This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/wow by /u/SpunkMcKullins on 2023-10-06 03:00:06.

This is going to be a very long rant, but ultimately I’m sure you can gleam the sentiment from the title.

I’ve tried bringing this to Wowhead’s staff’s attention before. Comments in articles get removed. Threads on the feedback forum go dismissed, or deleted, emails to their feedback address go completely unanswered, etc. At this point I’m unsure what other options there are aside from a public callout post in hopes that some other people out there agree with me.

Wowhead’s been on a pretty steep decline in recent years, but these past few months have hit the point of breaking the camel’s back with me. In the past, I wanted it to improve because it was our best resource, now I just want someone else to come along and do its job better so it can go the way of Thottbot or Allakhazam and just become so outclassed that its only option to be absorbed by the next big name.

____________________ Advertisements ____________________

The easiest example is the recent increase in advertisements for users without adblock. In web design, there is a golden rule derived from newsprint calle “above the fold.” When newspapers are sold, they are folded in half, and cut the content visible to the immediate sight. Web design has a very similar concept where you really, really don’t want to require your users to have to scroll in order to find content they are looking for. When we view the page without any sort of adblocker, this is what I am greeted with.

1/3rd of my content area, vertically, is taken up by ads. Not only ads, but a five and a half minute reveal trailer for an expansion that released a year ago. A five and a half minute trailer that follows the user as they scroll down. Even worse, about 1/4th of my horizontal content area is taken up by more ads. If we want to dissect it even further, is there no other way Wowhead could have advertised their talent builds than to have the spec icon for all 39 class specializations?

At this point, the tiny div used to display recent articles and blue posts are not a convenience, but a painfully necessary bandage to offer users the ability to view recent updates without scrolling the nearly three viewports worth of ads and featured content.

What incentive do I, as a consumer, have to disable my adblocker here? Why would I ever want to support this website with my userdata? What reasons do I have to not actively spite this website and its staff at every opportunity?

____________________ Unrelated Content ____________________

If you look at the top of the page, there is a content filter option that allows you to choose what articles you want visible.

Wowhead’s primary audience, by far, is World of Warcraft users who are attempting to keep up to date with the game. Going to a site called Wowhead, especially where there are dedicated subsections to Diablo, Overwatch, etc. just gives off a feeling of insecurity, like you know nobody will click your non-WoW related content. And so, stuff like this happens:

Of the last ten articles, five are related to Diablo 4. Towards the end of July, it was not usual to see all ten of the recent articles as Diablo news. Expect it to only get worse with Warcraft Rumble soon, as well.

Not too big of a deal, right? Just filter it, bookmark instead, and the problem is solved, yeah? Not really, because there is no way to filter content in webhooks or RSS feeds. Every single Diablo, Warcraft Rumble, or Overwatch article is going to give you a ping on your phone or Discord as soon as they come out. Because of this, I have yet to have ever met someone who does not just instantly mute their Discord channel’s Wowhead channel.

____________________ Nepotism and Content Farming ____________________

The third offense in the trifectum of main issues with Wowhead right now, in my opinion, is the lazy recycling of community content, and the pick-and-choose nature of who they offer to feature.

You’ll see a lot of creators on there was comparitively smaller sizes than many, many more WoW content creators because the staff of Wowhead, and typically Neryssa herself, are just personal friends with them.

Taliesin & Evitel get near-weekly articles that do nothing but embed their video and summarize the topics. Rextroy gets an article every single time he releases a video, and for some reason, nobody discloses how the author of his articles is a moderator in his chat.

How many times have you gotten a ping in Discord alerting you to a new Nobbel87 video despite not being subbed, or seen a Reddit post show up with its own article three days after it was posted? Despite constant complaints about this for years to the point where they often times just lock comments as soon as people start to call them out, they have refused to make a community content filter.

____________________ Conclusion ____________________

Maybe I’m just getting old, but the constant need to be advertised to, and artificial astroturfing of brand appeal through constant exposure if just becoming grating. I want, and respect, my privacy and free time, and hate that we are practically dependent on essentially one database that buys out all of its competetors, and then goes out of its way to give you the most frustrating, curatingly profitable experience possible.