StarWars.com forums closing down

It’s official that the StarWars.com forums will be closing down. At the end of this month, they will become read-only so it’s time to save, copy or print anything that you deem important information because come Friday, June 3rd, it will disappear from cyberspace forever!

An official announcement by Pabawan reads as follows:

At StarWars.com, we are always evaluating the various features of the website in order to provide the best experience to our users. As we review new community-based interactive features for the future, we have decided that the Official Message Boards at forums.starwars.com will no longer be part of the site.

April 2011 will be the last month of active message boards on StarWars.com. On Friday, April 29 the forums will be locked into a read-only mode, so that users can look through older posts and copy any they may wish to keep for posterity. On Friday, June 3rd, the official StarWars.com forums will shut down entirely.
For those who wish to continue discussions with fellow fans, we encourage you to check out the commenting available on website articles as well as posts on the StarWars.com Facebook Page, as well as following and interacting with @StarWars via Twitter.

Thank you all who have contributed to the fun discussion and lively debates at the Official Star Wars Message Boards, and a special thank you to our volunteer moderators who have helped maintain this community since October of 2001.

While on the one hand, I am not surprised to see them go, I am a bit sad that they will be gone forever since they can sometimes be a good reference and a great place for like minds to come together and mingle, debate or reminisce. I have spent quite some time at gaming forums myself as owner, moderator and admin over the years that I have been a gamer (since I was a kid) and I can tell you that forums can be difficult to manage and keep up with, especially for something as popular as Star Wars.

The StarWars.com forums have been online since October 2001 and have featured conversations with various Star Wars VIPs. In their day, the forums were quite a place to be. It was an exciting community to be a part of but since, many of the early members of the forums have since moved on.

LucasBooks editor Sue Rostoni bids farewell to the official forums but doesn’t state whether she will return in a different venue or not.

Star Wars: The Old Republic fans can still use the official SW:TOR forums to keep in touch and updated on info.