WoTC closing fourms.

[R.Shackleford]

So not sure if this is a good or bad thing but...

Can we now start saying that 5E killed the Wotc forums?

[steppedonad4]

All digital content ever produced by WotC has been poorly received. Mostly because it's deserved it. Given how small their budget is and how limited their staff are now, I'm not surprised that the forums are being thrown in the trash. Can't say I'm sad to see them go as they were always poorly managed and maintained and built, in my opinion. Then again, I also don't like the idea of all the information and power over D&D conversation now being held in the hands of independent, third-parties like EN World and even sites like this one. It's nothing personal, it's just that every privately owned website has a private agenda and community with a strong bias. I don't think that is, ultimately, good for D&D. It's good to have such sites as alternates to a primary voice controlled by the company itself, but not as the sole source.

[Ciraq]

I am not a fan of the direction they are taking with the web site. I was a huge fan of the online character builder in 4e, and used it to keep up to date characters sheets for the players in my campaign. The fact that they are now endorsing cumbersome third-party applications is disappointing, to say the least. I am not surprised that the forums will be following the same trend. I am hoping that a lot of the older information from inactive posters is somehow archived.

[R.Shackleford]

All digital content ever produced by WotC has been poorly received. Mostly because it's deserved it. Given how small their budget is and how limited their staff are now, I'm not surprised that the forums are being thrown in the trash. Can't say I'm sad to see them go as they were always poorly managed and maintained and built, in my opinion. Then again, I also don't like the idea of all the information and power over D&D conversation now being held in the hands of independent, third-parties like EN World and even sites like this one. It's nothing personal, it's just that every privately owned website has a private agenda and community with a strong bias. I don't think that is, ultimately, good for D&D. It's good to have such sites as alternates to a primary voice controlled by the company itself, but not as the sole source.

I'm not an avid forum goer but from what I gather the Wotc forum has always been quite toxic.

The charop and guide builders were awesome (used them as reference more than a few times) but when you get away from there (from what I've been told and shown) things turned crappy real fast.

[Temperjoke]

Part of the problem for companies is that it's expensive to maintain an official forums area. I mean, you have to maintain them, pay for moderators; it adds up very quickly. Companies also don't necessarily get a lot of benefit from them either. I mean, someone makes a ruling or announcement that a group doesn't like, and the place goes up in flames. They don't need a forums to make announcements, they post them directly. They don't need forums to get feedback any more, there's reddit, twitter, facebook, independently-run forums, hell even comment sections on the announcements. Not to mention, their forums aren't exactly the best designed. They probably had a sit down and decided that the cost of all the updates and running it was outweighed by the benefits of dropping them.

[Elkad]

Their reasoning sucks. You can't search twitter for discussion on a rule point, or a class design.

At least they should just lock the forums and leave them up as an archive.

[MeeposFire]

I'm not an avid forum goer but from what I gather the Wotc forum has always been quite toxic.

The charop and guide builders were awesome (used them as reference more than a few times) but when you get away from there (from what I've been told and shown) things turned crappy real fast.

Funny I always thought that this forum was a lot more toxic than anything I remember from the WotC forums. There are so many times I think I should just not even look at this place but I have to admit the off chance of seeing something new makes me come back. Heck if it was not for the web comic I would probably frequent there more often.

Actually I take it back as every time they updated their lay out I ended up hating it more and more. I did not hate the community but the layout of the forums just did not work with me. At one point they looked very similar to this layout which I liked but over the years little things just kept annoying me about it.

I miss the old OP forums...

[Naanomi]

I lost most of the fun optimization stuff I was a part of in the last forum update, nothing on there now I'll miss too much. Still a shame to see a community die

[R.Shackleford]

Does anyone know if any good 4E guides have been saved to other sites? I tend to refer people to guides written better than I could ever do it and Wotc foru was one of the main sources for them.

[Daishain]

Huh, that's going to screw with my thread. Something approaching half of the guides up there are hosted on those forums.

[steppedonad4]

I'm not an avid forum goer but from what I gather the Wotc forum has always been quite toxic.

In my opinion the problems there stemmed primarily from their methods of moderation. They would simply delete whole swathes of conversations which angered everyone participating in the thread. Moreover, much like at many forums, there were certain elements who learned how to tow the line between trolling and not being moderated. So they would antagonise people, get those people banned, and in essence control the conversation towards their own ends. It's also one of the biggest problems with ENW, in my opinion, although I think that's compounded by a lot of cliques there who either have moderation power or influence, either due to real-world friendships or simply long-term established personalities that are given the benefit of the doubt over any dissenting contributors. Essentially, the favouritism there is intense.

Then you have the RPGsite. The less said about that place the better.

Despite having a downvote brigade that definitely targets certain posters (yes, I happen to be one of them, but I also have other accounts where I say essentially the same thing, only with different language and either get upvoted or left alone, which I feel says everything about the voting activity there), I find reddit to be the best source of open discussion, primarily because it's the least moderated of the options. Moderation, in my opinion, only ever seems to lead to cliques, favouritism and extreme limiting of discussion towards a certain accepted community bias. This makes for very dull, one-sided, and unimaginative, uncreative discussion.

Maybe WotC could make an 'official' reddit sub? And not moderate it. At all. That would be awesome.

[animewatcha]

Usually we can find builds and guides either here, brilliantgameologists, or enworld. There any such on the community forum?

[MeeposFire]

Huh, that's going to screw with my thread. Something approaching half of the guides up there are hosted on those forums.

Also using guides was a lot better there than here. Here if a guide is is not used for a while you have to technically do an illegeal thread necro. There it was not an issue AND they had all the guides stickied in a special thread at the top of the OP forums. It was very helpful for sure.

I think my overall most favorite thread was the homebrew your own vestige thread. I actually have a number of vestiges on that thread including Starscream, Spinal Tap, and others. I should reacquire those before they are gone for good.

[P.F.]

Will this affect the value of my Magic card collection?

[supersonic29]

That's a bummer. Even if they discontinued use of the forums, surely it wouldn't impact their business notably to keep text archives up of the forums. Guess I need to go copy the diplomacy jumplomancer thing...

Edit: Oh! And basket weaving!

[Pex]

I had quit the forums when 4E came out and they gutted the 3E forums. 3E conversations became less interesting as those who still liked it moved on to elsewhere, probably here and/or Paizo. WOTC mainly cared about the 4E forums. Since I didn't play the game, WOTC forums were no longer for me.

[Namfuak]

Do they have an API or something? Or are they just shutting it down with no reasonable way for someone to actually download a significant portion of it?

[Curmudgeon]

This is going to take a lot of work. There are some invaluable resources there, such as

• Lists of Stuff
• Alternative Class Features
• Master Player Race List
• Master Template List
• MIC items by function
• Special Materials Index
• Forms for Alter Self
• Bunko's Bargain Basement

[Extra Anchovies]

I've copied the Lists of Stuff and uploaded it as a pdf here (with the links fixed to archive.wizards). Feel free to share the link, put it in your signature, etc. Let me know if it works and is in a convenient format; if it does and is, I'll do the same for the other items Curmudgeon mentioned. It's pretty much just the raw text of the list for now; top priority is saving stuff but if I have the time I may organize the re-hosts in a google site or some other similar format to keep them all in one place.

[The Glyphstone]

Great Modthulhu: Merged with the existing thread on this topic in Roleplaying Games, as this is a pan-edition issue.

[atemu1234]

Great. Time to fire up httrack again. If I succeed, is there anything stopping me from posting it all as a downloadable on google drive?

[animewatcha]

What about saving particular pages to the webarchive?

[Totema]

I don't have as much to say as a D&D player, but for Magic: The Gathering, the WotC forums were pretty much dead.

[Slipperychicken]

watching players RELENTLESSLY picking apart their game rules and needing to plug the holes.

That's actually a positive thing for them, believe it or not. Getting constant feedback like that helps them understand the consumer and learn to meet their needs better, which in turn leads to higher satisfaction and probably a better position in the industry. 5th edition D&D seems like a good example of this; WotC took more than a decade of feedback into account and used it to release a greatly improved product which many of us prefer over prior editions. Most companies know the value of such feedback and pay out the wazoo for it, but many of WotC's customers put their thoughts and experiences online for free. Nitpicking at WotC's products and suggesting improvements is probably the best thing we can do for them; it helps them get better, and it shows that they have passionate consumers who want to see the brand improve.


Also, if giants like WotC can make big expenses like playtesting and customer service (such as regular errata, revisions, advice columns, etc) required to compete in the tabletop RPG market, that can raise another barrier to entry and make it harder for smaller players to challenge them. If they get us used to a constant cycle of feedback and service, then anyone who wants to take their market-share will need to compete with that.

[goto124]

Seems that the main reason is 'why spend money and effort on servers and forum moderation when they're plenty of alternative places to share information and opinions'.

EDIT: An elaboration:

Part of the problem for companies is that it's expensive to maintain an official forums area. I mean, you have to maintain them, pay for moderators; it adds up very quickly. Companies also don't necessarily get a lot of benefit from them either. I mean, someone makes a ruling or announcement that a group doesn't like, and the place goes up in flames. They don't need a forums to make announcements, they post them directly. They don't need forums to get feedback any more, there's reddit, twitter, facebook, independently-run forums, hell even comment sections on the announcements. Not to mention, their forums aren't exactly the best designed. They probably had a sit down and decided that the cost of all the updates and running it was outweighed by the benefits of dropping them.

[tiornys]

There's been some amount of CharOp guides moved to ENWorld, but the majority still need to be moved. I might have to figure out how to wiki and pitch in on that.

[NeoPhoenix0]

wait, I think the wild shape bible i use is there, though i have found almost everything else I use on another site. Such as the lists of stuff on brillientgameologists.

[Kurald Galain]

Wow, they're taking down their entire forums? I wasn't expecting that!

If people are compiling guides on Enworld, then the Utility Belt guide could be useful.

[Zweisteine]

To everyone who is saving materials in a publicly accessible way (i.e. web archive or something):

We really need a thread to index everything that has been saved already, so we can figure out what's left.

I'd make it myself, but I'm too inactive to do any sort of maintaining of threads...

[R.Shackleford]

In my opinion the problems there stemmed primarily from their methods of moderation. They would simply delete whole swathes of conversations which angered everyone participating in the thread. Moreover, much like at many forums, there were certain elements who learned how to tow the line between trolling and not being moderated. So they would antagonise people, get those people banned, and in essence control the conversation towards their own ends. It's also one of the biggest problems with ENW, in my opinion, although I think that's compounded by a lot of cliques there who either have moderation power or influence, either due to real-world friendships or simply long-term established personalities that are given the benefit of the doubt over any dissenting contributors. Essentially, the favouritism there is intense.

Then you have the RPGsite. The less said about that place the better.

Despite having a downvote brigade that definitely targets certain posters (yes, I happen to be one of them, but I also have other accounts where I say essentially the same thing, only with different language and either get upvoted or left alone, which I feel says everything about the voting activity there), I find reddit to be the best source of open discussion, primarily because it's the least moderated of the options. Moderation, in my opinion, only ever seems to lead to cliques, favouritism and extreme limiting of discussion towards a certain accepted community bias. This makes for very dull, one-sided, and unimaginative, uncreative discussion.

Maybe WotC could make an 'official' reddit sub? And not moderate it. At all. That would be awesome.

Reddit definitely has that issue, no question, I typically use that site for the front page and to get my daily dose of News. That place can be the best part of the internet and be the worst part all at the same time.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see a good, unofficial, d&d specific forum pop up eventually. Maybe ran by one of the 3rd parties that will be working on 5E stuff.

Or maybe Paizo will swoop in and make a D&D specific forum, just out of spite (we are better than you mwuahaha) and some advertisement dollars on the side.