dragoon wrote:


For those not knowing what D&D is and never heard of it...can't really help you there, you have lived a more sheltered life than me.

With the basic premise that it is a game in a fantasy sword and sorcery world like but before the advent of MMOs...Also Star Wars has an RPG for it, and there are card games like Magic The Gathering.

Well the custodian of these games, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) announced a new version (4th edition) of the D&D game in 2007. When they did this they wanted to make a "Home for gamers on the internet" that would house all sorts of games players etc. They would have games from their parent company HASBRO, and would try to get other games for play online, as well offer all the fancy bells and whistles as MySpace and Facebook. Well they announced GLEEMAX.

This website was to be a MYSpace/FACEBOOK for gamers. From the beginning this didn't go over too well. Nobody that played WotC games really cared for that save a couple hundred people. Nobody wanted to subscribe to play online versions of the board games form HASBRO, or other cheesy games they came up with. No other company wanted to license their games to use online at a HASBRO website (will Funimation titles be playing in the TAN OP?). Add to this not one, but TWO poorly designed landscapes, schemes, and styles (current TAN website?) that were not only hard to navigate, but hard on the eyes and non-intuitive. Then the murder-suicide of on of the designers of the GLEMAX community site, and it went to pot. The main people that wanted such a site was the company itself from hearing buzz about how good MySpace and FACEBOOK are. They didn't take into account that the people that play their games and visit their forums may not:

1- Like MySpace or FACEBOOK
2- want to replace their MySpace or FACEBOOK accounts with a GLEEMAX one.
3-Want any thing other than a place to talk to others of similar interests in a forum.

Needles to say the main designer was gone form the project as well Microsoft lost a designer (his wife) because of the GLEEMAX incident, so WotC reverted back after much hostility form fans and customers to just a vBulletin forum. (OH MY GOD! I am again defending a crappy forum software such as vBulletin! just use phpBB! ITS FREE AND DOES EVERYTHING ELSE YO WILL EVER WANT!)

So a while afterwards and due to software suite platforms connected to D&D as well as GLEEMAX, Randy Beuhler the person in charge of web design for WotC was fired in a round of lay-offs.

The forums never recovered from the attempts to inbreed the GLEEMAX code into the vBulletin forums, but it became stable and everyone was happy even with the forums.gleemax.com being the URL for them.

August 28th this years comes for upgrade and some maintenance on those forums, and after a weeks downtime up comes a community site hosted a ONESITE.com where other companies like eBay, WWE/F/whatever, have dinky little sites for fans to converse about things provided by the company for free, for those who could not other sie create their own forums even though 100 places offer free forums and some offer free administration of them and a user need only moderate them!

Well WotC now has the MySpace type thing, and just like after GLEEMAX was announced it is losing visitors because some people just want a simple forum.

Granted ONESITE.com boasts clearly it is only interested in generating traffic for the company, but the problem is with something like WotC that has a large following you shouldn't dump all your stable users for random people that might stumble onto your community site to play around for a week and leave. WotC even lost a LOT of lurkers and has gone down in page hits after transition to this new site even though it is free and NOT ad-supported.

That is a key factor in these community sites is that they have the purpose of generating traffic for the ad-supported content for more revenue. Now I don't begrudge people money, but I buy DVDs because I don't like adverting. I have 20 ad-blockers running at all times to stop any and ALL web advertising, and only turn on flash when I want to watch a video. I am NOT alone in this attitude about the invasive advertising.

MY first question when anyone creates a community site, is are they doing something for themselves like WotC and just trying to generate revenue via a traffic site, or are they providing something for customers of their products that the customer can use? While I don't buy many series of ANYTHING! (Shingu was the first TV show I bought since the complete MASH collection...the only two I have). I buy lots of anime movies.

So will TAN be offering this community site for people because people who like(d) ADV and like TAN wanted it, or is it just to turn over a few more $$$?

I don't mind making money, but I do mind it being done at MY expense and trying to pull the wool over my eyes telling me it is being done FOR me. I get nothing out of things like ads and spam mails form community sites except extreme frustration and anger at the company and people that run these types of sites.

Just like the sub vs dub debate for anime, with community sites I have to ask....what's in it for me?

Also things like GLEEMAX, MySpace, and FACEBOOK; has a much higher noise ratio, and you think the spam is bad now (wow he really did pull it back on topic! ); just wait until there is a surge in users that want those things offered by the likes of MYSpace that flock to them just to spam.

Also I hate proprietary information form a company hidden on other sites like Twitter, MySpace, etc. So Far TAN twitters important stuff at the SAME time the news hits THIS website so I don't have to go to some stupid site to find out something....Many other companies use MySpace/FACEBOOK and twitter like the .hack series where you have to collect bits of info from manga, then game, then anime, then manga, then anime, then game, then....ENOGUH IS ENOUGH! Keep the story in one format, or your company info that customers may want/need in order to make more purchases of your products in ONE place....most preferably you OWN website.

So while a community site may be the new hip thing, nake sure you don't get caught up in the fad and be ran over by the next bandwagon that everyone has jumped on when the fad passes.

outlander wrote:


If there is absolutely no point, no forward motion and NO TALK among most of the posters. SPAM.

If there is debate, forward thinking, TALK among most of the posters. NOT SPAM.

shadzar wrote:


That was very... information-ish.

Slowhand wrote:


AHA! Now I know. Thank you. See how easy that was?

outlander wrote:


I know. I am just that good.

Slowhand wrote:


Sorry, when it comes to something important to me I either make jokes or seem to go into longwinded rants. The times I make jokes are to prevent myself from ranting, or just enjoy the rest of the party being had by all and their company in it.
I'm binary like that.

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