Changes Coming Soon to WoW.AKZ/ZAMFollow

Good morning folks! I hope everyone is doing well after the Thanksgiving smorgasbord/WoW marathon and everything is prepped for Cataclysm this next week. Can't wait to roll up my Worgen to eat some Orc face.

In any case, I'm sure a lot of you have noticed that some of our database content is getting out of date and that the site hasn't had it's normal "refresh" with each patch coming down the pipe and the shattering of Azeroth. After discussing it internally for most of this year, we decided that some changes needed to be made in terms of how we go about updating our data for World of Warcraft.

Right now, ZAM owns Thottbot, Wowhead, and WoW.AKZ, three sites that have done arguably the same thing (in terms of databasing) for years. While this strategy worked for awhile and people really enjoyed having three different places to find information, eventually we discovered that more and more people were using Wowhead as their primary WoW database source. Rather than continue to double up our work (at least on the ZAM side) we've opted to go ahead and shift the focus of our WoW AKZ site away from the database, implement Wowhead tools into the AKZ system, but spend our time improving the forum and user experience on ZAM (which helps out all of our ZAM sites) rather than trying to "compete" with one of our own sites. In short, we're going to be keeping (and improving) everything on WoW.AKZ except the database and the systems that it tied into.

However, we're going to try to make this transition as easy for you as possible and really try to highlight all of the things on Wowhead that are comparable with what you've come to expect on ZAM. One example of this is a sig generator that the Wowhead team has been working on specifically for this kind of transitional period. When the change does happen, I'll try to provide you with a substantial guide to all the new toys that you'll be able to use on Wowhead that will translate over to these forums.

And, just so it's clear, WoW.AKZ/ZAM is not going away, especially those areas that the community has spent so long working - namely the forums and user created content. I'm open to any questions, so feel free to toss them my way. This will be a pretty significant change, so I don't expect all unicorns and rainbows, but I do think that they're a positive change and that hopefully, with more time to devote on the user experience, we can attract more users and really push this WoW community as a positive place to be outside of the official forums.

Edited, Nov 30th 2010 9:00am by Micajah

Edited, Nov 30th 2010 9:01am by Micajah

That's good, because we'd end up all LFGComic worm dwelling goblin war or something.

But seriously, I'm all for dropping the Zam section's database. Wowhead's has pretty much been my go to for searching for quite some time, but Zam has always been my favorite place for forums, so a greater focus on that is also cool.

That's my leg now!



Agreed.



I'm not a real regular here, so I must have missed the introduction. Who is this guy? I remember him as the fellow who announced the well planned and effective Cataclysm contest and am not filled with confidence by that memory. I probably missed the good stuff, but ... nope, still not filled with confidence after that intro. Then again, I'm willing to listen to explanations too.

Fixed.

You're welcome. Luckily the forums really shouldn't pay any sort of price with the change. Except for the database and its tied in content, everything should stay the same. Forums will be getting attention hopefully before the end of the year (for improvements), but we'll see how things roll out in regards to scheduling over the next few months.

I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier. It's not only duplicating efforts, it's confusing the identity of any one site to have overlap with another. If I were TPTB I would clearly define WoWhead as the information source and Alla as the community, full stop; fully separate those two functions by removing from each site anything that falls within the scope of the other, with one premium for both and lots of cross linkage to integrate it for the users.

I'm not sure about Thotbot's place in the mix. Maybe you could buy Petopia instead. ;)

Looking forward to seeing this roll out.

Do you have any idea of how this is going to work? Is the database going to look the same yet link to wowhead or something? I know I've been talking to Xsarus about the database for awhile now. I'm assuming this won't affect the wiki, not that I have put too terribly much time into yet, but I had always been kind of waiting for an update to the database to link spells and what not so Xsarus told me yesterday to go ahead and just link wowhead in there.

I want mouse over item links.

Right meow.

Ugh, can this arc just end? Please?

On topic, this is a change I welcome and support wholeheartedly. It'll be good to not see sites competing for the same thing.

What Joph said.

+1 to Anobix said about Maz.

I find those graphical signatures to be quite annoying, and I hope that they never become common here.

Is that like when you're forced to listen to music that's so awful that you gouge out your eyes, which seems pointless because it's your ears that hear the music, but the music just drives you beyond all reason?









I'm referring to country music, of course.