It’s a sad thing, but with the current unresolved status of the EN World servers, I think the future is going to be really, really rocky for the venerable D&D site. It’s rather odd timing that just at the time EN World has become virtually unusable, RPG Geek has finally turned on. I’m a big fan of boardgamegeek.com, and RPG Geek has a lot of things going for it. It’ll probably confuse people who are used to "traditional" boards such as EN World and rpg.net, but the potential utility of the site is brilliant.
However, EN World has a problem. It’s not because of the current slow-down; that’s a symptom of the problem. It’s that it no longer has a technician looking after it. With Michael Morris having moved on to other things, and having not been replaced, there are issues. Morrus is a great guy, but you need a dedicated web server technician to keep sites like EN World running.
When you add to that the redesign of the review system (which has made it nearly useless from my point of view) and the split in the population due to 4e, you have problems. I saw Maxminis go through similar problems (in its case, the owner was absent and the web technician was getting rightfully really annoyed.) It never recovered.
Can EN World survive this? I think so. Morris and EN World have a great deal of good will stored up. However, given EN World has already spent so much time in trouble already, that good will is eroding and can’t last forever. People will find another place to talk about D&D.
In other news, I have a new home computer. Ok, a laptop. Hooray! More on that soon.
Some corrections- I believe Spoony and Michael Morris are one in the same. And when referencing the owner of ENWorld, it’s Morrus.
It’s current state is pretty sad. I get my 4E fill over at RPG.net. There’s some pretty cool people over there, although right now there’s a plague of “4E is more combat centric than other editions/4E is less about RP than other editions/Magic is so nerfed in 4E” arguments going around. Bleh.
I’ve been meaning to check out RPG Geek. Once I got the hang of Boardgame Geek, I got to like the place, even if boardgames have taken a backseat to D&D these days. Coincidentally, I saw the announcement for RPG Geek on ENWorld.
Congrats on the laptop. I find it easiest to run my characters straight from the CB on my laptop, and when running my homebrew, I pull up stats right from the compendium. Very handy.
It’s Morrus = Russell Morrissey (owner of EN World) that causes me great confusion. 🙂
First: Go you and your laptop! 🙂
I used to be primarilly an ENWorld guy who browsed RPG.Net in lean times – for a D&D 3.X player, there was only so many [Exalted +] threads I could stomach – but now I’m pretty much the other way around. I still visit ENWorld once every week or so, and tellingly I only knew it wasn’t working right becuse of an RPG.Net thread talking about it a couple of days ago.
The technical issues certainly do kill using the board properly – I tried to read two threads yesterday and it was pretty painful. As you say, a board that big (especially one which is basically the top D&D location online, if not one of the top RPG locations) really needs a dedicated tech man and it’s obvious whatever they’re doing now isn’t tenable. People will kick about for a bit but when they get out of a daily habit it’s a nasty cycle – you need to find a way to pull them back, and that gets harder with every day you’re effectively useless to them.
Of course, my problems with ENWorld aren’t really to do with the technical woes – it was more that the 3E/4E edition wars made the place wholly useless to me for quite some time. Then, when I stuck with 3E and the DDI went pay-only there suddenly wasn’t a huge amount of common ground for me to talk about – I’m still buying lots of 4E books but I’m not playing them or reading them that intently, so I can’t really get much out of the discussion there. Even if I did, quite a few regular posters either left during the edition wars (or similar stuff, like the Dungeon/Dragon cancellation fallout) or took an attitude change I didn’t much appreciate.
Hmm, now I think about it even though my game of choice hasn’t changed I’m mostly reading RPG.Net threads about more general RPG stuff than specifically D&D, of any stripe. I wonder if that ties in to me playing more different games recently with my Monday night RPG group?
George Q
Hm. Perhaps the time is right for me to start my message board back up…:-)
I’ve faded off of ENW for a while; I don’t play 4e; I haven’t played 3e for a while; and I’m concentrating on S&W right now – and the boards there are faster, smaller, and (usually) more game-oriented. I’ve been around ENW long enough to feel comfortable in it, but it’s certainly not the same and the server issues don’t help.
I’d like to see Morrus pull the tent in a ways, stop trying to be all things to all people. I don’t know what else is stored on the site or taking up room, but…get rid of it. Even the reviews (or build a review forum, rather than its own entity).