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Class Forums - How do we bring them back?
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Post by
nephthyswanderer
Could be a hot topic, but I'm really noticing that the class forums are all but ghost towns. Most of the forums seem to have 2-3 topics that have been touched in the last day, and then the rest haven't been posted in for days or weeks. Most of the topics are just talking about forums from other websites. The rogue forum is particularly quiet in my opinion.
Why is that? What could be done?
Reaching out to general to speak to users, although I guess this question could be addressed to site feedback as well.
Some ideas:
Class contests - Gear, rp, story, pictures
Class moderators or sponsored posters? A discount on premium or free premium for being a class lead?
Guides for classes in the class forums too, even just a topic for links to them stickied
Weekly articles by staff members?
Any ideas?
Wowhead - Any plans?(##RESPBREAK##)16##DELIM##asakawa##DELIM##After actively taking part in the discussion for a couple of days I finally noticed how appropriate it is to Feedback rather than General. I hope you'll forgive my oversight as I finally come to my senses and shift it over.
Post by
darkoath
I was just noticing this myself this past weekend. Most information is out of date, and the current responses tell you to go to an elitist jerk website. While that's fine to send people off to other sources for help, it turns the social forum aspect obsolete.
It may also just be too early into MoP to get good feedback because people are trying to figure out encounters/play styles that work best. I also think the consistent "flaming", "trolling", and negative feedback for simple questions (while repetitive or frustrating they can be to read), is hurting the forums. Wowhead does a good job at moderating this activity, but it still has it's effects on us "noobs"
Post by
Interest
I'd say the last idea would be a good way to redirect traffic from General to the Class forums. It would be nice to do it for a majority of the other forums as well, considering how General has a large amount of traffic but most of the others have little to none.
Post by
Izichial
Considering that when they were active it was generally the same half dozen questions repeated over and over again I'm not sure the former activity is much to mourn.
It's not just here, most class forums at WoW sites are very sleepy these days, even EJ and such.
Post by
nephthyswanderer
Agree Izi, most other sites class forums are pretty barren, giving way to maybe class specific sites? Interesting to see what started as a class specific forum add all other classes to the website in hopes of driving traffic.
Just seems to be a traffic driving opportunity to create class based destinations with a bit more umph to them rather than scouring the internet for data pieces. Love my class, interesting in being the best player possible, but keeping up with EJ type discussions can't be the way most people want information.
A weak point in the awesomeness of wowhead. :)
Post by
Interest
Considering that when they were active it was generally the same half dozen questions repeated over and over again I'm not sure the former activity is much to mourn.
It's not just here, most class forums at WoW sites are very sleepy these days, even EJ and such.
I dunno. I find the official Hunter forums to be reasonably active.
Post by
Izichial
Agree Izi, most other sites class forums are pretty barren, giving way to maybe class specific sites?
Not sure, I rather think class specific sites are following the trend of class specific forums. The death of shadowpriest.com was fairly well publicised but I don't really read a lot of sites. Class specifics blogs and regular columns like old Big Red Kitty go into the same category and while I'm not following those either I've seen a few fall by the roadside the last few years.
Love my class, interesting in being the best player possible, but keeping up with EJ type discussions can't be the way most people want information.
At the risk of sounding overly cynical, I'd hazard what most people want is an easy to follow summary of the EJ type discussion with the latter being done by other people. The wide circulation of Icy-veins' guides in the first days and weeks of MoP when many EJ summaries were missing and spec guides were few and far between points heavily to this conclusion - I don't have any grudge against Icy-veins but their guides are just not very good when it comes to the details and were still widely referred to because they were available.
I dunno. I find the official Hunter forums to be reasonably active.
My bad, I was talking about fan sites.
Post by
Magician22773
Class forums really require someone to take the lead and run the board. If the information is not kept updated and fresh, the board will get very little use.
And it has been a while since someone took the lead on the class forums here and gave them the attention they need.
In all honesty, its easier to just go to Noxxic or EJ for most information, or to class specific sites like Warcraft Hunters Union. Most of the time, thats what you got redirected to if you asked a question in the Wowhead class forums anyway.
Post by
Interest
My bad, I was talking about fan sites.
Oh for sure then. No doubting that.
Post by
rabican1
Class forums really require someone to take the lead and run the board. If the information is not kept updated and fresh, the board will get very little use.
I dont think the issue is not having someone take the lead, the issue is that there is very lilttle to discuss. If the classes had any complexity or any substantial choices to make people would come to the class boards to do research.
The only real decision making people have to make now is what class to roll, after that... not much.
Post by
161859
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
asakawa
(@Magician initially) It sounds more like you're talking about Guides than Forums (and this touches on the OP's point too). We have a Guides section that is reasonably active though I think everyone on the staff here would readily admit that we can do more to support and integrate those into the whole site.
Forums should be for discussion. Questions, answers, ponderings and musings. I think I agree with posters above who think that there's less to talk about than there once was but it's very difficult to compare things to how one remembers them without clouding things in reminiscence and such.
Some of the ideas above though, sound like setting up some official blog content within each class forum which is interesting but in the end I don't think it's playing to the strengths of the medium. Perhaps more class-based blog content would be good and perhaps it would drive people toward the forum to discuss points raised but I'm not sure that it should be hosted on the forum in forum-thread layout.
Guides used to be housed within forums like the individual class forums and their upkeep often became one talking point but my own experience of running guides within the forum structure was that the guide threads were more a place for corrections and additions than actual discussion which happened in other threads.
I do agree that it's a shame that class forums don't get used as much now as in the past. I was, for several years, a denizen of the Warlock forum, barely venturing out into the wider Wowhead world, and I have very fond memories of those days. If anyone has any cool ideas for making them more useful or inviting places for people to discuss stuff then please don't hesitate to state them. I'd love to take a few good ideas to Ashelia. Personally I'd like to see Class Guides properly integrated into the forum so that you don't have to go somewhere else to get from the discussion to the Guide and back again. What else could we do?
Post by
nephthyswanderer
The surge in traffic to Noxxic and Icy-Veins would be a good place to start. Why is trade chat pointing them there for class based questions? (At least that's what I'm seeing, sure other people can find contrary examples)
User created guides are wonderful and surely wowhead posters have done a tremendous job creating them. Some of the guides are hit or miss in terms of quality and content and trying to filter through and avoid seeing redundant information is tough. The ratings helps, but still doesn't address the issue. But then they get outdated, there's separate wowhead content (like class previews, armor sets, class changes, etc) that are posted on the main page but aren't stickied on the class pages or even linked there. Two challenges, one is content, the other is presentation.
Sponsored class guides with professional content?
Again with the no no's, but WowInsider manages to post weekly articles by class and sometimes spec so there's topic fodder out there. Perhaps wowhead users are lacking motivation? (Obviously WowInsider pays these people, it's not pro bono stuff). Zam or wowhead swag, premium offers, giveaways, etc could help with the incentive as obviously budgets become an issue.
Just musings....
Post by
asakawa
But again you're talking about content creation which I see as quite a different thing to simply promoting discussion within the forum structure. Certainly the one thing helps the other to some degree and (as I touched on above) there's no doubt that more could be done to make the Guide system everything it could be but these things aren't really about making the class forums a lively interesting place.
Post by
Rystrave
I don't think the class guides here on Wowhead are advertised as well as they are on the other two. When you click on Noxxic's WoW link, they have each class separated into PVP and PVE guides. It'd be nice to have something like that on Wowhead, making our searches easier.
I do love how the guides are written by Wowheaders though. It definitely shows what kind of community we have.
I can't seem to get Icy Veins to load right now, but I know their PVE content guides are fairly detailed, going over every aspect of the fight, from a DPS, tank, and heals point of view.
Overall, think more or less that people think of Wowhead to get answers for quests or drop rates. I don't think people realize that we have much more to offer.
Post by
nephthyswanderer
But again you're talking about content creation which I see as quite a different thing to simply promoting discussion within the forum structure. Certainly the one thing helps the other to some degree and (as I touched on above) there's no doubt that more could be done to make the Guide system everything it could be but these things aren't really about making the class forums a lively interesting place.
I'm linking the two because I think that content creation could drive traffic to the forum and promote discussion. Current content creation is focused on and launched in WoW General and never in class forums.
The Warlock quest news is an example. It's posted on general with other info, but there's no sign of it on the Warlock class forum. Discussion then about the topic gets buried into the singular thread on general without ever having the chance to engage the warlock community that may discuss the topic further. An epic class based quest series would be a perfect conversation starter. Relying on the class forum to transpose the information doesn't seem to be happening much and may take a nudge from the site.
In addition, when people do talk about it, they get shot down or sent to the general thread. I get eliminating duplicate or triplicate forum topics, but I think that just copying and pasting the Warlock piece into the class forum would be easy to do by wowhead. It doesn't even need to be new content, just focused on the class iteself.
Class changes and patch information never makes it to the class forums in a simplified way by wowhead.
Just a note that the quality and the timeliness of the patch information and datamining has really improved, the posts are awesome.
Post by
Magician22773
I do agree that the proliferation of guides has cut into how the old class forum worked.
While I appreciate the time and effort that many people put into the creation of their guides, I still liked having a community that I could ask a question, and get multiple opinions and ideas presented. With a guide, you have two "problems"
1. They have to be kept updated, almost on a constant basis, not just for major changes, but with hotfixes, and as new information comes in. This requires someone to monitor the class, and make the changes on nearly a daily, or at least weekly basis. That is a lot to ask from someone on a fan-site, as it can become more like an unpaid job, rather than just doing something to be helpful to the community.
2. If you rely on a guide, and its author, you are limited to just their opinion and expertise. If you use the community forum, you can get ideas from multiple people, and choose which to follow.
Post by
Glanzman
Sorry to jump in late on this discussion, but this is something I've seen too and had thought about making a thread about it (as far as the lack of activity in the class forums).
When I first joined Wowhead, back in summer of 2009, it was about 9 months after the release of WotLK. I was a daily reader of the paladin forums.
Each forum page holds 50 threads. Back then, you could only count about 4 days in between the time the latest thread was created and the thread on the bottom of the page was created.
Now, you can count about 4 months.
4 days vs 120 days is quite a disparity.
Post by
asakawa
@neph,
I don't think that the discussion in WoW General decreases discussion elsewhere. I also don't think it's the site's job to create topics for discussion. Maybe separate class forums are a bit old-fashioned these days and there's not much we can do but ideally we want to make a great venue for the discussion, not lead it.
@Magician,
Again, I don't think the creation of the Guide system has decreased discussions. Nobody is suggesting that Guides should or have replaced forum discussion. I think it's not an ideal way to lay things out (guides no longer being stickied threads in the appropriate forum) and people who use the forums are missing the Guides while people who use the Guides are missing the forum but that's a separate issue that I hope time is found on the schedule for eventually.
If you want a place where the community can ask questions and get opinions then you've got to
be the change you want to see in the world
(of Warcraft fansite). The place exists, it just needs to be utilised. The question is, can anything be done to increase the utility?
Post by
Eccentrica
Vibrant community requires participation, it can't be forced or mandated. If we want useful and vibrant class forums then it behooves us to step up and start compiling and writing.
There has been a noticeable change in the Wowhead community, but that is inevitable and people flow to and from here. Do the guides deter? Well, while some topics are better suited to discussion, there are many subjects on which guides are excellent ideas. I consider Runawaynow's guide to the Molten Front to be definitive and I pointed all my guildies there.
I personally have noted a downtick of commentary and contribution since the wowhead news started being posted to general. Don't misunderstand please, I love Ashelia and Perculia's work, but when too much is done for you, you lose the motivation to do it yourself, you know.
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