The first comment on this blog post mentions a 'downward slope' - I'm in complete agreement with that sentiment. I really love many of the new features you've introduced over the last couple of years, including the profiler and stat weighting/comparing system, but it seems to me that if you're having to keep finding increasingly desperate means to finance what you do, you're either doing too much and thus are spending resources on the wrong things, or you're not doing what you do as well as your 'competition'.Take the blog - what began as a light-hearted and informative channel to engage with your users has steadily become what I'm sure you hope is a direct challenger to MMO Champion. Do you really need to be such a thing? Does throwing resources at datamining, rendering model videos and ever more (admittedly) impressive comparions between one patch and another really bring a bigger audience to the site, and thus extra revenue? If it doesn't then why do you do it?Despite a recent spat I still love Wowhead. I come here several times a day, I vote on comments, post my own, read and sometimes post in the forums, etc. You've always done one thing really well, and with a lot of style - you take data provided to you by your users and you present it back to them in as useful a way as possible. No-one has ever done it better.I always thought that Wowhead's "raison d'etre" was to be a database site for all things World of Warcraft. The further and faster you move away from this, even if being a database remains a big part of what you do, I fear for Wowhead's future because someone else will eventually seek to provide what the vast majority of your users want - an uncluttered database with a comments system attached.I joined Premium because I don't begrudge paying for a service I get a lot of use out of, I'd probably pay 3-4 times as much to be honest, and wouldn't dream of using an ad blocker (leeching), but the evidence is that you're struggling to secure the revenue you need to justify everything you do. I sincerely hope that you take a step back and re-evaluate what your users want and need the most, than risk losing the very users that make Wowhead what it is.In short, if providing feature x means you risk alienating some of your users, is it really worth introducing?
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Echoing the negative feedback.I come here for fast information presented in a helpful and efficient way. Looking past the aesthetic, size, and highlighting nightmares , it still causes my pages to begin to lagg like crazy.Blocked for now; it would be nice if you guys did a trial, maybe put some pictures up so we can see what it looks like and give feedback before it gets implemented, or actually post the blog thing a reasonable amount of time before the feature goes up.
Unfortunately I'd have to block it when it comes back (temporarily disabled). Having to use a slow connection (384kbps) and having an internet usage "CAP", even just browsing WoWHead while playing WoW get's me DC'ed. Where ever I can save bandwidth, I have to...
Agh, this is one of those bars that sticks to the bottom of your browser window like a leech and bugs the heck out of me, right?Please no. I really don't care if it connects to Facebook or has links to all of the most used pages. It's obtrusive and catches your eye too much. And as an echo of other feedback, I'm not a fan of third parties running java on my computer either. Whether it does run an ad "unobtrusively", it's probably more obtrusive than just putting a banner ad on the bottom of the page or a skyscraper on the side. as you cannot get away from it. Even the pop-up-on-the-bottom-of-your-screen ads can be canceled, while this one always takes up some of your screen.Plus. It's white. Wowhead is grey-black.
Design wise this thing is just plain bad. While the text appears to be roughly the same font as some of the other site features, the colours are completely out of left field. Not even close to what we would expect from something on Wowhead. The "Share Page" button is great... but share it on what? It doesn't say what. There's no Wowhead logo on it to show that it's actually authentic and meant to be there, lets face it, there will be more than a few people who regularly use this web site that don't read the blog, don't know what Zam is and will never in their lives have heard of meebo. And another thing, the little icons on the buttons, like Blue Tracker, they don't match with the standard menu. Overall I think this bar was just a bad idea, a bad design and just wastes people's data useage with things they will never use, have never used and just don't care for.
I was a little confused when I saw the Meebo Bar pop up. I use the Meebo client to stay signed into chat services, and do have my own account. I was very annoyed, believing that Meebo had done an update which proceeded to intrude on my browsing. I checked the front page, no mention of Meebo there. Then I went to Zam.com and found the link for the Meebo article. I'm no less annoyed then when I started.Suffice to say, I'm not a fan of this. The Wowhead team has done a great job with the site, and I understand the need to generate revenue, but I don't need a toolbar to access functions that are already easily accessible at the top of the page to start with. It's kinda why you have the menus (less intrusively) built into every page, isn't it? Easy access without being in the way? What, exactly, are we gaining here? Extra ad space and a quick button to social networking sites? Who cares, honestly? Whenever we want to link something to someone else, it's generally in the game. And there's a scripted link button on the page already. Not in the game? Post the URL in Vent or the IM client you're already running. To me, it's easier to grab a URL from the address bar than to navigate the Meebo Bar, especially when running NoScript (extra steps beyond that to allow an exception for the extra step required by the extra step...).The Meebo Bar clashes with the general design of the site. This white bar stands in stark contrast to the dark theme adopted by the site.You say that your goal is to have an unobtrusive feature. This isn't it. It may not make noise, bounce, or flash by default. But it doesn't have to. It stands out like a sore thumb, and has a 'sound' button that presumably enables sound.I like Meebo. I like Wowhead. I'll link stuff from Wowhead through Meebo on my own. It takes all of 2 seconds without the bar.Now, where's the option to "LOL FU I ADBLOCKED"?-Edit-Found the Adblock option. Right click the bar (you may have to allow NoScript to process the right-click, as it sometimes registers a hijacking attempt), then AdBlock the frame using this filter: cim.meebo.com^Make sure to disable the checkbox at the bottom of the AdBlock window to only look at the beginning of the URL.
I really, really don't get the fascination with social networking... Seeing the picture made me so glad I got premium a while back.However, some comments (judging only from the picture in the blog).1. It must must must match Wowheads colour scheme. I wish other sites did but it just looks horrible not matching plus it's really true that easy on the eyes is a big plus about Wowhead.2. Make which "sharing" buttons available customisable. I installed MSN Messenger the other day, it wanted to connect with every social site/program out there it was ridiculous. I'd hate to see Wowhead go that way.3. Icons/text/menu options (ie profiler) should match Wowhead. Not really sure on the need to have the links at the top and bottom of pages... save breaking mouse wheels perhaps from excessive scrolling?4. Anything interfering with basic PC usage (highlight, copy, paste) is bad and distracting. A program I have to use at work has mapped Ctrl + A to a different function... and this program is about adding notes to cases and sending emails, I go to use select all loads but have to do it with the mouse instead which is really annoying.As a suggestion, make it so that once text is highlight users right click on the text they've highlighted and then it offers to share it. That way it's still easy to share but it doesn't interfere with normal use of the site.5. Some of those icons seem so huge it's silly. Big Icons to my mind look dafter, and they don't need to be that big to get peoples attention.
You turned it back on.Fine. As long as it is on, the adblock exception for wowhead is canceled.
Hmm, what community site was it that decided to make "social media" a big focus, and inserted a big, intrusive ad bar at the bottom of each page that messed up important functionality?Oh yeah, it was Wowwiki. Since deceased. I hope whoever is making decisions like this for Wowhead knows exactly what they're getting themselves into.For the record, I won't be using Adblock to block Meebo because NoScript takes care of it for me. If you really want people like me to see your ads, stop using iframes, javascript, flash, etc. to serve ads and instead serve up ads with plain IMG tags.
I would not mind the bar, save for the color and style not matching Wowhead, even if I had to use it but there is one suggestion that nobody seems to have made yet:The bar should have an option to be vertical and placed on the left side of screen. This way it would not be in the way of anything on widescreen display due to Wowhead limiting the space actually used for content. Atleast on my screen there is 2 cm of black space on both left and right sides. Additionally, it could be even wider if the actual content was aligned to right (if doable, of course.)Other than that, I agree with the highlighting issue being a serious problem as I use it for marking too.Even if worked out to be as useful, 'non-intrusive' and 'non-annoying' as possible, there should still be an option to disable it though if it strains the user's connection too much.
I hate the way it looks. Just that.
I agree with those that said to make a darker skin. I have 2 monitors set up and the one with my browser open is a little further away from my main monitor. That being said with the white background of the bat and grey lettering on the bar i had to strain to read it the first time. I don't mind the advertisements they seem to be non intrusive for the most part. but the social networking aspect of it is a little over rated. I will never use that part of it
My thoughts on it are this. If it is something that is 100% hosted and maintained on your site on your machines, I have (a) no problem with it, and (b) no right to have any problem with it, if I did. However....If it is leaving any trace of itself on my machine in any way...Im prob gonna be upset. Im just not a bog fan of anything that trys to hang around on my machine without my permission.