2019 was an exciting year with the launch of WoW Classic! Expanding Wowhead to cover both Retail and Classic at the same level of detail was a massive challenge as the person overseeing all the projects on the site. I worked on leveling up my management skills, calmly putting fires out, and helping grow the site to cover more content than ever before. Classic was a blast to work on because without modern systems like Titanforging, some of the original features on Wowhead like filters and the Talent Calculator flourished once again. But we could also apply lessons learned from Retail Wowhead, and bring our elaborate guide system over to Classic--the best of both worlds.
While I manage dozens of freelancers in addition to a wild assortment of Goblin and Gnomish developers, I also made an effort to set more time aside to write longreads. Ages ago, before Wowhead, I worked a bunch of odd jobs in museums and academia, and it's been nice to swap back to analytical mode, writing about the lore of the game in articles such as
Sylvanas in Shadowlands - Edge of Night, Jailer of the Damned, and Vol'jin's Mystery and
Wrathion's Journal and His Plan to Defeat N'Zoth. While I started writing these in 2018, I set a regular schedule in 2019 and I'm happy with the increased frequency of them. It should be exciting to continue writing these articles with all the tasty
Shadowlands reveals and broadcast text! I've also helped others on the site to pursue niche projects they truly enjoy, and hopefully that's been reflected in the variety of deep-dives published in 2019.
One of the high points of 2019 for me was starting up our datamining streams. For every PTR build, the team hops on a call to coordinate breaking news and react to the new models. In late 2019 we decided we were confident enough to stream our datamining and the reaction has been great with thousands of concurrent viewers tuning in to see Wrathion and Calia, so we are actively working on improvements to consistently stream the
Shadowlands beta! Personally I am working on a way to make Brightpaw sit still so we can have the cat reacting to the datamining on the stream too.
I'm really proud of the team at BlizzCon 2019. Every year we expand the team and plan more coverage in advance, but our goals get bigger so it's just as hectic! This year was notable not only for the
Shadowlands reveal but also the overwhelming interest in
Diablo--both IV and Immortal--on Wowhead. I personally handled the liveblogging on Twitter, as well as assisting with articles, images, and staff assignments from our Mission Central at the Hilton which featured a pile of snacks and five Pepes.
In 2020 we'll be celebrating Wowhead's 15th birthday--thank you to everyone who has chosen Wowhead as your home for sharing information. It's rare for any type of site to thrive for so long, especially one dedicated to a niche topic. When I first started here at Wowhead, I spent my holidays including Christmas soloing the feedback inbox, and now re-reading this post, I'm reminded that with your support I've been able to expand our wonderful team. A special thanks and warm welcome to all of the Classic writers who joined us in 2019.
Happy new year from Perc, Brightpaw, and Santa Pepe (freed from the 8.3 PTR)! Looking forward to
Shadowlands and hopefully justice for Teldrassil!