Dev Blog 17/01/20

With Bannerlord’s Early Access release on the horizon, we want to take the time to step back from the game for a brief moment to discuss some of the work we have been doing outside of the game to support our community -- more specifically, the overhaul of our official forums!

The forums have always been at the heart of the Mount & Blade community, serving as a platform where like-minded users can come together to discuss our games, share knowledge, seek support, form clans, organise events, and work on modding projects together. In addition to this, they act as the main point of contact between the community and ourselves, allowing us to engage with each other and share ideas in a relaxed environment, and ultimately, as we are sure many of Bannerlord’s multiplayer beta participants can attest to, create better games!

But, truth be told, our current forums were starting to feel a little dated. And while they are perfectly functional, they are perhaps a little lacklustre when it comes to providing the community with the features and tools needed to help the community thrive. We decided that it is time to really up our forum game and provide our community with an updated platform that caters to their needs.

So, with that in mind, we want to introduce you to some of the new features that you will have at your disposal when the new forums go live.

Home page:

• The forum home page acts as a hub where users can quickly and easily access game and support forums. It also houses featured content from across the forums which we feel deserves to be highlighted and presented to the entire community.

Social Groups:

• The new social group feature allows like-minded people to come together in their own dedicated forum. We think that this will be a welcome addition to teams working on projects together, such as modding teams and event organisers, as well as, clans and any other groups that are looking for their own space to hold discussions amongst themselves in a more structured area that they have total control over.

Modding:

• Modding has always been a major part of Mount & Blade games, and as such, we wanted to provide our modding community with a dedicated area where they can come together to share their knowledge and ideas with other modders and present their mods to the wider community. In other words, the modding section is a new hub for all things modding!

Media:

• The media section allows users to share their videos and screenshots in one place, with support for a number of different external media sources, such as Imgur, YouTube and Twitch, which is presented in a structured gallery that is easy for users to browse at their leisure.

Streams:

• Similar to the media section, the new forums also contain a dedicated streams section that displays Mount & Blade live streams from both Twitch and Mixer in a single place, allowing users to watch and engage with streamers directly on our forums.

Trophies:

• We have included a new trophy system with the forums which provides users with goals and achievements that they can work towards by being productive members of the community.

Badges:

• Badges are quite similar to trophies in that they serve no real purpose other than to show other community members just how awesome you are! However, the key difference with badges is that they