Awful new lookFollow

Why fix what wasn't broken when it alienates near everyone who has been using this site for years?

It might not be Nizdaar's place to comment on it, but it looks worse now that an admin has posted multiple times while ignoring the actual subject of the thread.

Even Walmart, the big store (we say so kind of store), was humbled when they tried to tell the masses they didn't want what they wanted, and their customers started shopping less or went to other places, to find the items that was streamlined out and announced they was undoing that streamlining somewhat...

for me, this just encourages me to want to utilize the new system LESS... like that old Splenda sweetener commercial, (the one that showed two lovers in a coffee shop after hours and the proprietor got sneaky to drive them out... they pretended to run out of splenda, and offered sweet 'n low... and the two LEFT the shop very promptly after being disgusted with what was offered instead...) changes even that small can make masses upset, but they can also drive people away... just have to find other webpages that offer content to make up for what's being left when they do... which there are other pages... just not as many are as well established and filled as this one... but it's WE the people that filled this one, we can always work on another...

and just as it DOES show they're reading... things I found i didn't like on "Allakhazam's Everquest page" current revision (not the ugly "ZAM" name that it has now it will be a very cold day when i give in to "ZAM" or maybe when i do decide not to return... then it'd be credit where it's due...)

• Drop down menus...
• not having everything you wanted in an easy to find section ONE click away from the home page (sure it was a lot of links in one spot... but they was all visible sections from the get go... not all piled into one subcatagory under another subcatagory)
• Not having squeezed content for the sake of a "SKIN" for each game, when the old Allakhazam header was really all that was needed, as most people KNOW what's there... no glitter was required... now it looks from unique to a corporate "ZAM" look
• this PHP-Nuke or other cookiecutter with a CSS lift page style is nice for smaller pages... but after years of the old page, it was like going home to a homepage... but now that home was hit by a tornado and left looking as good as a pink flamingo being left behind after the home was ripped apart...
• the drop down menu doesn't really even have any style to it... more like it was just quickly added to sort it all in... it doesn't look like it's a menu... no buttons look to it, no drop down or folder look either... just square blocks of color with a word in each and a single ARROW on the 2nd tier, but not the main... a plain look...
• There used to be a small section on the main page with database statistics... number of NPC's, quests, zones, items, ect... THAT was always a fun trivia to look at... now to find if it's still there...
• Allakhazam Everquest's new look REALLY helps people see that some of the information is dated... the AA list... the veteran rewards are up to 12? and the list here has eight of them... as a good example and then the names are links to the forums on them... not with a lucy's entries for the spell ones... so to REALLY find out about the spell ones we have to copy the name and then go back to spells and cut and paste search (which is what we used to do, but we didn't have to find out that the AA page didn't have any links like that, as it used to be way down the side list)
• screenshot of the day and trivia of the day and a recent poll used to be AT THE TOP of the page... right under "allakhazam" where people would log in and see a nice picture upon getting on the page... now to see the screenshot, you have to go to a widget down under some stuff... (I have no interest in the Zam Promotions widget... shame we don't have a way for subscribers to turn off what widgets we don't want to see if we're stuck with this (ahem) 'new format'... Trivia of the day used to be question at the top of the page, and answer at the bottom (to encourage people to see the whole page)... now it's under the screenshot on the right side with the answer right underneath the question...
• I've no interest in the network news widget, not interested in the former webpage style links at the bottom of the page... don't want the individual sites list (THAT would have been a good one to put on a drop menu!)... don't want the Community links in an individual link list (Another good set for a drop menu list!)...

i don't know... it gives me the same feeling like microsoft IE 8.0 did when they released it... which is why I'm still running 7.0... I always loved the content of Allakhazam... but the new webpage interface makes me not want to support it... it wasn't broken... but a lot of extra work, true... but it's that uniqueness that gave the page it's charm... not the 'plain brown wrapper with a CSS touch and then some glued on rhinestones for BAM!' that the new setup has..



Edited, Apr 26th 2010 6:53pm by gannen

I'd actually like that, lol. That way I know it's not the admins making us suffer, and that it's just the higher-ups who we all already hate. I mean, is preserving the old skin and the ability to use it really that much to ask for? This design might be fine for 1280x800 and lower resolutions, but it's horrid when you go above that. Not to mention that how everything is managed up top now is ********* There's no url I can type so that when I start up firefox it goes to the ffxi skin homepage with forums already displayed. In order to go get information about a game I have to change my section to database, and then change it back to forums to get to forums.

And this is when I'm not even playing ffxi anymore.. I can't imagine how annoying it's going to be to use the ffxiv skin when I'm actually playing the game. Is there a reason why easy ffxiv board access has been removed from the ffxi skin? To view it from here now I apparently need to highlight forum=## and change it to game=##. The ffxiv color scheme is a bit to harsh on the eyes imo.

An actual question that the admins can probably answer though.. is there a reason why the ffxiv forum is game=## instead of forum=##? It's different from every other forum I've been to on this site and I don't understand why.