D&D Forums - Is EN World now the biggest?

Olaf the Stout · Jan 27, 2016

I'm guessing when the WotC forums were in operation they were the biggest D&D forums on the internet. Now that they have gone bye-bye, does this mean that EN World is the biggest D&D forum around?

I'm guessing that RPG.net is a bigger roleplaying forum, but their D&D forum is likely smaller than EN World.

Just curious.

Lwaxy · Jan 27, 2016

I didn't consider the WoTC forums that big, or active. At least the few times I went there it was rather slow going.

PlzBreakMyCampaign · Dec 13, 2016

Lwaxy is correct. 339 imploded and all the users went to BG/minmax.com

I wasn't aware there was much activity on enworld besides saving things from the long defunct WotC forums. For instance, I don't see a new handbook on the forum with largest clumping of D&D, while there was a new samurai handbook on minmax yesterday.

Morrus · Dec 13, 2016

I can't speak for any other forums - I know there are very large Facebook groups and Reddit groups and stuff. We have about 200,000 members, nearly 7-million posts, and get a few thousand posts per day and several million visits per month, but I couldn't tell you how that stacks up. We usually have between 1,000 and 2,000 users online at any given time (right now it's 1,155).

Alexa (not that I'd rely on those stats for anything) puts EN World at global site rank 35,920; RPGnet at 53,939; minmax boards at 305,036; and Giant in the Playground in the lead at 11,648.

If you count Pathfinder, Paizo slips in ahead of us but behind GitP at 25,907.

I would agree that RPGnet's non-D&D forum is more active (ours is very quiet), but our D&D forum is more active. That's pretty much been true for the last 16 years.

Morrus · Dec 13, 2016

(I'd agree that while the WotC forums were the biggest about a decade ago, they were a shadow of their former selves when they closed).

pdzoch · Dec 13, 2016

Morrus said:
I would agree that RPGnet's non-D&D forum is more active (ours is very quiet), but our D&D forum is more active. That's pretty much been true for the last 16 years.

I think this is the strength of EN World, and I think it is fairly consistent with Eric's original vision for the site. I think those focused on D&D find their home here best compared to the other sites. Especially after the poorly managed WOTC site closed. The traffic on the other sites are so diverse (game-wise) it can almost become distracting (if not overwhelming) for anyone who primarily plays D&D in one of its several editions.

CapnZapp · Dec 14, 2016

PlzBreakMyCampaign said:
Lwaxy is correct. 339 imploded

I had to google that:

"339" refers to the pre-Gleemax Character Optimization forums, because of the number in the board's URL.

So Plz is talking about the WotC boards, or at least the WotC boards at a certain time.