A note on WOW communities and the rebirth of WOWInsider as Blizzard Watch:
I've been a long time reader of WOW Insider, the WOW news/analysis site that has always been more accessible and less toxic in its community than, say, MMO-Champion. WI did a wonderful profile of this guild in September 2011 - many of the comments on that story were as stupid and negative as you would expect even of the generally laid back WI commenters, but the bonus of the coverage was that the guild came to the attention of a LOT of WOW players who had been looking for a guild like ours. They came running! Many have moved on since then, but many are still with us, and people have continued to find us thru that article as it comes up in Google searches for progressive WOW guilds.
So I was very sad to read that AOL, which owns WI and a family of WOW web sites like Massively, was pulling the plug on all of them. The readership of all of these sites had increased substantially over the last year, despite WI having to end many of its columns, like the ones on specific classes in WOW when AOL slashed their budget, so the decision really had little to do with these sites per se, and everything to do with AOL's well known obtuseness when it comes to internet content and service. However, the WI staff (just like the Massively staff apparently) regrouped, and set up a new site on their own, Blizzard Watch, which started up at 5PM Tuesday. They are funding it through Patreon, a site which allows people to contribute (thru a subscription process) to projects like this - their initial goal was $8K per month to get the site up and running, and their top goal was $12K to expand coverage into other Blizzard games, restore class columns, etc. I think they hoped to get to $8K in a week or two - instead, they hit that within 6 hours, and within 24 hours, they were at 12K per month. It's a fascinating process to watch - and be a part of, as I threw a few bucks their way myself. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do now that they're free of AOL - and I will always be grateful for their coverage of Wreck List that brought us so many great people over the last few years. You can find the new site here http://blizzardwatch.com/.
|