Well JGE has been silent for a while now and most recently NetDevil retooled their forums/website. I like the new look but the new forums is missing all the old posts. Why do something like this? The forums had a lot of member feedback and good debates on the game. But NetDevil decided to whack it all. That is very irritating and if anything makes them look guilty of hiding truth thoughts about JGE. Just my .02 though...
See full thread here: http://us.jumpgateevolution.com/forums/read.php?3,895
Things the development team is currently working on:
Patcher – finished first pass which now includes authentication and NDA/EULA acceptance. Performance improvements ongoing.
PvP – sector testing. Continuing design work, prototyping and internal testing. Six prototypes are in the mix right now.
Event sectors – layout and design work. Successful tests of mission objectives and PvP aspects. Several prototypes being used to test systems and game play.
Economy – design and mockup/implementation continues. Overall a very cohesive system, but some parts are farther along than others. “Factory†system is well understood and being proven out.
Asteroids – as promised asteroids still appear in the game and some play a larger role than envisioned earlier in the year. BTW, this is not in reference to hauling or hide-and-seek. More to come down the road.
“Live†support – supporting a “live†play test environment with a small team that is also building the game is, not surprisingly, a challenge. Currently running a focused testing schedule with Gazillion-wide volunteers.
Compatibility testing – catching back up (somewhat) with never-ending compatibility and graphics settings fixes.
Well that is everything for now! Stay tuned for Tuesday's screenshot and hopefully I will have the October dev blog posthaste.
My guess is this: With the new vision for the game, they decided much of the discussion on the forum was misleading at best, or negative PR at worst. It's not good having pages and pages of forum threads around discussing features which were later cut, and the subsequent angry responses from players. That's not a healthy base for Netdevil to work off of for their revisioned game.
They want a "fresh start". Of course, there's a price to pay among the players for removing all those old threads. But perhaps they viewed this as less damaging than having those old forum posts around.
I'm not defending the decision. But rather pointing out that game forums are ultimately a marketing tool for the game, and so decisions like this revolve heavily around public relations concerns.
The other possibility is that perhaps they changed their website/forum software, and it was too much technical effort to port the old posts over.