The State of ENWorld (too important to go to Meta)

[Acid_crash]

I want a 21-sided die...where can I get one?

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I want a 21-sided die...where can I get one?

I heard they're selling booster packs of Dice(tm). The D21 is 'silver foil' rare... so get busy with the buying already! (or ebay!)

 

[Morrus]

I think what you're perceiving is the result of specific forums being created for specific things. A few years ago, everything was in General RPG. But as the userbase increased, General turned into a complete mess, and was so busy that threads disappeared within a couple of hours.

So, now, we have a separate forum for d20/OGL games (which is where you'll see a lot of those threads you're missing, Ryan), a separate forum for discussion of movies, TV and books, and a separate forum for publisher announcements (plus, of course, the Off-Topic forum). We also now have a Meta forum.

If all of those were recombined, you'd see the busy, crowded General RPG forum you remember. But, if you look at all the posts in all those forums, I think you'll see that one forum just can't handle them all these days. There are simply too many of them.

Registration, new posts and new threads are all increasing, not decreasing. The boards are busier than they've ever been, but the activity is now spread out into manageable chunks than one massive mess.

The other factor to take into account is that WotC don't really hang out here these days - most of the cool people left, and have their own publishing companies these days. Plus, pretty much every publisher now has its own little messageboard, and tries to encourage people to go there. That hasn't affected our traffic negatively, but it does explain why they prefer to just use EN World for announcements and not for the community aspects.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think that making new and more specific forums improved the site. If there is a forum which is still too full of stuff I regularly miss because it goes "out of the screen too soon" is the General. But maybe there could be one extra board where several boards are combined (or perhaps only the best threads selected by moderators); obviously that wouldn't mean copies of the threads, just links, but I don't know how hard it could be to implement it.

Oh, an by the way, it would be also good to display more recent threads in the same page

 

[BrooklynKnight]

The other factor to take into account is that WotC don't really hang out here these days - most of the cool people left, and have their own publishing companies these days. Plus, pretty much every publisher now has its own little messageboard, and tries to encourage people to go there. That hasn't affected our traffic negatively, but it does explain why they prefer to just use EN World for announcements and not for the community aspects.

Perhaps it would be cool to take a page from mortalities book and offer forum space to d20 companies.

 

[Cergorach]

Perhaps it would be cool to take a page from mortalities book and offer forum space to d20 companies.

I was thinking the same thing, but then the server needs to be a lot more stable than it is now...

Some companies are using EZboards, i think that if offered an alternative here on Enworld, some would welcome that i think.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I notice people missing missing or at least not posting to general, I think you go where your interest lay.

 

[Belen]

Well, I never noticed a real decline in the publishers posting in general. Monte, Eric, Chris etc seem to post a lot, although as their companies become busier, they probably do not check out the boards as often.

Maybe the real problem is the glut of books that are being thrown out. I can no longer keep track of it and the news is a mess with all the announcements. Heck, the only companies I even buy from now are:

Malhavoc Press
Green Ronin
Fantasy Flight
Necromancer Games
WOTC

That accounts for all of my available money for RPGs.

For me, EnWorld has gotten a lot better, although the slow downs in the afternoons are a killer!

Dave

 

[Maraxle]

Personally, though nobody probably noticed because I was never a real frequent poster to begin with, I stopped coming to the boards about oh, six months ago, and only recently came back, though it's looking more and more like a temporary visit. I'm not really a publisher, as I just made one little software product, but some of my reasons might be the same as theirs, or at least ones they are detecting. Like them or not, here's my reasons for leaving the first time (and probably again soon):

Changing Interests - The fact is, I haven't played D&D/D20/RPGs in about a year now. About the time 3.5 came out was when my interests really started to wane. I'm not blaming 3.5, that's just how the timing worked out. My game group broke up, my books started collecting dust, and for me, the value of the site was lost. It's been a few years now since the revolutionary 3rd Edition came out, so people are probably moving on to other things. My current obsession is building arcade cabinets.

Same Ol' Same Ol' - This kind of ties into my first point and may be a contributing factor to it. The Slayer's Guide to BLAH, The Complete BLAH, BLAH: A book about BLAH race/class, etc, etc. To me, the good, original ideas have all appeared to dry up. Everything is a rehash of something else, or a sequel of sorts. Give me something original and I'll give you money. I'm sure the publishers can feel that too, at least in their wallets.

The Culture - This one is going to get me beaten down, I'm sure. I know my opinions aren't always popular ones, but the culture around here seems to foster being argumentative rather than holding civil, intelligent conversations. It brings it out in myself too, so I'm not claiming innocense here. It's not everyone, of course, but it seems like differing opinions are immediately followed by antagonistic remarks rather than friendly debate. I can see why publishers would want to stay out of those kind of discussions, as it only serves to tarnish their names.

Block Lists - A popular web proxy filterning service for businesses has rightfully added EnWorld to the "Games" list, so a lot of large companies are now blocking it.

Let the beatings begin!

 

[DaveMage]

I agree with pogre - I don't really see the same problem.

I started a speculatory "World's Biggest Dungeon" thread a while back, and within a few days, AEG's jim pinto (art director) showed up and began commenting (this was his first venture to EN World).

In addition to who pogre said, I also see Chris Pramas, Sean K Reynolds, Mike Mearls, and Scott Greene posting often.

Even after being around this community for 4-5 years, I am still very grateful to be able to interact with these industry talents. I consider EN World a great treasure in that regard. I wouldn't change a thing (except for faster servers ).