[UPDATED] WotC To Close Forums - Including D&D and M:tG (aka "Welcome New Forum Members to EN World!

WotC has announced that it will be closing its forums, which they refer to as a "former foundation of our community". The forums will close on October 29th. Of course, WotC's forum members are welcome here at EN World (although the expectations are a little different, so please do check the rules if you sign up!) The forums have been around for nearly two decades, in various incarnations, but WotC cites the rise of social media platforms as the reason for the closure.

Here's the announcement in full.

Choosing to retire a former foundation of our community was not an easy decision, but we feel that we must adjust our communications structure to reflect where conversations about Wizards of the Coast games are taking place.

Social media has changed significantly over the last ten years, and discussions about games aren't exclusive to company-hosted forums. The majority of community conversation takes place on third-party websites (such as Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and many other fantastic community-run websites), and it is up to us to evolve alongside our players.

We encourage past and current users to retrieve any information you want to retain from the Community Forums for both Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. The shutdown will occur on October 29, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. PT. We want to provide enough time for our forum members to move their content, and we recognize that given our forum's vibrant user base and extensive history, this may take time. Any information still on the forums on the cut-off date will be deleted.

Thank you to all of our past and current forum users. You helped build our community into what it is now, and we look forward to continuing to interact with you on our many active social platforms.

WotC's Trevor Kidd had a little more to add.

"I could hop onto all the forums having this discussion or I can say it here and let it disseminate. I'm choosing the former. Moving away from running our own forums doesn't mean we think longer conversations or fan sites/forums aren't good or necessary. They are both good & necessary. From what I'm seeing, they flourish and you enjoy them more when they are run/managed by fans.

DnD & RPGs in general are all about story telling & talking with friends. It makes sense that we want to share those stories. So, it's vital that we have places to share those experiences & stories, like forums & fansites. But it's not vital that #dnd run those.

Closing our forums does not in any way lessen our interactions. We'll still be talking & lurking in your social media & fan sites. And the idea that forums are going away because dnd &/or magic are doing poorly - that's ludicrous! Both are doing very, very well.

We'll still be talking with you here, and elsewhere. Enjoy your new forum homes and don't forget to migrate your treasured content!

On the topic of losing forum content - it's tough, I agree. Once we knew we were going to close the forums, we also knew we weren't going to maintain the community site indefinitely, so we opted to pull the band-aid off quickly rather than let it linger."

Welcome to new members!

If you're a refugee from WotC's forums, you are very welcome here. You can register here at EN World by clicking here. You'll find out community busy and vibrant, and generally welcoming. We've been here over 15 years now, and there is tons of useful content here and lots of great resources which you're welcome to explore. These include:

• Forums.We have forums for 5th Edition, Homebrews/Houserules. Character Builds, Older D&D Editions, Pathfinder, and more.
• Gamer Search. The world's largest gamer search database: find roleplayers near you!
• Downloads. There are thousands of items in the downloads area, including hundreds of character sheets.
• Features. Useful features like the D&D Pronunciation Guide, Hot Games Chart, D&D Product Schedule, and a history chart of the game.
• Reviews. A system which collects and aggregates reviews on the latest products. For example, Out of the Abyss is currently trending at 79%!
• News. And, of course, constant daily news on the news page, all about tabletop RPGS, including D&D! There's no better way to keep up with what's going on!

(Announcement spotted initially by Critical Hits on the Twitters).

 

[Lojak]

First, welcome to everyone coming over to EN World. I am a professional lurker and almost never post but this really a great community and is very well run. I think anyone new to this board will really enjoy it.

However, Hasbro's decision to eliminate the forums reinforces the perception of Hasbro creating a divide between the fan community and the game producers that just feels wrong for this particular hobby. I think there is a lot of value to the sense that the devs are fans of D&D both in its current and past iterations. We know many of their names. We know many of their resumes. We used to get direct communication from them in the form of Dungeon and Dragon magazine articles/editorials, UA articles, and even forum posts. It feels like a lot of that is going away and we are left to form and manage our own community (which I know we can do but its still different).

I still think Mike Mearls and the other guys working on D&D are fans of the game and see that they have a responsibility to the community and as stewards for the hobby. I doubt they had much input into this decision (since it seems to be Hasbro wide). But it still creates a contrast to the approach of Paizo where they use their forums actively to build community and solicit feedback. Even if I like 5e better than Pathfinder, I admire the way that Paizo goes about their business and I defintely get the sense that they are fans of their own game and the hobby. The divide between the devs and the gamers is much smaller there.

The official forums had their issues but they were still the single greatest game resource for D&D left after the books themselves. There was tons of great ideas and advice in the DM subforum about running games or insipiring ideas. There were tons of great discussions and handbooks about buildling characters. If I had a rule question, I could usually find a thread over there where someone had asked the exact same question (even if sometimes the issue got discussed and argued to death). If I was considering making a 4e Ranger (as I was recently), I could find a lot of information about how the class plays, comparing essentials v. non-essentials, etc. Heck, there was a thread where some artists would literally create art for your character concept for you just because they enjoyed doing it. All of that was good for the game.

I am getting old and its likely pure nostalgia. Still, they have eliminated Dragon magazine, they have eliminated Dungeon Magazine, they have stopped publishing settings, they have stopped publishing crunch books, they got rid of the char builder and the other insider tools, etc., etc. etc. Its just sad to see a hobby I have always enjoy appear to be dieing.

Okay, enough doom and gloom. I know I am over-reacting and I am really heartened by the efforts people are making to save some of the great content from the official forums. Thank you to everyone involved in those efforts and to Morrus for providing this place.

 

[Mistwell]

Anyone know a good method of searching the WotC fourms/blogs and saving stuff? I'd like to preserve as much of Unearthed Wrecan as possible...

I don't have access to it, but:

http://community.wizards.com/forum/wrecana-archive/threads/2715651

In general though:

Not sure if anyone responded to you earlier, but from the WOTC forums:

You can do a somewhat targeted search like this:

site:community.wizards.com/[specific forum or thread]

DO NOT search any URL with numbers at the end. Always remove them but leave the last "/" in place. Also don't include "http://"

Example:

If you want to search the "D&D 5E Rules Q&A: Ask a Simple Question, Get a Simple Answer" thread you'd type into the Google search box:

site:community.wizards.com/forum/rules-questions/threads/ [Your question here without the brackets]

Try it (copy and paste the entire next line into a Google search field):
site:community.wizards.com/forum/rules-questions/threads/ druid

This search syntax will hit every thread under "Rules Questions" on the site, so pay attention to which area the Google results are in once you click the link.

Happy Searching!

 

[Mistwell]

So I guess this is a "no" as to whether they'll ever get around to fixing my malfunctioning account there?
Welp, time for thread-looting! I know there was a thread where we all collaborated to make a campaign setting, that I'd like to save...

Yes that's a great thread. You should try to copy it over here!

 

[Yunru]

First, welcome to everyone coming over to EN World. I am a professional lurker and almost never post but this really a great community and is very well run. I think anyone new to this board will really enjoy it.

However, Hasbro's decision to eliminate the forums reinforces the perception of Hasbro creating a divide between the fan community and the game producers that just feels wrong for this particular hobby. I think there is a lot of value to the sense that the devs are fans of D&D both in its current and past iterations. We know many of their names. We know many of their resumes. We used to get direct communication from them in the form of Dungeon and Dragon magazine articles/editorials, UA articles, and even forum posts. It feels like a lot of that is going away and we are left to form and manage our own community (which I know we can do but its still different).

I still think Mike Mearls and the other guys working on D&D are fans of the game and see that they have a responsibility to the community and as stewards for the hobby. I doubt they had much input into this decision (since it seems to be Hasbro wide). But it still creates a contrast to the approach of Paizo where they use their forums actively to build community and solicit feedback. Even if I like 5e better than Pathfinder, I admire the way that Paizo goes about their business and I defintely get the sense that they are fans of their own game and the hobby. The divide between the devs and the gamers is much smaller there.

The official forums had their issues but they were still the single greatest game resource for D&D left after the books themselves. There was tons of great ideas and advice in the DM subforum about running games or insipiring ideas. There were tons of great discussions and handbooks about buildling characters. If I had a rule question, I could usually find a thread over there where someone had asked the exact same question (even if sometimes the issue got discussed and argued to death). If I was considering making a 4e Ranger (as I was recently), I could find a lot of information about how the class plays, comparing essentials v. non-essentials, etc. Heck, there was a thread where some artists would literally create art for your character concept for you just because they enjoyed doing it. All of that was good for the game.

I am getting old and its likely pure nostalgia. Still, they have eliminated Dragon magazine, they have eliminated Dungeon Magazine, they have stopped publishing settings, they have stopped publishing crunch books, they got rid of the char builder and the other insider tools, etc., etc. etc. Its just sad to see a hobby I have always enjoy appear to be dieing.

Okay, enough doom and gloom. I know I am over-reacting and I am really heartened by the efforts people are making to save some of the great content from the official forums. Thank you to everyone involved in those efforts and to Morrus for providing this place.

A cooperation as evil as EA took over, what do you expect

 

[Nightfall]

I am a professional lurker

I'm pretty sure I'm at least epic level lurker.

Also I'm pretty sure I'm nearly as long posting as some others maybe.

Dunno.

I do know this much, I come to EN World for the posts and stay for Morrus' access to McVitte's biscuits.

 

[Pauper]

Morrus pointed out earlier in the thread that XP and Laughs don't work with mobile browsing -- do they also not work on Chrome? I don't see an option to grant XP or laughs (but I'm also a relative newbie to the boards here).

Edit: I can actually see the options to grant XP and/or Laughs on other threads, but not in this one.

 

[Mercurius]

Not sure why five are needed...

I was going to say, this is the era of Bounded Accuracy - at most, three should be enough.

 

[Nylanfs]

Morrus pointed out earlier in the thread that XP and Laughs don't work with mobile browsing -- do they also not work on Chrome? I don't see an option to grant XP or laughs (but I'm also a relative newbie to the boards here).

Edit: I can actually see the options to grant XP and/or Laughs on other threads, but not in this one.

I think they work in Tapatalk which is what I use to view the forum.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Using my mobile I can see them?

 

[neobolts]

Morrus pointed out earlier in the thread that XP and Laughs don't work with mobile browsing -- do they also not work on Chrome? I don't see an option to grant XP or laughs (but I'm also a relative newbie to the boards here).

Edit: I can actually see the options to grant XP and/or Laughs on other threads, but not in this one.

If you access a thread from the front page, it displays it in a News Article format. If you access the same thread via the forums, it displays it in a Forum Thread format.

It's a bit weird, but any front page thread that I want to get involved with I track down in the forums, so XP/laugh, reply w/ quote, and go advanced are available. (I have never used the Tapatalk app, so I can't help with app questions.)