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.