New World and Lost Ark forums killed as Amazon pivots to Discord

gamedeveloper.com:

Starting today, May 1, the forums specifically focused on Lost Ark and New World have been shut down. Amazon revealed that the respective forums for both games have been sunset in favor of Discord servers. 

According to Amazon, Discord offers better functionality and accessibility, hence the "decision to embrace Discord as our primary engagement platform...moving forward." The forums are being shut down to give the developers a centralized location to convey information to players in a "central, and easily accessible platform."

Discord has started to become one of the big pillars of the game industry for both players and developers alike. Last year the platform became the new home for recent Gearbox games such as Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and Homeworld. 

Forums are one of many (and arguably safer) ways that developers have been able to communicate with their audience. Because both games are MMOs, having their forums gutted means developers lose another avenue to convey information.

While several online games still have forums, it does appear that their time as a part of games' ecosystem is gradually coming to an end. Between Twitter, Discord, Reddit, and even Twitch, some developers may see forums as redundant in some form or fashion. 

Though the Lost Ark and New World forums are now shut down, users can still access them for the foreseeable future to "assure that sentiment and feedback left is not lost. Players can save whatever posts they want to keep until then, after which point the URLs for both forums will redirect to their respective Discord servers. 

Interestingly, Amazon also said it plans to "invest time into growing our presence" on each game's respective subreddit.