Has BoLS 'Jumped the Shark'?

[Denzark]

A few days ago, in yet another post on the main blog about gamer hygiene, somebody expressed the opinion that 'this was when BoLS' jumped the shark'. So I pops onto urbandictionary.com, and it tells me this is a reference to The Fonz from Happy Days literally jumped a shark, and it was seen as the point from which the series went bad, and has since been adopted as an expression of when something starts to degrade. (I always thought Happy Days was the worst sort of mawkish schmalzy caca anyway, but I digress).

This has got me thinking - has BoLS started to go down hill?

Personally I arrived at BoLS looking for rules for big b*stard sized warmachines, having had a proclivity for purchasing old Armorcast titans. The rules were excellent, and balanced. The play aids were awesome, hugley well put together, particularly the campaigns. It seemed every 5 minutes we would have new transfers for obscure chapters or craftworlds. OK, Goatboy surely did for list spam what Dr Alan Comfort did for the sex lives of our parents in the 80s, but hey, he was a world class painter.

Fast forward a few months or so. Can't think of the last campaign, or new rules. Or transfers. The standard of posts on the main blog is under scrutiny - I don't think it would be unfair to say 1 in 2 has complaints about editing or lack thereof. And I only read 40K posts! Other issues beyond editorial, is some 'guest' posters seeming to take an entire post, to posit a 1-liner opinion or theory - why use 10 words when 500 will do?

Whilst I don't think either the main pages have descended into the immaturity of some of the other forums (and all their problems therein), I think there is danger of the butter being spread a bit too thin - a la Afghanistan 'mission creep'.

I put this down to 2 things. Firstly other game systems, and the amount of coverage of them. Bell of Lost Souls is clearly a 40K reference - the site was never called 'Honest Joe's Used Warjacks' or 'Sigmar's hairy teste sack'. Diversity is great, but you run the risk of being a jack of all trades and a chapter master of none.

Secondly, trying to keep up with news and rumours. GW seems to now keep us hooked with new plastic crack, similar to how I imagine a gang of human traffickers keeps its sex slaves in line with heroin. Trickled rumours, glimpses in the backs of rule book photos or 'leaks' from Nottingham, all get discussed, extrapolated, mulled over and ruminated on in the most excrutiating detail on BoLS. And the tempo of operations is set to 'maxi-grimdark warfare paced.'

Whilst contemplating repeatedly the mysterious individual known as Meta Game. Who is he, what does he look like, why is he carrying the sword of Lion El'Jonson, and how can he eat that many Krispy Kreme goodies in one sitting? Even M. le Goat of Goat Hall has seemingly become a voice of reason.

I stick this in the 40K lounge because, as a recent poster stated, BoLS is one of the biggest influences on the 40K community and merits, I feel, discussion in '40K general'. Should a Mod disagree please feel free to move.

Btw this isn't a slag session, I appreciate the work goes into this site on our collective behalfs and am hughely thankful for what I have already taken out of it - but if you can only polish a turd so much I would be interested to see if others have thoughts along this line.

[BuFFo]

BoLs jumped the shark when they got Goatboy.

Week after week of power list after boring Warseer inspired power lists by Goatboy is what did it.

Then everyone just started to make power lists. Then go to tournaments with said power lists, and BoLs became this clone of every other forum, with an obsession behind WINNING and not having fun.

Soon BoLs was about boring battle reports between the same 4 armies, the same authors repeating the same boring spam lists with no imagination, and a complete lack of any house rules anymore.

It was inevitable, though. They wanted higher readership, and this was the way to go. Face it, people online don't care about the old BoLs style of hobby centric articles. They want to know how to win, not have fun, and BoLs just changed with the times.

Am I being harsh? nah, not really. I just use the internets for hobby centric articles, such as painting, how to make terrain, etc... So in the end, I don't really care what BoLs does, as it is their business. If they want to make few bucks off of ad revenue, more power to them.

[Melissia]

Do people really want "fun" lists? I posted some of my Ork lists intended for fun with a bit of competitiveness in them just to keep up the fun (because presenting absolutely no opposition to enemy lists isn't fun to me), and a lot of people just *****ed and moaned instead. Do people really want house rules? Every time they're posted people ***** and moan about those. Do people really want painting sections? Very few people actually respond to those compared to the "power list" posts.

There's no shark. There's just BoLS trying to provide what its readers appear to want.

[fuzzbuket]

if its what readers want? i sy we find everyone who complains about new codexes they havent seen and those who make up army lists with vauge rumors and stick them on the black ships ! *evil laughter*

ye its gone down hill but the loung is still okay


and lets face it


were not as bad as dakka (:P yay for speaking in full english/engrish ^_^ not silly acronyms about toilet roll titans :P).


final words:

its not as big as warseer and less silly 7yr olds than dakka its the B-O-L-S ^__^

[Denzark]

Do people really want "fun" lists? I posted some of my Ork lists intended for fun with a bit of competitiveness in them just to keep up the fun (because presenting absolutely no opposition to enemy lists isn't fun to me), and a lot of people just *****ed and moaned instead. Do people really want house rules? Every time they're posted people ***** and moan about those. Do people really want painting sections? Very few people actually respond to those compared to the "power list" posts.

There's no shark. There's just BoLS trying to provide what its readers appear to want.

This analysis is a bit shallow - no disrespect. The old campaigns, Genstealer cults etc, had comments about who had playtested them - it had the feeling of group consensus the 'House rules' were fair. As against to single source uncorroborated house rule design - by an individual if you like, rather than 'corporately' issued by BoLS.

Obviously a painting article will raise less comment than a power-gaming idea (haha theslingshot etc) as its less contentious.

As to BoLS trying to provide what its readers want, the single most common comment as to this is increased editing to rub out poor spelling, shoddy English and posts that could be expressed in one line.

So I'm not quite sure they're just 'going with the flow.'

[Melissia]

Maybe my lazy interpretation of events is shallow.

But then so are vastly overwhelming number of blog posters.

[Denzark]

true, true - clearly if you are using teh interwebz the need for manners, decorum, socially responsible and humble comments, is oot the windee (as they say in the land of the porridge noshers.)

[Pendragon38]

I think you guys & gals left out that it may have rubbed someone the wrong way and they got there MAN-GINAE hurt so they started to whine to BOLS

[BuFFo]

I only stopped writing Dark Eldar articles because the new book was coming out, so I didn't know what was going to change. And I didn't want to jump the shark on the Dark Eldar, much like all these Hellion lists are attempting to do.

I still won't write any articles on the Dark Eldar until I have played a bunch of games FIRST. That's because I care about the quality of my words, my thoughts and my articles. It would be a disservice to the readers to write an article about something I don't have experience with yet.

I don't feel the need to see my words in 'print' every other day.

[eldargal]

I have zero interest in competitive lists and tournaments and all that sort of thing and I can't say I have a problem with BolS articles. Though it would be nice to see more hobby articles.