IMPORTANT! Should EN World continue reporting RPG news?

[CharlesRyan]

I read the news page pretty much every day. No insight into why it no longer seems to spawn threads in the forums.

 

[occam]

The news page is still the first thing I read before I hit the forums.

 

[TerraDave]

...Back in the day, when Eric was running the site, it really did seem like the news page was hopping and popping on a daily basis. Yes, a lot of that had to do with the fact that 3e had just been announced and everyone was eager to squeeze every news morsel out of the page, but I think there were a couple of other important factors.

...

Even in the run up to 4E, you had more dribs and drabs in WotC blog posts and other sources that could first be reported as "news" here.

With the latest 4E redirect (whatever you want to call it), very little of that took place and very little is taking place now. All communication seems to go through official channels. I think that is one main reason why their has been some acrimony about recent changes to 4E (also mea culpa/whatever): these changes have tended to be "sprung" with little warning, or with very controlled, and very limited, messaging. But that may be another topic.

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

News gathering and delivery takes a lot of time and effort.

As EN World runs Google Analytics, can that tell the breakdown of front page usage? Are people simply pulling the information via RSS?

I used to visit GamingReport.com a lot before it closed down a few years ago but it was mostly just Press Releases. As an alternative I've now got the RPG Bloggers Network on my RSS reader which does pick up interesting things as they're blogs so they also have comment. It also has the advantage of showing trends as several blogs pick up on major things in short succession.

I think it would be sad to see the news page go, but I appreciate how much of your time goes into it.

Eric's suggestions sound pretty good, though.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

FWIW, even though I voted that I don't get my RPG news here, I'm actually glad the vote is shaping up the way it is.

 

[Page]

Until the news page contains more reportage than links, it remains superfluous. If nobody is willing to actually write an original report on the industry or editorialize on the same, kill it. You can't call it news (or worthwhile) otherwise.

 

[scourger]

I read the front page news here very visit, which is almost daily. It is my gateway to the site. I would like to see more coverage of the RPG industry.

 

[Tharian]

I definitely start each visit to the site here at the news page. I enjoy being able to see what's new there. I may not be able to visit the site every day, but finding that news page there makes it easier for me to see what big announcements I may have missed recently.

 

[falcarrion]

I check the news area every time I log on. I would like to see the news expand to include miniatures and tech used in games.

 

[wedgeski]

.... the industry/fanbase NEED Enworld's effort at providing independent unbiased coverage regardless of publisher.

Except all ENW is doing at the moment is reprinting press releases and news snippets generated from the horse's mouth. The industry is way bigger than WotC and publishers who have any sense at all will have their own news sites, and more importantly news feeds, which you can aggregate in many different ways these days and essentially create your own news page in your browser.

To me, as long as ENW is just another aggregator, its news page has little value to me. I would love to see some reportage come back to the site, but what exactly is there to report on? Not a whole lot.