Runescape officially shuts down their forums today (planned since january), replaces them with an official groomercord

Here's the announcement made preparing the playerbase of this change: https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/an-update-regarding-our-forums

It's evident that vital conversations and community voices often get lost, whereas external platforms offer enhanced functionality, including livestreaming 'Stages,' voice chat channels, and more convenient shortcuts to the topics that are most relevant to you.

Naturally, we're eager to help communities find new homes for Clan Recruitment and similar ways to connect – we've already helped our respective Groomercord servers prepare so that Clans can continue to enjoy the same functionality as before, but with a more direct and timely method of connecting with our JMods and other players.

Who benefits from switches to groomercord? Now you know who!

Back to the blogpost linked in this post's title

Literally the first paragraph after "Join our official community hubs" is:

Firstly, there's the Official Groomercord! Here we've established a thriving Clan section for you to connect and chat with Clannies across the globe. You can also drop in and ask questions of our wonderful Mentors, a community of helpful players who will be delighted to help you get on the right track! Whatever you're looking for, you're sure to find it on the Groomercord – and you might even spot a JMod or two in there as well. Sometimes they're asking for feedback or suggestions, so don't be shy if you see one…

Reddit and /v/ react:

https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/671681023/#671681023

Groomercord vs Forums is basically Fandom vs actual wikis.

This is the best way I've seen to describe the difference between groomercord and forums to the uninvolved that isn't a paragraph long, and doesn't rely on invoking chuddery

https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/671681023/#671690074

Keyed offtopic argument, see the first reply to each successive reply

https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/198m42v/the_official_runescape_forums_are_closing_down/

https://old.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/194xrwv/an_update_regarding_our_forums/

https://old.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1bqnk3b/v_talks_about_the_forum_being_shut_down/

the problem i have with groomercord instead of forums is that groomercord servers are not public

there is no large searchable database of topics that people talk about on groomercord servers that any search engine can access if you want to search for answers you need to be on the right server first, on the wrong server? no answer for you, got banned from that server for any one of a multitude of reasons including a janitor going on a power trip? no answers for you.

if a server gets shut down that's it its all gone there is no waybackmachine there is no archive

groomercord in place of forums is just a black hole of information.

reddit is not quite so bad in that you can archive and search it but who knows when reddit is going to decide that being searchable and archivable is bad for the bottom line as they did with 3rd party apps?

if a subreddit gets shut down its all gone apart from what got archived

but hey relying on a third party service (especially one that just did an IPO) for your forum needs is a great idea as you don't have to pay server hosting costs

As always, read https://rdrama.net/h/slackernews/post/218652/groomercord-and-the-death-of-lore

!g*mers important news that I didn't find in a search for runescape here

!chuds western gaming and ancient forum heritage have fallen to the 'cord menace yet again