[Tom Flanagan]

With the launch of Skyrim Special Edition this Friday, we are beginning the process of migrating our Elder Scrolls forums to a new forum platform powered by NodeBB -- largely to help us with handling support-related requests. Working with the Bethesda.net team, we believe these new forums will be a significant improve over both these forums and the existing forums at Bethesda.net. The new platform will also allow us more flexibility than we had to add new features over time.

Here are some key points to note:

• We are not closing www.gamesas.com this week. You will still be able to post in these forums. We will be encouraging folks to start moving discussion to the new boards, but we also have a lot of respect for the history around these boards.


• We ask that all discussion relevant to the Special Edition Creation Kit, Special Edition Mods, and Support take place on the new forums. We're not going to be able to look at topics/issues in both places. There will be other TES forums opening, but you don't have to post in those... yet.


• We will eventually be closing these forums, and as we have new information, we will let you know. We are investigating what is possible in terms of moving content over -- no promises on that.


• Our new Bethesda.net forums will use the same user accounts that presently work on Bethesda.net. If you don't have an account, you can create one at http://account.bethesda.net


• This week the current forums on Bethesda.net will move to a read-only state. We will notify users when these forums are being closed for good.

These new forums are expected to go live on Thursday.

If you have questions, please let us know.

[Tha King o Geekz]

Thanks for giving us a few days.

[Khamaji Taylor]

As noted, they won't be closing this week. Not in a rush to close these. The current Bnet boards will be read-only starting Thursday.

[Ownie Zuliana]

We're looking forward to the forum relaunch. NodeBB offers a traditional forum experience, with ease of navigation and browsing. There are further adjustments to be made, and these forums allow us to experiment with plugins created by 3rd parties, as well as ones we build ourselves. With our attention focused on the fundamentals, there also aren’t many special features . . . yet. Despite being in their early stages, we feel it is still a significant improvement over the current forums. We’re already hard at work on further improvements, and eager to get feedback from the community on what to add.

[DAVId MArtInez]

Thanks for the update! Looking forward to the new forums.

[Samantha Mitchell]

This announcement is almost identical to the one posted in August, 2015...and we're still here. So I will believe it when I see it.

[Lily Evans]

August 2015? What?

[Jah Allen]

Back in August we were stated to move to Bethesda.net and Fallout 4 was close to being released. It was delayed until the Fallout and a couple of other forums moved to the new home.

[Emily Rose]

August 25, 2015, to be exact: http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1533362-bethesdanet-update-%E2%80%93-username-registration-soon/

[Hayley Bristow]

Bethesda.net forums show weird symbols mixed with English for me. I stopped going there when I signed up because this is what I always see.


http://i.imgur.com/djnjcUP.jpg

[Dalley hussain]

Sometimes they get Korean spambots. It is best to report them and then the next moderator will nuke them.

[Jarrett Willis]

Thanks for the update. Took a look at NodeBB, and it looks sooo much better than what's there now. Legitimately interested in what's going to happen, especially with the potential of transfering content in some fashion.

[Ronald]

Ok, here goes.

That history, with lots of useful information, seems to have gone missing.

Where is it? How can it be found, now and in the future?


I am, of course, speaking of personal content history, and most importantly, the ability to search the forum.

[Raymond J. Ramirez]

The anti-spam protection is far more robust on NodeBB. It may take a bit for us to properly tune everything once the forums go live, but we shouldn't have nearly the trouble we do currently. It's one reason for launching the new forums now, even though they're lacking in some 'quality of life' features like spoiler tags (which are an option, and we're looking into it).

For those interested, there are a number of showcased forums on https://nodebb.org/. There's a lot of range there, and we've doing some heavy customization. As a heads up, the advlt Swim forums have a lot of NSFW discussion, and are also probably the furthest from our setup.

Unfortunately these forums have had a lot of technical problems in the past two years, and search in particular has a habit of failing recently.

[Chica Cheve]

Yes, so I have noticed . And no offense intended, but that does not really address the actual question,

I am not expecting any miracles, especially while a forum transition is going on. However, I do hope, that the issue is not brushed aside and forgotten, but at some point it will be looked into, one way or the other, so much valuable content might be effectively salvaged. I am mostly concerned over forum content for Morrowind and Oblivion, as for these games even old posts may be highly relevant.

[Sophie Morrell]

The new forums does look and function better than the other set. Missing some features, but they can be added eventually.

[Melung Chan]

Are you guys using a BBcode plugin for the new forums, or should I go ahead and reformat posts I want to carry over into html?

[Laura Shipley]

If they aren't better than beth.net, I won't be there. I hope your company realizes just how offputting those forums are. Offputting and unusable. JMO.

[Kelli Wolfe]

We won't have BBcode at launch. We're looking at adding it later, but at the moment we have some concerns. If you copy your posts into a word document, without going into an editor to get the formatting, you should be able to paste them into the new forums.

We are very aware, and it is why we're replacing them. It is also why we are launching the new forums even though they are still a bit rudimentary, because we feel it will still provide a better experience. We'll be actively working on them in the future as well, and look forward to getting player feedback on what we should be doing.

[Crystal Birch]

Hi everyone, we wanted to give you a quick look at the new forums before they launch. Some of these screenshots are vertical composites, as it’s hard to capture something like a thread with only a few posts. Each image is linked to, and depending on your browser you may need to scroll to see the entire image, or zoom in to see it at full detail. We are still working on the forums, and there may be some differences when they launch tomorrow.

Front Page

The forum front page can either display a traditional list, or blocks. The list allows you to quickly access any sub-forums without having to jump through the forums one at a time. Blocks are a bit more compact, which some players may find more convenient.

We’re looking to include other community information under the list. Right now we’re only featuring web articles, but we’re hoping to include things like FAQs and popular threads here as well. In time, this should expand to include an assortment of community-focused content.

https://community.bethesda.net/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-314165-254935/NodeBB_Teaser01.png

https://community.bethesda.net/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-314165-254936/NodeBB_Teaser02.png

Forums

One of the biggest Bethesda.net complaints, for us as well as the community, was the lack of information displayed on the forums. It made it very difficult to browse, because you couldn’t easily tell what was new. Threads now feature when they were last posted in, and we hope to list who last posted soon.

We’re aware that many players would like threads with unread content to be signified as such, and to make it easier to jump there. We’ll be looking to add this in the future. It isn’t something we have enabled for launch.

One new addition, threads that staff members post in are marked as such with the Bethesda icon on the left. We have plans to expand this further in the future, to make it much easier for members to find official comment. For players familiar with the ESO forums, we’ll look at excluding as many moderator posts as possible from this feature.

https://community.bethesda.net/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-314165-254937/NodeBB_Teaser03.png

Threads

We’ve kept a traditional “flat” reply structure rather than tiered/nested posts.

Replying to a thread, or quoting a post, will open the posting pane. You can continue to browse, even going to other threads, and the pane will stay up. This allows you to easily add multiple quotes to a single post. The name of the thread you are currently replying to is kept in the bottom corner, in case you navigate elsewhere, or have the forums open in multiple tabs.

It isn’t shown here, but it is possible to include images in post. Video embedding may be added later, but it won’t be available at launch.

Multi-page threads have page navigation at the top and bottom of the post.

Some of you may notice that most of the avatars come from the ESO pool. These were simply convenient, there is no set avatar pool here: everyone can upload their own custom avatars.

Also, signatures are back!

https://community.bethesda.net/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-314165-254938/NodeBB_Teaser04.png

https://community.bethesda.net/servlet/JiveServlet/showImage/2-314165-254939/NodeBB_Teaser05.png

Example Thread

[Laura-Lee Gerwing]

Glad to have signatures back.

The unread thing will make it difficult to follow threads, though. Even the current Beth.net forums have the Inbox which sort of kind of almost simulates allowing you to go somewhere near the first unread post in a thread. Will the new forums have anything at all to help you find where you left off?

I do hope there is a black background with grey letters color scheme option.

PS: Don't disable or hide the moderator tools button.

[Georgine Lee]

These forums will still be accessible via 'read only' (as is the case already w/ Fallout)

Suppose that could be the forum adaptation of The Purge.

[Richard Thompson]

Will we have the option to use a dark theme instead of a white/grey background. I find those colors to be hard on the eyes when reading through posts. I prefer white/grey text and black background.

[Juliet]

Can we still upload pics without having to have them hosted somewhere else?

[Mélida Brunet]

I've checked out that example thread both on my PC and a Kindle Fire.

Pro's: cleaner look, obviously greater functionality (compared to beth.net). The avatars are a good size.

Cons: Not a high enough contrast ratio for me. Only the avatar names were easy to read. But that's exactly how this board looks using the Elegant Theme - which I don't/can't use. So there's some hope that a dark theme will do the trick, as it does here. There seems to be an unnecessary amount of unused and empty space to my eyes.