forums more because it usually means that other players are more active because they it's very convenient. They don't even have to make another forum account. What do you guys (and or girls) do?

[leZourite]

While it's not easy, or more precisely asks for good knowledges in these forums and their databases it is possible to include a forum like IPB or PHPBB inside your game so it looks "seamless".

But they are usually well too big and better use another mysql server for loads...

Otherwise i prefer the more simpler home brewed forum, much easier to integrate though you have to code it all and take care of basic functions like editing...

[Zeggy]

Usually I use an external forum, but for Click PBBG I coded a custom forum. It doesn't have as many features as other forum software, but it serves its purpose

[Chris]

At the beginning is much better to run a separate forum on separate server. It saved me several times when the game server was down... You just get a cheap host for a few bucks, put there a free forum and that's all.

Once your game gets big and you know how to select good hosting company then ingame forum would be better. Probably.

To sum it up, I find separate forum much more convenient for the owner and during emergencies and the ingame forum much more convenient for players. A really tough decision I would say

[Rimmy]

How difficult is it to implement an ingame forum?

[foxumon]

I made an internal forum for my game =3  I think it's worth the time and makes it a lot easier for players.

Plus they have to use the same name they have in the games - i.e. someone could register in the forum with someone else's user name and cause problems for them.  I've seen games where they have you verify your game account on the forum...but I think having an integrated forum is just easier on everyone   and looks more professional <3

It wasn't too hard to make my forum...took probably about a week or so?  But I've gone back to make improvements and such so I can't say how much time I've put into it.  The only thing I've had trouble with is adding a BBcode editor >.o

Oh, one more advantage I just remembered is that if the forum is integreated you can give out rewards for posting   (like in gaiaonline)  I've been thinking of adding something like this for my game =3

[raestlyn]

I use internal forums, its easier. I have good working script that can be easily modified to fit on any game I will ever make, so why bother with external?

[RangerSheck]

Just to echo some of the previous replies, I use an in-game forum system as well. In a lot of cases, it's a little like re-inventing the wheel, because there are so many good existing forum systems out there. I took it as an opportunity to build a more generic messaging system, and so the same system that drives the forums drives the logging of battles and missions as well as allowing players to create posts on their own pages (sort of an in-game blog).

And really, when you're building an entire game, simple forums are pretty easy by comparison. Back about 12 years ago, when I first learned perl, it was so I could create a "guestbook". When I learned PHP a couple years after that, one of my first projects was creating a forum. A forum system has all the basic building blocks of any dynamic website with a community: user accounts, a relational database, different sorting methods, user-inputted text that needs to be sanitized, etc.

[robot]

making an in-game forum would be better because you get better control of the forum and you only have what you need for the forum's function. that will save a lot of unnecessary resource consumption

[Josh1billion]

I use an integrated forum in my game, so it shows the user's character info and avatar next to posts.