Vision for the Lurker Lounge: World of Warcraft

[MongoJerry]

I'm just saying that I don't see a reason for the LL community to be spread out across x number of servers. In fact, I think we should be playing the same servers as the AB crowd.

In my role as the new Site Administrator, I have to think in terms of not only what the site and community will be like tomorrow but also what it will be like a year from now. My expectation for a year from now is that the WoW Lurker community will be at least ten times the size it is now. This means that 90% of the people who will be posting at the Lounge a year from now won't have started with our list of servers and therefore the Lurker community will naturally be spread across x number of servers. Such is the nature of the beast.

What's more, the Lurker Lounge is not a guild (You'll hear me repeat that ad nauseam), and we welcome players from all guilds to join us and encourage players here to join guilds of their choosing, including the Amazon Basin. Lurkers of different guilds will naturally end up playing on different servers from one another. Again, such is the nature of the beast.

Finally, the Amazon Basin is limiting the choices to Horde PvP and Alliance PvE styles of play on two specific servers, a necessary step since the AB's desire is to have a large concentration of AB players on their servers. However, this choice goes against the Lurker Lounge philosophy of encouraging discussion of all aspects of a game. Some people here will want to play Alliance PvP and Horde PvE. Some will want to role play, something none of us had any experience with in the beta. Limiting our server choices will limit the experiences that the Lurker community brings to the forums here, and that goes against the general philosophy of the Lurker Lounge.

I gave this matter a great deal of thought over the last several months. One of the biggest questions I posed to myself when deciding whether to take the Site Administrator job or not was, "What is our niche?" What justifies the Lurker Lounge's existence versus the sea of other fan sites? And, since I know about the large population of crossovers (including myself), what's the difference between the Lurker Lounge and the Amazon Basin? The answer comes quite clearly from the top of the Lurker Lounge About page and at the top of the Amazon Basin front page.

Lurker Lounge: Getting the most from your favorite games. This is the goal of the Lurker Lounge. A site dedicated to die-hard gaming, studying a game down to every tiniest detail. Statistics, game mechanics, and in-depth strategies are what make news here.

Amazon Basin: A Community of Friends Playing Games

The difference between the two sites can also be shown in how they started. The Lurker Lounge started with "Bolty's Diablo Strategy Central" that hosted the strategy guides of Jarulf and others. The Amazon Basin started with the formation of an amazon-only guild for Diablo II. The Lurker Lounge's emphasis has always been discussion of strategy and game mechanics, while the Amazon Basin's emphasis has always been the guild and playing together in game.

If we don't play together, how can we be a community?

I chuckled when you said that, because that's a very "Amazon Basin" thing to say. The answer, of course, is that we form our community right here in the forums through our lively debates and discussions of all aspects of the game.

In the end, the Amazon Basin's emphasis has always been creating a guild experience that doesn't suck. The Basin is a better alternative to sites like LoD, Fires of Heaven, and DiE. On the other hand, the Lurker Lounge's emphasis has always been the discussion of strategy and gameplay mechanics on forums that don't suck. In a way, the Lurker Lounge is a better alternative to sites like the official Blizzard forums and worldofwar.net.

Over time, I've felt the drift of the Lounge toward being more like the Amazon Basin, and at first, I thought along those lines while thinking of what I thought the Lurker Lounge should look like. But every time I thought that way, I had a gnawing sensation in my gut that this was the wrong way to go. There's no need to duplicate the efforts of the Amazon Basin, since the Basin has that niche well covered. The niche that isn't well covered, however, is a general strategy site with intelligent and civil discussion. That's the niche that the Lurker Lounge filled for Diablo and Diablo II, and I feel that it can fill that niche for the World of Warcraft as well.

I hope that this gives you a better idea of what I'm envisioning for the future of the site. I'm finding that as I shift to the role of Site Administrator that I'm having to step back and take a larger and longer term view of things. As for your worries about playing together tomorrow at release, Cathan at the Amazon Basin has already said that they plan to post the AB server list both at the Basin and at the Lounge at 11am tomorrow, so people here who want to play with the Basin crowd will know then where to go. As for everyone else who might want to play a different style of game, play in a different time zone, or play with friends or guildmates they know, we'll keep some lists of where people are at and see if we can consolidate the community somehow so that we here in the old guard can play together as much as possible.