[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).

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

I disagree. Their forums were very different, from ENWorld. Edit: Just saw Umbran and Morrus's request, I'll take out my thoughts on the issues on WOTC's forums.

I'm sorry you had bad experiences there. My experiences were obviously different than yours. Hopefully everyone will remember this is a welcome thread for that very community you are talking about.

 

[JEB]

One specific archiving issue - all of the feedback Wizards got on the D&D Next playtest was on the forums, but there's no easy way to get to it anymore unless you have a specific URL. That's extra important to D&D's history, I think, but it'll be extra difficult to preserve.

I did throw some URLs I had into the Wayback Machine (specifically, my own playtest feedback) and manually archived them, but that's a drop in the bucket. Now, if someone is determined enough to link out from those and dig up other Next feedback posts (I found a few by looking at other posts from the people that responded)...

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Yup, it's just that the process of deciding what was the better choice in the matter resulted in a decision of just pulling the plug because keeping it around as an archive didn't serve the purpose that was given priority.

And in a way, they kind of are handing you the database - at least any portion of it that anyone frequenting the forum currently actually cares about.

An archive should be fairly complete and searchable. It's not a question of, "Oh, I better go make a copy of that marvelous post I read a year ago." Rather, it's more like two years from now I think, "Crap...I know there was a detailed discussion about the pros and cons of wizard summoning vs. ranger cooking. I should go search for it on that forum...oh wait, the forum is gone."

Now, granted, if there is someone with the technical capabilities to just grab the whole dang forum in one fell swoop (the text at least) and archive it themselves (and make it available for others to search) that would be great. The searching capabilities would be unlikely to be any worse than what we already had. But I am not person with that sort of skill set. The fact that I have a few weeks to theoretically copy and paste anything I can remember that I might want to search for later isn't very useful to me, because I'm not going to remember much until I actually want to look for it.

 

[Nightfall]

All I know. It's only Rock and Roll (and d20s) but I like.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Rather, it's more like two years from now I think, "Crap...I know there was a detailed discussion about the pros and cons of wizard summoning vs. ranger cooking. I should go search for it on that forum...oh wait, the forum is gone."

You hit the nail on the head, there. I have had moments like that over the years, only to find content missing thanks to WotC's prior forum migrations.

Thanks in advance to everyone who does archiving and saving of threads/content.

 

[Fralex]

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...

 

[Fralex]

I'm not sure why they feel the need to delete the old information rather than archiving it. Whenever a site does that nowadays, I feel like it is some great disturbance in the Force. I've just become accustomed to a culture where information, once available, is supposed to remain available forever. We have the technology. I just don't see the need for us to ever experience the loss of the library of Alexandria ever again. (Not that I'm drawing a quality comparison with the WotC forums.)

It's just really disturbing. I don't know exactly how to explain it. I know they have the right to do whatever they want with their servers. Maybe someone else who feels the same way can better explain the sensation I'm feeling.

Yeah, I really love this metaphor. Like, I'm not particularly religious, but the concept of destroying books feels downright sacrilegious. Just... all that knowledge in one place, suddenly gone... there's something inherently wrong-feeling about that. How many stories can you think of where a character really ought to destroy a piece of dangerous information, but they simply can't bring themself to get rid of it entirely? It's sort of the same idea.

 

[Delazar]

Guess you'll see me here more often!

*who's this guy?*

Exactly!

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

One piece of history for the new guys. About a year ago, a whole bunch of people were mass-banned from WotC's forums and ended up here. Some are still here, and post cool, interesting stuff. A mean-spririted minority went about deliberately trolling the members of this forum (and even set up a teeny forum elsewhere from which they coordinated the trolling). That minority is no longer here, but that's why you'll see some people a bit wary - they're worried this will happen again.

This was the motivation behind my comment on the first page that a couple of people have commented on.

To those here in good faith, my sincere apologies for how I may have come off as unwelcoming. The previous exodus Morrus was referring to was really jarring and changed the tone of the place for a while - in large part because the mods gave those who came here a lot of chances to stop the trolling.

Anyway, my apologies for the earlier comment and I hope explaining the reason for it doesn't make it seem like a weaker apology. Welcome to the good guys, and a particularly hearty welcome to anyone who might still be a fan of 4E!

 

[Fralex]

The quality of the posters on each forum I'd say is relatively the same, I think this one just has some features, such as different moderation approach and ways to show people you appreciate what they say, that help encourage constructive (or at least entertaining) behavior.

So yes, to all the people I might have seen on WotC at some point before my account got messed up: Welcome! If you were fun on the other forum, rest assured you will be appreciated here, too.