LEGO Message Boards closing down

This is shocking, but if the Lego owners make this decision about their product then they are the bosses…

Huw, only if there was a good discussion about how upset we where about bionicle's air attribute being changed to jungle or any other rant.

"In order to make way for the exciting features of the future we must occasionally retire older features."

What a crock that sentence is. It's a forum. What groundbreaking new technological advance will they replace a forum with?

The thing is, much of the content on the LEGO Message Boards toward the end of 2016 didn't have anything to do with LEGO. It became more of a chatroom and less of a LEGO forum. It's not worth The LEGO Group's time and resources to moderate posts about nothing related to LEGO.

The galleries are still active and won't be removed, but the galleries have more actual LEGO value in them than the Message Boards did, and that's worth having moderation. I think the LEGO Life app is also closely linked to the galleries, so that's why they're pushing LEGO Life a lot.

Overall, I think they're trying to put the LEGO back in LEGO.com.

I didn't even know LEGO had message boards.

^I didn't either, but I guess it wasn't worth their time. Very odd for a company to discontinue message boards, but it's their decision, they had to put a lot of thought into it.

@Huw: I enjoyed them because they were a place where actual LEGO employees could answer questions from kids (like in the "Chat with Greg Farshtey" or "Ask a Creator Designer" topics). I also sometimes visited just to see what kids were saying about new sets or themes, since more adult-focused LEGO fansites can often begin to feel like a sort of bubble. And sometimes the LMB moderators would post cool downloadable goodies like wallpapers there.

I've never spent nearly as much time on the LEGO Message Boards as on sites like BZPower, Brickset, and Eurobricks, but I like that they existed as an option. I understand how dated they've become, though, especially with many younger kids favoring social media over more forum-like social spaces.

It's a smart move from a business standpoint. As Forum software ages it becomes a liability due to being a breach risk. The Lego forums really do not generate that much traffic. They could just as easily move the functionality out to easier to find third party social networks such as Facebook or Redit. Without the upkeep costs and liability risk. There is really no major reason for a company like Lego to maintain that sort of forum outside of some CS and Tech Support purposes.

I used to be very active there a long time ago... Sad to see it go but it was time for it to get retired.

Lego Message Boards were the first forums I ever got on as a kid, so there's some nostalgia in there, even if I eventually moved on because discussions moved painfully slow when ever post had to be moderated. :P But I always appreciated it as a kid-friendly place to talk about their products, so hopefully they'll have something similar to replace it with.

I can't believe it. First MLN, then the MB's. Those were both a large part of my childhood. I used to have a lot of friends on there.
I forgot about the MB's for about a year, but then rejoined in late 2016. It wasn't quite the same as before, but it was still fun.
This LEGO Life app had better be good.

Lego had message boards?

To echo a few other posters; LEGO had / has forums? Guess not only their app portfolio that needs some clean up and improvements in discoverability...

What's this Lego Life people are talking about? This is the first I've heard of it...

As for the message boards, it's an odd choice to remove them without first announcing their replacement clearly, I'd say.

I had never heard of the message boards. I don't know anything about it, but this Lego Life had better be good, after stopping LDD and this.

Why does everything HAVE to be an app?

Its not like EVERYTHING in the 1950s was on TV, or everyone HAD to have a car in the Edwardian era.

LEGO have a forum? Go figure.

I used to be on there a lot when I was a kid but I soon grew out of it.

It was a cheap and easy way for TLG to receive ideas and feedback; I'm surprised they're getting rid of it. After all, they only employed 3 or 4 talentless clerks to moderate it. The only problem was the vast quantity of spam. Amongst a few pieces of useful customer input were countless double posts, useless chit-chat and attention-seeking rubbish from immature children. Even what was intended as genuine product suggestions was almost always terrible.

Wow, I didn't expect that to happen. I used to be quite active on the Message boards, and had some great times a long time ago. Sad to see the LMBs disappear with Bionicle and Mixels this year, but they certainly had valid reasons.

Truly shocked by the news since ive been with MB for over six years and changed my life so much.Nothing makes sense here but its not the first time they did something like this anyway.Miss the good old days.

I'm not too shocked to see the Lego forums go, but not too sad either. Yes seeing what the target audience actually thought about the products was interesting but if you wanted to post something yourself you'd have to wait seemingly 24hrs before it popped up due to the heavy moderation (I'll admit you need this for kids though). Even then some weird posts slipped through.

@The Rancor Last I checked LEGO had gotten a lot better at that. It usually took my posts an hour at the most to get approved.

^ I probably haven't used the Lego forum since perhaps 2005 or 2006 so I'm sure to be fair TLG would have changed things for the better since then, but at the time the delays (and some of the threads) gradually put me off. Plus I discovered AFOL forums of course.

Yes, because we all know how well TLG does with apps *cough Fusion cough Lego Minifigures Online cough*

thats where i got the 244 in my username from. and thats already a few years ago

Honestly, I never knew there even WAS an official Lego message board / forum.
When it comes to Lego, only the Brickset Forum really interests me. In former times I also read posts on Eurobricks, and still do occasionally, but the forum here is definitely my favorite.

And about this new app, I couldn't care less. I'm not into apps at all. I use only three on my phone more than once a month, and less than ten in total. Helps that I haven't got a tablet computer ;-)

...To be honest I'm more concerned about the literal tidal wave of 7-year-old LMB users that will inevitably flood every other lego forum in existence because of this

Like many here I didn't know that LEGO had a message board. Guess I won't miss it then.

Understandable. I only was there for a few days, but another user helped me with a mistake I made building a large Technic set, so that's a fond memory, I guess. But I completely understand the decision not to put anymore ressources into this community that didn't have much to do with Lego enymore.

Would anyone use a similar message board if available? Or would they stick to something like the one here?

Luckily for most other LEGO forums in existence, there is a LEGO Message Boards Wiki that will likely be flooded by immature children (and thus save other places from experiencing an influx of very young children).

I can't say I'm surprised. I got in roughly around the tail end of what would probably be considered the "Golden Age" of sorts of the boards, and ever since then, it's gone downhill quickly.

R.I.P Chat with Greg Farshtey, both the best and worst thing to happen to BIONICLE.

I used to use the LEGO message boards to talk about ideas I had for sets (that involved new molds and so couldn't go on LEGO Ideas)

not surprising. the expense of moderating message boards - especially boards targeted at children, is very high relative to the benefit.

As usual, the 10% of bad apples ruin stuff like this for everyone