Has BoLS 'Jumped the Shark'?

[pgmason]

I definitely fele there has been a reduction in quality of the content overall over the last few months. It seems that despite having 5 times as many articles, the ones worth reading are fewer and further between.

I started to come to BoLS regularly for the campaign and mini-dex content - something which seems to have dried up completely now. I have no interest in battle reports, power gaming netlists or anything like that. In fact, I often go 2 or 3 days without finding sometihng worth reading.

I play 40k and WM/H so its nice to see content for the latter, and surprisingly its often better than the 40k content these days.

[Herald of Nurgle]

(First of all - it should be obvious which option I went for. Like, a derp-de-derp. I can't disagree with my uncle thrice removed)

The problem with BoLS is twofold. There's less to talk about without angering the old bloods (i.e. myself) who remember articles for a LONG time or the newbies who will leave the site (and migrate to the south with Purgatus and ZombYs) because the articles aren't to their taste.

BoLS IS an ad driven site - thats what pays for the lounge and multiple domain names, and what makes up for some of the loss of BoLScon (you DARE force me to call it that s*itty WarGamesCon and I WILL choke you) and other coverage (i.e. Adepticon, some of GW's s*itty practices). But the Ads - aside from stuff like the Pamela Anderson crap which was being flung around for a time - aren't the problem.

Likewise, BoLS is now a nouveau-poole site. The old guard (Bigred, Good Mkerr, Aventine, and others) don't post as much anymore, thats for sure. But BoLS hasn't lost a bunch of the good writers either - Goatboy, (often) Brass Scorpion, Just Me, and... erm... Brent!

Ah. Wait, I just noticed who I left out.

The problem with BoLS is you let some dick stick their dick into your perfectly good pudding! You let in Darkwynn (and the Leafblower - destroying ur hobbi since 2009). You allowed TastyTaste, Not Brent, Evil Mkerr (aka: Post-Chainfist), and Spacecurves in. You allowed for the Competitive side of things to suddenly outweigh the good old fashioned balanced hobby stuff. You can talk about how, back at the start, the blog would've gone nowhere if Bigred had kept to his Death Guard stuff but, man oh man, the Death Guard stuff is/was why i'm in the hobby. Your Death Guard are the only reason why I started Chaos Space Marines, man. I loved them. I'm happy to go through 20 pages of bulls**t on stuff like powergaming Blood Angels, Wolves, Guard, SM, and others if it means that you touch on some awesome Brass Scorpion project or Death Guard peek. But not everyone will do that.

On top of all that, you turned away from your Minidexes, despite your unique style, choice of stuff which hasn't been touched on by GW, and, well, the quality of your works! You can say 'uhhhh... Gee-Dubya stole our rights' or 'Ay Pee D00d' but man, why the f*ck does it matter?

You talk about the Fly Lords of Terra blog as being up and running still, but hahahah... no. You can say that, but you stopped any work on that after Week 3 of Macharian Crusade, I believe. You missed an opportunity there, man. If you had simply split all of that campaign stuff over to there, no-one would be complaining and you'd still satisfy your main userbase. As it is, you've just made it stagnant. Well done.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.

[sukigod]

... allowed for the Competitive side of things to suddenly outweigh the good old fashioned balanced hobby stuff.

In a nutshell right here.

[Melissia]

I don't really care about the hobby aspects to begin with most of the time. Painting is the most boring, obnoxious part of hte hobby and that's usually what they're concerned with.

Why not an article on conversions?

[sukigod]

I don't really care about the hobby aspects to begin with most of the time. Painting is the most boring, obnoxious part of hte hobby and that's usually what they're concerned with.

Why not an article on conversions?

Why not? Good question. I would count this as part of the "hobby" hobby aspect of the game.

I would agree with the idea that the majority of the articles are competitive meta-gaming over hobby oriented content. Is it bad? Who knows (besides Bigred ), as it seems they get the numbers (viewers, clicks, etc. ) to justify the advertising. I understand the vicious circle this is and I don't fault that either. All this does is mean I breeze through more of the post titles without clicking on them to read the entire post. That's just me and apparently I'm not in the majority. Oh well, I'll live with it an adjust my viewing habits accordingly.

All in all it means I spend less time here than I used to. If they deem my interests in the "hobby" side as more fitting for content, I'll spend more time here. It's how it works.

I completely agree with Bigred about the differences in time it takes to create "hobby" oriented posts over tactical. Tutorials and the like are much more time intensive. I've written a number of online tutorials and know how much more effort goes into these. Kudos to all those who do!

[fuzzbuket]

im going to say bigred should ask and then lift some of the hobby stuff from the lounge so it could bask in glourious front page limelight

[Bigred]

I normally try to respect people's privacy regarding the Lounge, so I am a bit uncomfortable with just yanking great looking stuff and using it on the frontpage.

But if anyone volunteers, thats a different story and anyone can PM me - so please do. One of the primary reasons we created the Lounge was to give the hobbyists a place where they can endulge in lengthy thread based projects and conversations that are difficult to have on the frontpage.

Also believe me when I say that I read all the feedback from this thread. I don't want to get too much into it for a myriad of reason, but let me just put out there, regarding some of the differences between the bols of today and the bols of 3 years ago that there is a world of difference in what an individual is often allowed to create versus a much larger website...if ya get my drift...

[Herald of Nurgle]

I normally try to respect people's privacy regarding the Lounge, so I am a bit uncomfortable with just yanking great looking stuff and using it on the frontpage.

But if anyone volunteers, thats a different story and anyone can PM me - so please do. One of the primary reasons we created the Lounge was to give the hobbyists a place where they can endulge in lengthy thread based projects and conversations that are difficult to have on the frontpage.

Also believe me when I say that I read all the feedback from this thread. I don't want to get too much into it for a myriad of reason, but let me just put out there, regarding some of the differences between the bols of today and the bols of 3 years ago that there is a world of difference in what an individual is often allowed to create versus a much larger website...if ya get my drift...

Hmm... So what you're saying is that if we were able to somehow 'reduce' the size of the site - say, through culling unnecessary writers, for instance - we could have our DECENT BoLS back, rather than your, say, more shallow and samey crap which goes on these days?

Get the harpoons.

[Bigred]

Not exactly...

Lets just say that all the big sites above a certain size feel the gaze of Magnus upon them now and again, and the rules of the game are irrevocably changed by it.

[Mal]

If it helps bigred, once I get my chaos army back I can do a lounge topic about how to paint a deathguard army in a day and you can throw that up as a blog entry if you like (I need to wait for the army as I didn't take any pics before lending it out, and im probally going to want to touch up any ware and tear from usage). As a nice center piece of the army, im using slightly converted RT dreadnoughts (1987) as oblits.