RPGChat Forum Review

RPGChat is one of the other large roleplaying forums out there, and they've been around since about May, 2001. Since then, RPGChat has gone through many evolutions, and has expanded rapidly - they started with a forum, grew into a decent sized roleplaying chat, and finally removed the chat and went back to forums.

RPGChat\'s Forum Index You'll immediately notice the large number of forums, which for most boards isn't an issue. In today's roleplaying world, RPGChat's index fits right in.

They've got four basic navigation options at the top of the page, which are images instead of text, which isn't very good for SEO. The four menu options are Home, Forums, Chat, and Rules. I gave each of them a shot, but it looks like only the "Home" and "Rules" link work.

I'm going to take a look at their code, because using images for links isn't horrible if you specify the right attributes. Let's have a glance:

<a href="http://forums.rpgchat.com/index.php"><br /> <img src="header/but_home.jpg" border="0"><br /> </a>

Yikes! Not only does the anchor not have a title attribute, but the image doesn't have an alt attribute! Search engines won't be able to understand the context of these links, and the flow of link juice to the two working links won't be very beneficial.

I participated on these forums for a few months as the username Alighieri, for that period, I became the single most active user in their welcome forum. I posted in several other topics, but got pretty frustrated with the limitation on the length of a post (20,000 characters).

When attempting to post a profile for one of my characters, I was immediately snubbed by the limitation. This makes well-researched posts difficult to make, specifically with the citations that must be put in place for accurate references. Ultimately, I was forced to cut out portions of my character's history to fit it into the post.

After posting for a few weeks nonstop in the Welcome Forum, I headed off to the The Arena area, where turn-based fighting is largely popular. I opened a topic with a list of the top turn based fighters, placed into a neat little image and posted right into the topic. It took a few days to get any response at all, (save for a few people who contacted me over AIM) and when I did get a response, I logged in to RPGChat to find that I had been banned for "advertising on multiple occasions", much to my surprise.

However, while my visit was cut short, I met some good friends, and had some great discussions. Unfortunately, the forum does not allow any links to external sites of any kind, and also does not allow signatures, which makes it very difficult to spread the word about the topics you start there. This isn't very good for encouraging member interaction, and makes it very difficult for momentum of any sort to be gained within the community.

RPGChat\'s LogoAfter speaking with someone who had messaged me on AIM prior to my banning, I confirmed my worst fears - RPGChat is a closed community, and is not very open to outside communities or positive interaction with those communities. This is the number one concern mentioned to me about RPGChat and their future, and there is ongoing fear of the community continuing to stagnate without any growth other than direct referral.

I sent a request via the site's contact form, as listed at the bottom every page, which merely opened a new email to their support address, forums@rpgchat.com - I sent a couple questions in my email, and I identified who I was, but I haven't yet received a response. It'd be great if we could get an interview with an admin from RPGChat on the history of the site!

In terms of organic visitors, a search for pages on RPGChat has about 16,200 results. When digging through the pages, I noticed that only 477 pages were in the primary index, with the remainder in the supplemental index. That's scary!

Let's take a look at their search results:
Running a Google search on RPGChat

As you can see from the above search, we can confirm that there is some duplicate content problems. However, from what we've seen - most of RPGChat's traffic is a result of direct referral. We can identify with the importance of defensible traffic, but organic traffic is also a high-quality method of driving laser-targeted traffic to your site, and it looks like RPGChat is seriously missing out on this.

RPGChat has a relatively active forum; 63,708 threads, 1,925,709 posts, and 59,352 "active" members. While that's only an average of about 30 posts per thread and only about 32 posts per user, they do have some great quality and style elements in their posts that you simply don't see in many other places in roleplaying forums these days. I think it would be a great move for them to deactivate a lot of their older and inactive members, and send out reminders to these users to come back and join in on the fun.

It also seemed like a consensus that the single best area on RPGChat was the Clans & Guilds forum, which most users simply called "C/G" for short. It looks like most other forums' version of a multiverse, where roleplay is freeform, and most action is player-driven with rules being defined by the status quo.

Lack of availability aside, RPGChat leaves a pretty strong impression, and if you're careful to follow their 500 word list of rules, you can likely make some friends and enjoy some great high-quality roleplay. The administration needs to do some overhauling if they're going to keep the community healthy, but for the time being - RPGChat makes for a great roleplaying destination.

14 Comments · Tags:

Comments

  1. I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

    Stacey Derbinshire

    Stacey Derbinshire on

  2. Hey Eric (I assume it is you). This is going to sound harsh, sorry about that.

    The rules pretty explicitly condemn advertising in anything but website-part of the profile. The idea that competition is somehow bad is, of course, pretty suspect, but that is their call.

    Eric, frankly, this comes off as less than polite. That probably wasn't the intention, so let me elaborate.

    You went there, broke the rules (unless they were changed post-banning, which I doubt), became the most active member (Cynical me can read this in two ways: Either you spammed a lot or you imply that most members are not very active).

    The SEO stuff can be considered as constructive criticism or unsolicited sniping. One should also consider how relevant it is: They are not necessarily very considered with SEO, especially with regards to random forum threads.

    All in all: Given how you were banned for evidently breaking the rules, are a "competitor" (as much meaning as that may have in internet realm of fan communities and hobbyists), and criticise them, my first impression of you would not be very good, if this was the post creating it. There are also positive parts, but they read like they are there to make your stance look more objective. The last part does sound more genuine.

    Take care and don't post website reviews immediately (well, ten days) after being banned. This is not intended as an attack.

    Tommi on

  3. Tommi, yes - I waited specifically for a portion of time before publishing the review. I don't think I'd ever posted a link to other sites there, other than my profile link. I had hoped to contact someone about this, and I'll update this post with their response.

    All in all, I'm only attempting to highlight the the things they do great, and some improvements they could make to do even better. I don't aim to be the bad guy, and while I participated there, I really tried my best to be a good member, by participating actively in the welcome forum, and providing ample feedback in other threads.

    I don't see online communities as competitors, and instead I see them as being social - I can only hope to improve other communities, and by no intent to I hope to drag them down. If I can provide constructive criticism, I will, if not, I don't say a word.

    Thanks for your feedback!

    Eric Martindale on

  4. Eric may or may not have intended this post to come off as "sniping" (personally, I feel after reading both the original post and the comments that he did not), but this fact is fairly irrelevant. All of the criticisms in the entry were true and accurate, and should be seen as just that: criticism. If anything, take the points he highlighted and work on them as a site. If you do not agree with what he said, do nothing to change it.

    If all of these points are true, the site can only benefit from what "outsiders" have to say, since they aren't ingrained with the tired and sad patriotism of long-standing group members (a particular jab at AM, not RPGChat).

    Please also feel free to offer us at RoleplayGateway criticisms of the same sort. We would welcome them and hopefully grow from them.

    Treize Khushrenada on

  5. Eric, I kind of guessed you intended nothing malicious, but it is easy to read otherwise. (Google discovered the post where the ban was announced, and that is all the dedication I have to offer for this thing. Maybe you had the url written somewhere, like title or location?)

    Treize Khushrenada, I'm not representing rpgchat here. I'm just a random internet person who has talked a bit with Eric and shared an occasional stumble.

    Tommi on

  6. Aha, that may be what it was - I've had the domain of RolePlayGateway set as my title for quite some time. It'd have been nice to receive a request to remove that if it was a problem, and after so long - I never expected this.

    Heck, the thing didn't even link to anything, it was just a title. Meh, whatever. Maybe someone from their staff will contact me about it.

    Eric Martindale on

  7. All I have to say is... I was there when RPGChat first began.. The first year and a Half were ran near perfection... Then rules came bearing down. Other people started hogging the site. Soon enough, the site didn't even have a Chat... (Kinda needed, hence.. RPG... CHAT) I'm known as Maxamillion on there. One of the original RPGC goers... That site as come a long way. No really, from the top of Everest, directly plummeting to the bottom. Tis why I left it.

    Vexar/Maxamillion on

  8. I too think the closed-forum style that the site runs off is a mega turn-off.

    First thought:
    They ban you for advertisement?

    Because OBVIOUSLY you were a walking billboard and completely ruining their membership.

    It sounds like RpgChat needs to loosen its belt and lift the burden off their players.
    They're only hurting themselves.

    Jakob Gray on

  9. I am an active member of the site and yes, it is true, the site is not growing very fast anymore. That doesn't really concern me as it's current size means that good roleplays can generally get good people involved but you don't have so many people that you don't get to know the active community. If an rp site gets too big it's filled with 99% bad or just inexperienced roleplayers and since the good ones are so few and far between, getting quality rpers on the same story is close to impossible. As it is, most people I come acrosss in roleplays that I decide to join are fairly experienced.

    Also, I've noticed that one reason they don't get involved with other rp sites is becasue most other rp sites are very inactive or they just suck. There are good ones, of course. But if another site is good and RPGC is good, we really don't need each other.

    I do not feel myself burdened by the rules, either. Theya re very straightforward and fairly easy to follow. (Though I disagree with the one decision of your banning. Meh.)

    Overall, it is one of the more balanced sites when it comes to quality, activity, and fun that I have been to.

    Spock on

  10. Hey Eric. Can you review my roleplay forum ? I'm a member of your community and I would be very happy to have my forum reviewed by you. Please get back to me as soon as possible. I am very excited to have my community looked over by you.

    link:
    http://s11.zetaboards.com/Roleplay_Adventures/index/

    roleplay on

  11. I only just found this blog area. Before reading this entry I saw the screen cap of RPGChat and wilted. "Was RPGateway once RPGChat!?" I used to be a member there. Lord it was awful for me. I am sorry you had a somewhat negative experience there, as well.

    When I was there, there was a lot of tension amongst staff and zero consensus on how to handle matters. Insta-bans were frequent. It was hard to keep people active in threads--or get anyone in a thread at all--if you weren't interested in guilds. They (including the staff) took debate too seriously and a lot of members felt slighted in the debate forum. I was never banned, but there was always a general feeling that if you weren't in on the guild stuff and didn't have a few friends in the mods, you weren't part of the "clique."

    And I had some reeeeaaaal issues with staff. It's one of the reasons why I found it so important to tell you how happy I was with your staff, Eric.

    ThatsNotPoetry on

  12. Hello!
    I am newboy. Can I write here?

    GoClarkRT on

  13. It's funny because I'm a member of RPGC and I've seen posts of Master and others advertising their website pre-RPGateway in posts on the RPGChat messageboard. I actually went back later and got a mod to delete some of them, since the threads had just been closed before.

    You broke the rules and at the same time admitted to have knowledge of them beforehand. It's okay, we all know you'll just go and register more names on RPGC anyway. RPGC doesn't require silly mudslinging and slandering like you do to recruit members. They don't spam their website on other peoples sites in violation of their terms of use agreement. I find it especially ridiculous that you're the [i]admin[/i] and owner too. Stop being a whiny little kid and making your site look worse than it already is.

    Hopefully you get tired of leeching members because I'm awfully bored of reading your silly plugs like your "Almost an Allegory" you posted there, and subsequently got ripped to shreds by the users.

    Yours truly,
    H. Suyvam

    H. Suyvam on

  14. On the contrary, "H. Suyvam"! This was a legitimate review of RPGChat's SEO situation (a reflection on why they haven't grown since I frequented the place years ago) and also some input on their general place as a roleplaying forum.

    I did not post "Almost an Allegory" and I certainly did not mean to do much more on RPG Chat than to get involved in the community. They don't allow signatures, so why would I have become so active in the RPG Chat Welcome Forum?

    However, I do admit that when GWing first started, we got off the wrong foot and posted about the site where we shouldn't have - we acknowledge this as a mistake and it will not happen again.

    Moving forward, we'd much rather work with a site than "leeching" members. For example, we send tons of members every day to our partner site, RoleplayerGuild. When a site is willing to work with someone, the entire roleplaying community, across the web, can benefit.

    I participate on as many roleplaying websites as possible now, under various names. I am an active roleplayer in places like Roleplayer's Realm on AnimeLeague and the Advanced forum on Roleplayer Guild... among many, many others.

    In fact, I think I might be a bit closer to you than you know... I know who you are. :)

    Eric Martindale on