I've given up on WotC's message boards. What about you?

[Nyaricus]

That being said, I consider the Character Optimization (CO) board to be a holy grail.

Me too! Mostly, I lurk in there though

Pun-pun is major fun

 

[Treebore]

Epic forums? Never even occurred to me to look for one. Thanks!

 

[Morrus]

Far too many forums and sub-forums for my taste. Takes as long to find the right area as to read the thread when you finally get to it! To be fair, the large amount of traffic probably does require this, but I think it could be consolidated a little more into some easier, broader categories.

 

[Aaron L]

I'll just say that the signal to noise ratio on the WotC forums is very poor. I can only take so many Drizzt vs Elminster or Drow Rock threads at a time.

But I still go there because there are some great people with cool ideas there. The psionics boards are usually pretty good. Its nice to have a place (relativly) safe from "psionics arent fantasy" or "Psionics are borken!" whinging.

Think Ill go take a look right now.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

I find the forums are not as bad as many people say. The age group is a lot younger though.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

ENworld posts under this name 360. Wizards posts under this name 210 in the same time frame (about a year). Guess that makes me a lurker, but I don't consider myself a lurker so much as someone who doesn't find a lot of threads that require his opinion at either location.

Over at Wizards I stick to scanning the general, What's a GM to do, and What's a player to do categories and ignore the rest. Certainly as far as those go I find the bulk of the posters to be far less mature both in age and general attitude, and with MUCH worse spelling and grammar. I guess I still read/post there only to help the clueless noobs with the gift of my superior wisdom and cool. I certainly don't go there expecting stimulating, intelligent debate though that does still happen every once in a while.

What rankles me more is the more stringent restrictions on post content. Not so much heavy-handed enforcement as arbitrary I guess. Understandable given their heavy traffic and younger-skewing demographics that they would go beyond "grandma-friendly" to aiming at complete innocuousness, but it does help make their boards community actually less palatable, not more. It seems to have created a core community with a much less egalitarian attitude regarding playing styles and rules interpretation. Contrary views are "not official" and therefore tend to be considered invalid by default, and fewer posters have the maturity to engage in debating the contrary without rancor so alternate views are again more easily dismissed as it's more difficult to maintain a friendly debate.

Just MHO.

 

[Ranger REG]

What rankles me more is the more stringent restrictions on post content.

You mean the freedom to post Rifts conversion to d20?

Or talk about novels? Doesn't bother me much, though would have been better if they had set up a novel forum.

 

[Orius]

I used to years ago, but at the time the boards loaded far too slowly for my liking. Eventually, I switched over to ENWorld, and my habits changed.

Also, I haven't really kept up with some of the newer products over there, and many discussions seem to cover the latest stuff, so there's no real frame of reference for me. Here, there's threads covering everything from the 3 booklets to the latest release. Or even as far back as Chainmail.

 

[GeorgeFields]

I sort of visit Wizards' message boards from time to time, but I just can't get hooked on any thread there.

Not to mention I've run into a lot of smart asses over there.

 

[Vigilance]

I post there, though very occasionally.