ENWorld used to be the place I got nearly all my gaming info from and where I participated in numerous forum discussions. I was a supporter for years, kicking in those few bucks a month to keep terminally slow forum running.
G+ and blogs are where I find my RPG news these days and where I talk about RPG related topics. For me, ENWorld offers little that I can't find elsewhere.
I'm surprised at how well the ENWorld Kickstarter has done, but maybe I shouldn't be - the PDF package of goodies available doesn't quite compare with the package offered with the Pathfinder Online but it covers both Pathfinder and 4e to some extent.
Another case of supporting a Kickstarter for the bonuses and not the core products. I guess I should be happy I'm firmly entrenched in the OSR - there is nothing all that tempting that is being offered from my perspective.
So, do you still visit ENWorld? Are you supporting it's Kickstarter? If so, are you in it for the loot or to support the site?
ENWhat?
ReplyDeleteI am in to support the site, just bid 5$ for all the old service and community
ReplyDeleteI'm like Fabio, I've been a member from the beginning, so I'm in for £5, even though I don't hang out there much any more. The OGRE application sounds cool, too.
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for Enworld. I also spent a fair bit of time there before 4e launched and the place fell apart/became so toxic it wasn't worth the trouble. Moderation stepped up but I think that made things worse. When I returned the place was vacant as the community had split. The majority of the forum refugees found their way to the Paizo boards while others went to the WOTC boards or RPGNET.
ReplyDeleteI can't see how the ghost town that remains is relevant anymore.
I think I've read one of their threads before, because it mentioned an adventure I wrote. I may have created an account in order to thank the author of the post, but I'm not sure. That's pretty much all the connection I've had with enworld.
ReplyDeleteUntil they got hacked, I'd heard of them, but never read them. Now I've gone there exactly twice.
ReplyDeleteMy question is: Did the owners of ENWorld ever hear about backups?
If my site got hacked and erased, I have everything from the site in a backup in three places, at least one of which is offline.
I'm assuming that they had backups, probably in the Cloud, and that the hackers hacked the backup. They couldn't have been running with no backups, right?
I'm cynical, but I suspect he just used this as an excuse to run a Kickstarter.
DeleteHe's had these "emergency" fundraising drives before.
And these days, the forum traffic is so low I can't see that the server costs are all that much.
It was not about backups. They had a backup, and all the messages are there from the backup.
DeleteThe problem was the old version of vbulletin would have remained just as hackable if they just threw it back up. To genuinely deal with the issue, you can't just put your backup up, as it would just happen again whenever the hacker decides to run his hack again.
So, he did the right thing, bought the newest secure version of the software, and is upgrading it correctly.
Not interested.
ReplyDeleteEN World was great once, when Eric Noah was in charge.
I don't think he ever was. He had just a news site, but I think Morris sort of came up with the whole ENWorld.
DeleteIf it was ever great, it was because there was once so much interest in 3.0 that it attracted a lot of people. Nothing Morris ever did (probably the contrary).
I stil check out ENWorld when I remember to every now and then, but the forums have been subpar for a long time now. I think ENWorld could benefit from moving beyond its D20-only focus to encompass RPGs in general, as where it stands right now no other site out there offers broad RPG coverage, and plenty of other sites offer better and faster news on the D&D/D20 front.
ReplyDeleteWho? Oh, yeah, the Burning Sky guys, haven't thought twice about them in years.
ReplyDeleteIt's not relevant to me at all, as I haven't been on there since I stopped playing 3e maybe 10 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIt's not relevant to me at all, as I haven't been on there since I stopped playing 3e maybe 10 years ago.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's relevant to me, and I spent money to help with the upgrades.
ReplyDeleteGuy who donates a huge amount of his time and resources to the RPG community got hacked. My first thought is not "What PDFs can I buy for my money?" it's "How can I help out a peer who's in trouble?"
I stop in once in a while to check the news bits, but that's about it. Most of my gaming info, news, discussions, etc. comes from great blogs--like this one =)
ReplyDeleteThe EnWorld forums are still pretty bad. Add that to the long list of good things that Bill Slavicsek destroyed.
ReplyDeleteBut the news page is good. When something new and interesting is afoot, I usually hear about it first from Morrus.
A lot the people who don't care about forums or blogs still get their RPG news from EnWorld's front page--I know a couple of my players do. And their gamers seeking gamers page is well worth replacing.
So, yeah, I pitched in a few pounds, despite the fact that EnWorld is, and likely will always be, a weak shadow of what it once was.
I don't think I've goe by enworld on a rgular basis in 3-5 years. It just hasn't been all that relevant to my gamiing.
ReplyDeleteApparently Morrus say this post as an attack on him. It isn't
ReplyDeleteIt does show, however, that ENWorld has little relevancy amongst those that consider themselves Old School Gamers.
Maybe if you found a way to include them, they'd find it more relevant
Hmm I always heard it was called Enron? My bad.
ReplyDeleteI use the forums regularly; I don't use it for news or whatever else is on there; so the bells & whistles that make the forums so slow are just an annoyance. For me the site worked best just after Morrus got it online again after the hack; for once the forums were reasonably quick. Didn't last long.
ReplyDeleteIn general I value it for the moderation and the no-politics rule; it's neither a hard left North Korean dystopia like rpgnet, nor an anarchic cesspit of scum and villainy like therpgsite.
DeleteWorking in the RPG industry, EN World (along with RPG.net) is on my list of top-tier sites to pitch in order to get coverage that will reach a broad audience of RPG hobbyists. I don't have traffic numbers, but it appears that a lot of people will at least glance at the front page to see what news they're featuring. It's also a way to get coverage that people will then talk about on their blogs and social networks, which then opens up opportunities for the news to spread to audiences who don't read EN World.
ReplyDelete