WoTC closing fourms.

[Chambers]

Announcement.

Just shaking my head at this. You own the brand for the biggest/oldest RPG in the world, and you're going to force your customers to talk about your product somewhere else? How did they think this was a smart move?

[Forrestfire]

Huh. That's definitely an odd choice... I need to go through and save a bunch of threads, because I relied on the WotC boards for a whole bunch of guides for 4e and neat old TO builds for 3.5.

[JAL_1138]

WotC closing their forums...well that idea's as bright as a broken lightbulb...oy.

[Mrs Kat]

In fairness, their forum system was terrible when last I used it.

Is anyone going to archive the handbooks and so on (I'm thinking of Treantmonklvl20 among others) before the forums are deleted for good?

[TheCountAlucard]

In fairness, their forum system was terrible when last I used it.

The same is true for me, albeit with the tiny asterisked "*eight or so years ago."

Plus I recall it being a somewhat caustic place.

[ThinkMinty]

Plus I recall it being a somewhat caustic place.

That's kinda...everywhere compared to the Playground, to be honest. Facebook's pretty hostile, comparatively.

[JAL_1138]

In fairness, their forum system was terrible when last I used it.

So convert to a better forum system and let users move content. There are plenty out there that work well, and presumably require very little money considering the nearly-no-budget sites using them.

[Nifft]

Well that sucks.

It wasn't my favorite community on the 'net, but it had some value.

[obryn]

It was useful for reference and archive. But man, I can't see this as good news for WotC if they can't afford to keep an active forum going.

[JAL_1138]

It was useful for reference and archive. But man, I can't see this as good news for WotC if they can't afford to keep an active forum going.

Either that or someone at Hasbro demanded that they use more social media.

[Joe the Rat]

What, there's too much diluting the natter between the forums and umpteen different social media channels? I mean, it's not like they need to do official announcements in the forums, and everything gets cross-linked anyway. It just seems an odd choice. I wonder how much influx we'll get from it.

Anyone want to do a quick scan and see how many other publishers are going "no official forum" these days?

[LibraryOgre]

Either that or someone at Hasbro demanded that they use more social media.

I'd say that forums are a pretty social media, and not terribly different than most others, in some respects.

However, I haven't used their forums since they could be read on a newsreader and were going through the announcements about 3e, so.... I'm certainly not their target audience.

[Anonymouswizard]

That's kinda...everywhere compared to the Playground, to be honest. Facebook's pretty hostile, comparatively.

I've personally never used the WotC forums, but yeah. You can occasionally find a forum as good as the Playground, but you have to be careful as they don't have the playground's regulations to avoid that slip.

Fun fact, I once pointed out on Facebook that it can be considered a forum/bunch of personal forums, and people have no right to tell me to go to a forum to discuss ideas. Soon after that I gave up, classified forums as the best part of social media, and mainly use Facebook to chat with friends who live far away and try to get groups started.

Either that or someone at Hasbro demanded that they use more social media.

Forums aren't a social media? I mean, we don't talk about such personal stuff as some people do on Facebook (I personally don't put anything on Facebook that I wouldn't mind turning up on here, but I've seen what some people do), but the GiantITP forums have always felt like a place to socially connect with many people over shared interests, like Roleplaying and what stupid things WotC are doing now.

In fact, the only advantage I see 'social media' having over forums is the slight chance of bringing new people into the hobby. Although I think GiantITP may have done as much work as Facebook on that front.

[Slipperychicken]

This looks like a way of externalizing the cost of forum maintenance. Other entities (like this site) are already hosting most of the discussion, and WotC can monitor them just as well (to see what we want, what we think, how we're using their products, and so on), so dropping their own forums is a way to cut costs without losing value.

[ComaVision]

I wonder how often I'll be seeing "There used to be a guide for that on the WotC forums..." in the months after.

[LudicSavant]

The WotC forums used to be a pretty damn vibrant community pre-Gleemax. Ancient history now. It was crippled by repeated changes that were so bad they seemed like outright, intentional sabotage. This just seems like a continuation of that.

I wonder how often I'll be seeing "There used to be a guide for that on the WotC forums..." in the months after.

Heck, I'm already used to hearing that a lot, since so much of the old, good material has been lost in their forum changes over the years.

[Lord Raziere]

The same is true for me, albeit with the tiny asterisked "*eight or so years ago."

Plus I recall it being a somewhat caustic place.

you don't know the half of it. the first online freeform roleplaying place I ever was in, was on there. it sucked. ran for five years on people doing but arguing over which of their overpowered characters should win when their level of power was "I'm godlike, I have only one weakness, and I'm not telling you what it is, guess it yourself.". to the point where my character, (dragon artificer wizard, 10,000 years old) who would be like, an overpowered mary sue or something anywhere else, constantly died to everyone else in the RP- 17 times in fact, thats more times than the Doctor or the Master has died! and then there was all the excessive terraforming and apocalypses.....I'm not sad to see WotC forums go, knowing it created Gleemax roleplay.

[Knaight]

That's kinda...everywhere compared to the Playground, to be honest. Facebook's pretty hostile, comparatively.

I can think of three forums, and about six IRC channels that are far less hostile than the Playground just off the top of my head, without even leaving the RPG-nerd subgroup. WotC forums being far more hostile is not a point in their favor.

[SaintRidley]

I honestly don't even care. I remember the shift to Gleemax over there losing my ability to log into my account, and that's about when I quit visiting them entirely.

Wonder what's going to happen to the stranded forumgoers.

[Nifft]

Forums aren't a social media?

Some forums seem to be anti-social media.

[LibraryOgre]

I can think of three forums, and about six IRC channels that are far less hostile than the Playground just off the top of my head, without even leaving the RPG-nerd subgroup. WotC forums being far more hostile is not a point in their favor.

I'd be curious to know which ones; PM me.

Some forums seem to be anti-social media.

I'll admit, I chuckled.

[DigoDragon]

I wonder how often I'll be seeing "There used to be a guide for that on the WotC forums..." in the months after.

Could always migrate them over here, though I think a few already have counterparts in the Playground.

[GPuzzle]

The 4e CharOp community is already developing a plan to move as many guides and builds as possible to ENWorld before the deadline. It's actually really impressive.

[Awesomologist]

The 4e CharOp community is already developing a plan to move as many guides and builds as possible to ENWorld before the deadline. It's actually really impressive.

I would love to know more about this. The 4e guides (and recently the 5e guides) where my main reasons for going to the WotC forums. Once WotC seemed determined to kill 4e I spent less and less time there. I never cared much enworld as I always found their site to be an eyesore, but an archive of these guides will always be useful.

[Solaris]

That's kinda...everywhere compared to the Playground, to be honest. Facebook's pretty hostile, comparatively.

Not to be ragging on this forum, because it is a good resource, but the Playground is just as hostile as most any other forum I've been on and sometimes more so; there are topics I don't get involved with because I know it's just going to turn into twelve pages of pointless bickering before it degrades into insults and namecalling that only sometimes skirt the forum rules. People may need to be more subtle in their insults and passive aggressive in their attacks here, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of discussions here have as much vitriol in them as you'll find in the Youtube comments section.

[Brova]

It was useful for reference and archive. But man, I can't see this as good news for WotC if they can't afford to keep an active forum going.

They can obviously afford to maintain an active forum. MTG is (technically speaking) "profitable as ****". Seriously, the game makes a quarter billion a year, has major tournaments every weekend, probably the best design team working on any tabletop game (possibly ever), and a huge fanbase. If WotC is shuttering their forums, it's not because they can't afford them.

You own the brand for the biggest/oldest RPG in the world

While D&D is certainly the oldest RPG in the world, it's probably not the biggest. Setting aside the fact that WoW is totally an RPG and makes substantially more than D&D does, 4e did a number to the brand. Pathfinder was beating them in the past and may still be. Unfortunately, the numbers are very hard to find.

Not to be ragging on this forum, because it is a good resource, but the Playground is just as hostile as most any other forum I've been on and sometimes more so; there are topics I don't get involved with because I know it's just going to turn into twelve pages of pointless bickering before it degrades into insults and namecalling that only sometimes skirt the forum rules. People may need to be more subtle in their insults and passive aggressive in their attacks here, but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of discussions here have as much vitriol in them as you'll find in the Youtube comments section.

Basically this. The internet is a hostile place. You can't make people not be aggressive, you can just make them be passive aggressive.

[D+1]

1) It costs money to maintain a forum server and moderate them.
2) Forum participation may be down overall. Participation of obnoxious users may be up.
3) It costs a lot of headaches to moderate a forum, not just money.
4) They're yammering about social media and only proving they STILL don't grok how to make more monies from D&D on teh internets.

My guess would be it's as much or more about #1 as anything else. Still, letting participants find forum discussions elsewhere absolves WOTC of the NECESSITY of making petulant children and man-boy jerks talk nicely to each other. Now they can go elsewhere, be as vile as they like, and WotC doesn't get stained by it.

If it were ME suggesting this move to them, I'd advocate that it also frees them of watching players RELENTLESSLY picking apart their game rules and needing to plug the holes. That means still more savings in staff. DM's should be doing that anyway and WotC should never, EVER have placed themselves in the position of subverting the authority of an individual DM and letting players appeal to the greater authority of RULES. Back with 3E they dedicated themselves to supporting the rules like they supported MtG (which will always need lots of authoritative rules that ALL participants are subject to in competition). But D&D is not a competitive game, the rules are orders of magnitude more complex in their interactions, and they simply CANNOT be made to apply equally in all games.

I see almost nothing but upsides to the move. The only downside is that they can no longer tell players or DM's, "You're doing it wrong!"

[BRKNdevil]

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles...own-2015-09-16

They plan on shutting the forums down so if you have something you want to save, do it now

[Pluto!]

I don't think WotC has hosted the biggest discussion board for any of their products for over a decade.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to cut the costs to maintain word-of-mouth social support that their users have proven themselves willing to foot the bill for anyway.

[Battlebooze]

Wow, WotC really is amazingly bad at dealing with their customers.