[0:01] We don't often talk specifically about
[0:03] Wowhead or other community sites here.
[0:04] We usually stick to the game. But this
[0:07] time, I think we actually do need to
[0:09] because Wowhead is changing. And you
[0:11] need to know that Wowhead does not own
[0:13] Wowhead. Zam does. Wowhead's site
[0:17] director was just laid off. And much
[0:19] like how fandom being [ __ ] led to
[0:22] Wowedia moving over to wiki.gg,
[0:25] this is in some ways a story of
[0:27] corporate inshitification. It's a wild
[0:29] one. It even has well one of the worst
[0:33] Jeffres there's ever been. Hint, I'm not
[0:35] talking about Jeffrey Dmer. And to set
[0:37] the tone, here is a quote from one of
[0:39] Wowhead's most pivotal team members who
[0:42] was there for a decade and whose work
[0:45] you have absolutely almost certainly
[0:48] used or experienced. The quote is, "Zam
[0:51] has truly broken me." So yeah, this is a
[0:56] serious one. Now, as I'm sure you know,
[0:57] Wowhead's been fairly important to most
[0:59] of us, and for longer than many people
[1:01] have even been playing. If you need
[1:03] something, anything, you can generally
[1:04] trust that Wowhead will have it.
[1:06] Sometimes it's their own content, a
[1:08] guide maybe, that their writing team has
[1:10] put together over the PTR, maybe some
[1:12] data mining gathered and then posted
[1:14] instantly. All the other times, well,
[1:16] could be a user comment in their
[1:18] insanely comprehensive database of
[1:20] quests, abilities, items, everything. I
[1:23] mean, hell, even Blizzard support just
[1:26] links you to Wowhead whenever you're
[1:28] stuck. It's the absolute number one in
[1:31] the scene, the undisputed leader in what
[1:34] it does. And in terms of the utility it
[1:36] provides, it does belong there. Or at
[1:38] least it did. For the last while, people
[1:42] have been questioning if it still
[1:44] deserves its place.
[1:47] One of the most common complaints, and
[1:49] it's been one for years upon years, is
[1:51] the actual site experience. If you don't
[1:53] use an ad blocker, it is an
[1:55] unfortunately miserable time. On mobile,
[1:58] only about half your screen is usable,
[2:00] and that's if you're lucky. Desktop
[2:02] isn't as bad to look at, but it's still
[2:04] bloated with layers upon layers of ads.
[2:06] It can take multiple seconds to load
[2:09] even on our insanely fast in-off
[2:12] connection on a high-end PC where it's a
[2:15] dedicated business connection and it is
[2:17] mostly because of ads. Turn them off and
[2:19] load times go from over 5 seconds down
[2:22] to 0.7. Now, obviously I'm not against
[2:25] Wowhead being monetized. It should be
[2:27] monetized. It provides real value. It's
[2:30] worked on by real people who deserve to
[2:32] have their jobs supported by income.
[2:34] Obviously, as we've all experienced in
[2:36] the internet, it can lead to a pretty
[2:38] bad time for users, and that is a medium
[2:40] to long-term problem. The other
[2:42] complaint, though, especially recently,
[2:44] has been content quality. They've been
[2:47] filling downtime with opinion pieces
[2:49] that some would say feel half-lifted
[2:51] straight from the top few Reddit posts.
[2:54] And there's nothing necessarily wrong
[2:56] with them, but they're often seen as a
[2:58] way to fluff out views. Class guides,
[3:02] often one of their strongest draws, have
[3:04] definitely been lacking as of late.
[3:06] Certain specs of talent builds with next
[3:08] to no explanation of why choices are
[3:11] made. Some are absolutely still
[3:13] top-notch, but it's still kind of random
[3:15] depending on who the rider is. And then
[3:17] of course things that we can't know like
[3:19] the timelines, the conditions, etc. that
[3:23] go into the guide existing. Certain DPS
[3:25] like say Windalker get a ton of guidance
[3:28] on their defensives. They're one of the
[3:30] lucky few, though. The point here is
[3:32] most people would agree that it's
[3:34] getting worse in quality. There are a
[3:37] whole lot of reasons why, and I'll talk
[3:38] about those today. But first, there's
[3:41] that bit of bad news. Because just a few
[3:44] weeks ago, the person largely
[3:46] responsible for its past success was
[3:48] laid off.
[3:50] Perculia, the site director, announced
[3:52] that she was one of the wave of layoffs
[3:55] by Zam. Zambian, wowheads, lord and
[3:58] master, or should I say corporate owner.
[4:01] And looking at the replies, people are a
[4:03] mixture of surprised and heartbroken.
[4:05] And that even includes current and
[4:06] former Blizzard employees thanking her
[4:08] for her work over the years, which is
[4:10] not a surprise. Peculiia's peculiar
[4:13] signate was added into the game way back
[4:15] in Mists of Bandaria as a honor for her
[4:18] contributions. And it's largely accepted
[4:20] that the site is what it is today
[4:22] because of well things that were
[4:24] happening while she was steering the
[4:26] ship. And if we've learned anything as a
[4:27] community lately, it's that you can't
[4:30] run a ship without a captain. WoW had no
[4:32] creative director for a while. And well,
[4:35] it's no coincidence that that was some
[4:37] of the game's darkest hours. WoW is
[4:39] obviously still struggling to find its
[4:41] bearings years later. It shows the sort
[4:43] of damage that a lack of leadership can
[4:46] do. Obviously, she was the captain, but
[4:48] she also had her crew. She had tech
[4:50] people like Steven who were working on
[4:52] data mining and database things, solving
[4:54] problems that nobody else could solve.
[4:56] And plenty of work was done in the
[4:58] community by absolute legends like
[5:00] Marlein of Wow.tools fame. And Wowhead
[5:03] was already a big deal before really any
[5:06] of that. There was really Perk and Hers,
[5:09] that group that turned it into a
[5:11] unbeatable content machine. Their
[5:13] writers and data miners have internal
[5:15] tools that let them post their findings
[5:17] lightning fast. And on the user side,
[5:20] talent calculators and entire databases
[5:22] are updated immediately with every
[5:24] current WoW build available on the
[5:26] Blizzard servers. The Wowhead add-on
[5:28] collects data from thousands of users so
[5:30] that we can track loads of things like
[5:33] drop rates, rare spawn locations. If you
[5:36] ever need anything WoW, Wowhead
[5:38] generally was and is your answer. And as
[5:41] the premier site, they were able to
[5:42] recruit and pay the best guide and class
[5:45] riders, meaning that you needed
[5:47] absolutely nothing else really. They all
[5:49] had drive from Perk to the staff and the
[5:52] financial backing to make it all happen.
[5:54] And that's why I have to talk about who
[5:56] actually pulls the strings.
[6:00] The ZAM network, then it has a
[6:02] complicated history. You see, the first
[6:04] seed of it was an EverQuest site called
[6:07] Alakazam. By 2006, it was ZAM, the
[6:11] subsidiary content network that was
[6:13] owned by a firm called Internet Gaming
[6:15] Entertainment. And boy, it's a story. IG
[6:18] was founded in 2001 by a dot investor
[6:21] named Brock Pierce, who was actually a
[6:24] child actor from the Mighty Ducks. Now,
[6:26] you may not remember MMOs in the early
[6:29] 2000s, but to call it a wild west is
[6:32] almost an understatement. And where
[6:34] there is an unexplored frontier, there's
[6:37] obviously money. IG was at the very
[6:39] forefront of selling virtual items in
[6:41] currency. Pearson Co. spent millions and
[6:44] millions buying up competing sites and
[6:46] yes, even platforms and fan sites like
[6:49] ThoughtBot. There was an obvious logic.
[6:51] Control the sites people use to find
[6:53] items and prices and you kind of control
[6:55] the market. It's vital, Dassa. And it
[6:58] was all done using the money he got from
[7:00] his time at another place called Digital
[7:03] Entertainment Network. Incidentally,
[7:05] Deen was shut down following a heavily
[7:08] suppressed documentary that levied
[7:10] insane allegations against its founder.
[7:13] The 2000s were a wild ride. Anyway, by
[7:17] the time Wowhead was bought, it was
[7:19] 2007, and the purchase was all part of
[7:22] getting cleaned up. You see, in 2006,
[7:25] they brought Steve Bannon in as CEO.
[7:27] Yes, that's Steve Mannon. And this was
[7:29] to court some investments such as from
[7:32] Goldman Sachs. Shortly after though, a
[7:34] lot of chaos went down. Pierce was
[7:36] ousted and IG was no more. They were now
[7:40] Infinity Media and they were out of the
[7:42] gold selling business. Not that everyone
[7:44] believed them at the time, and Wowhead
[7:46] CEO certainly had to do a lot of damage
[7:48] control. Anyhow, Zam nabbed Wowhead for
[7:51] its content for a million dollars. So
[7:54] with that spent, it was time to make
[7:56] some content, get some ad revenue. So
[7:58] here's how it happened. ThoughtBot's
[8:00] database was rebranded and rolled into
[8:03] Wowhead. Perk and loads of other staff
[8:06] were then brought on to get the whole
[8:08] thing rolling and Brock Pierce had long
[8:10] moved on to bigger and better things
[8:13] like helping Epstein. Yes, that one
[8:16] specifically helping him invest in
[8:18] crypto. I suppose it's a a small island
[8:21] in a small world. But returning to the
[8:23] main thread, by 2012, Perk had become
[8:25] Wowhead's content manager and was
[8:27] leading it to major success for Zam.
[8:29] They had spun up a submodel to help pay
[8:30] the bills and started advertising
[8:32] heavily. But by all accounts, they were
[8:34] totally legit, massively popular, and
[8:37] incredibly profitable. Shockingly so, in
[8:39] fact. But then a different controversial
[8:42] figure got involved.
[8:45] In 2012, the overall owner, Infinity,
[8:48] sent Zam Network on a journey to the
[8:51] east. At least in financial terms,
[8:53] Tencent, the Chinese tech and mobile
[8:56] gaming giant, were investing crazy
[8:58] amounts of money into Western gaming,
[9:00] and ZAM was part of their plan. Sadly,
[9:02] the deal is entirely private, so we
[9:05] don't really know the details, but I
[9:07] mean, you can almost guarantee that a
[9:08] lot of money exchanged hands. Back then,
[9:11] though, 10 cent were actually known for
[9:13] being handsoff. If you were profitable,
[9:15] they were happy to let you do your
[9:17] thing. All that they wanted was fingers
[9:19] in the western gaming pie. Of course,
[9:22] they're a big corporation. So, what do
[9:23] they want? They want diversification in
[9:25] their various revenue streams. And a
[9:27] great source of diversification is being
[9:29] active in different regions of the
[9:31] world. So, as far as Wowhead was
[9:33] concerned, nothing truly major changed
[9:36] until that is the year of 2018 when a
[9:39] new name for ZAM appeared. That name was
[9:43] Fan Bite. So Zam was now one company
[9:46] with two brands doing two distinct
[9:48] things. Fanbite was the public-f facing
[9:50] media site covering game news and
[9:52] editorials while Zam was in the
[9:54] background working with game companies
[9:56] directly. Obviously Wowhead was a bit
[9:58] closer to the Fanbite side. Or so we
[10:02] thought because 2022 actually changed
[10:04] that. Now first you've got to understand
[10:06] the money side of things. During co
[10:09] people played a whole lot more video
[10:10] games than usual. Every line shot up and
[10:13] very fast. That drove gaming executives
[10:16] completely insane. Everyone suddenly had
[10:19] a ton of money and explosive market
[10:22] growth. So, it kicked off an
[10:24] unbelievable burst of investment. One
[10:27] that was obviously a bubble and it's a
[10:29] bubble that I think broadly we're kind
[10:32] of still feeling the fallout from today.
[10:34] Now, Tencent found themselves on a giant
[10:36] pile of mobile gaming cash and they
[10:38] wanted to make it useful. So, they went
[10:40] on a shopping spree. And we all know
[10:41] what happens after one of those. You
[10:43] look at your account, you panic, and
[10:45] then um you're you're you're eating
[10:47] delicious ice soup for a while. Tencent
[10:50] kind of did the same. Nothing
[10:51] existential, but you know, postco
[10:54] happened and they needed to tighten
[10:55] their belt. So, in September 2022,
[10:58] Fanbite was completely gutted with
[11:00] almost zero notice. All that remained
[11:03] was search engine friendly guides and
[11:05] loweffort aggregate news. Thankfully,
[11:08] Wowhead survived unscathed. Why? Well,
[11:11] because they're profitable. Fan Bite was
[11:13] basically a failed attempt to get a
[11:15] Wowhead for loads of other games. In
[11:18] fact, one attempt at doing that did
[11:19] survive the purge, and that is their
[11:21] FF14 site, which did keep up with an
[11:24] active database and feature development.
[11:26] But now, it's 4 years after that went
[11:28] down, and the Golden Goose Wowhead has
[11:30] lost Peculiia and other key staff.
[11:34] What changed? Why?
[11:36] Well, in classic YouTube title fashion,
[11:40] what changed was everything.
[11:44] The internet of today is unrecognizable
[11:46] compared to a decade ago. And you
[11:48] probably know what I mean, right? What
[11:51] used to be laughed at for being, I don't
[11:53] know, Buzzfeed, clickbait, trash is
[11:55] basically just now the entire written
[11:57] internet. Top 10 lists, vapid culture
[11:59] war pieces, you you name it, right?
[12:02] Cheap, easy stuff. Traditional gaming
[12:04] media has been beaten and battered more
[12:06] times than we can really keep track of.
[12:09] For years now, the corporate owners like
[12:12] Future, Ze Davis, and Valnet have been
[12:15] constantly in the news for buying media
[12:17] brands and then almost instantly laying
[12:20] off key figures for a very short-term
[12:23] gain. You ever wonder why it feels the
[12:27] quality of work has went down? Do you
[12:29] ever wonder why it feels everything is
[12:31] SEO optimized guides and that sort of
[12:33] thing? Well, this is basically the
[12:36] reason. Now, this year there have been
[12:38] more layoffs across just about every
[12:40] major firm in the space. And it's all
[12:43] with a fairly clear point. Investigative
[12:46] journalism, expert opinion pieces, and
[12:48] cool features are all expensive things,
[12:51] and the bean counters have decided that
[12:53] they're simply not worth it. And the
[12:55] worst part is on the immediate financial
[12:58] level, they're certainly right. Now, I
[13:01] think supporting expensive, highquality
[13:03] content is important to building good
[13:05] products and brands that will make
[13:07] customers happy and importantly, you
[13:10] know, actually last over time. A little
[13:15] bit of an important thing, but that is
[13:17] obviously not what the owners of these
[13:18] sites really care about. To them, these
[13:21] sites are just ad farms with value to
[13:23] extract. Quite simply, they get a lot of
[13:25] clicks right now or they go bust. And of
[13:28] course, ads aren't what they used to be.
[13:30] Wowhead isn't covered in ads because the
[13:32] guide riders want to take the company
[13:35] yacht to Blizzcon. No, it's to keep the
[13:38] books balanced enough, the 10 cent don't
[13:41] dump them. Now, as easy as it is to
[13:43] blame all this solely on faceless
[13:45] corporate greed, there is a real
[13:47] downturn behind it, too. And that's that
[13:50] over the last decade, the ad market has
[13:52] been a constant battleground. Sites get
[13:54] more aggressive ads. So, well, people
[13:57] make and use more aggressive ad
[13:59] blockers. Click farms get more
[14:01] sophisticated. Click farms, of course,
[14:03] are often used to basically scam
[14:05] advertisers, and that means that ads get
[14:08] more aggressive about detecting real
[14:10] clicks and real views. I mean, one of
[14:12] the existential threats to say Twitch
[14:15] and one of the reasons why so many
[14:16] brands have abandoned Twitch. Well,
[14:18] that's causing a lot of problems in the
[14:20] streamer space is view botting because
[14:22] the brands want to know that whenever
[14:24] they're getting views on their thing
[14:26] that those views are real. That
[14:29] obviously impacts websites, too. Of
[14:32] course, attention has moved away from
[14:33] digital text over towards video. Uh,
[14:36] it's moved from long- form video often
[14:38] to short form video and sometimes then
[14:40] back to long form so that people have
[14:42] something on in the background while
[14:44] they watch their shorts. Who knows? It's
[14:47] pure chaos though, that's the point. And
[14:49] adup supported sites are struggling to
[14:51] keep up. And now the latest enemy is the
[14:55] mass tide of AI slop. That's the case in
[14:58] a whole ton of ways, but it is the case
[15:00] in a very specific and important way
[15:02] here. The backbone of advertising for
[15:05] games media for the longest time has
[15:07] been high-volume SEO articles getting as
[15:10] many people as possible onto a site.
[15:12] Now, Google uses AI to remove that step.
[15:16] If you want to know how to get ascendant
[15:18] void cores, you don't even need to click
[15:21] through to Wowhead because Google will
[15:23] pull the information out of Wowhead and
[15:26] just present it there on the search
[15:28] page. meaning you never have to go to
[15:31] Wowhead, meaning there's never any ad
[15:34] revenue for Wowhead. Now, I get there's
[15:36] times where that's actually kind of
[15:38] convenient for people. They just get the
[15:39] answer that they want fairly quickly.
[15:42] But of course, it's bad news for the
[15:44] website, which is no longer being
[15:45] clicked on. And of course, that means
[15:48] the money goes down, and eventually
[15:50] that'll mean that those sites no longer
[15:53] really exist. They no longer fund
[15:55] content. one maybe thinks of uh the
[15:59] robberos eating its own tail. Right? So
[16:01] the internet as we know it is under
[16:03] existential threat. The problem is we
[16:06] just don't have an answer right now. It
[16:09] very much seems a large part of the
[16:11] advertisingbased model is falling to
[16:13] pieces. And I guess well we can only
[16:16] guess what the landscape's going to look
[16:18] like in a few years cuz the direction of
[16:21] travel is certainly one of games media
[16:24] and many game sites just dying off. So
[16:27] it's only natural then that if SEO heavy
[16:30] advertising is how you make your money
[16:32] that well you kind of pull back and work
[16:35] on another plan. Here's the thing.
[16:38] Tencent Zam do actually have a plan and
[16:42] to find out what the plan is, you just
[16:44] need to go to their site and look.
[16:48] Fan bite was the public-f facing
[16:50] adsupported model. That's what they
[16:52] gutted in 2022. Wowhead is also a
[16:55] public-f facing adup supported model and
[16:57] it's been hit hard in 2026. But as we've
[16:59] covered, Wowhead was so big and so
[17:01] successful that it was insulated from
[17:03] the worst of what went down in 2022.
[17:06] But of course, it's not just fan bite.
[17:09] Zam's other avenue skips the customer.
[17:13] They go straight to the business and
[17:14] they provide B2B, that means businessto
[17:17] business, community services. This is
[17:19] things like building Discord servers,
[17:21] Reddit communities, and X followings
[17:23] primarily for gacha games. Lovely. It's
[17:27] all done behind the curtain. They get
[17:29] paid directly by the games companies
[17:31] that they work for instead of relying on
[17:34] ad revenue. I genuinely don't know where
[17:36] Wowhead fits in this relationship. They
[17:40] have a good relationship with Blizzard,
[17:41] sure, but they're still an outlier in
[17:44] the business model of their overall
[17:45] company. And if that's obvious to us,
[17:49] then they'll be thinking about all this
[17:50] as well. Unless, of course, Tencent are
[17:53] holding on to Wowhead just to, I don't
[17:55] know, spite netties, their Chinese
[17:57] competitor who actually runs World of
[17:59] Warcraft in China. But somehow I don't
[18:01] really think that's true. But what we
[18:03] can deduce from this is that while
[18:04] Wowhead is still the profitable king of
[18:06] WoW, things will work just fine. Of
[18:09] course, I don't know if it's going to
[18:12] stay that way cuz this is a ship of
[18:15] Thesus problem.
[18:18] The question really is, do we need
[18:19] Wowhead in its current form? A few years
[18:21] ago, I would have said yes without a
[18:23] second thought. Today, I'm less sure.
[18:26] Their data mining posts are excellent,
[18:28] but a lot of it is now done over on the
[18:31] community Discord. Their database is
[18:33] incredible, but that doesn't take a
[18:35] massive team to keep running, and it
[18:38] sure doesn't need a slew of writers.
[18:39] Their class and spec guides are losing
[18:41] steam and relevance compared to more
[18:43] data-driven sources like archon.gg and
[18:46] murloc.io. And some of that, I say from
[18:48] personal experience. One of the biggest
[18:50] improvements in our guild recently is
[18:52] that a few of our players rely on Archon
[18:55] to find raid talents instead of just
[18:57] using Wowhead guides, and we've actually
[18:59] seen pretty huge boosts in damage from
[19:02] just that because Archon reflects the
[19:05] game's real meta immediately. Guides
[19:08] traditionally are set up with
[19:10] pre-release theory crafting and early
[19:12] results. Once patches land, things often
[19:14] do change fast, though. You can get
[19:16] context from community discords and data
[19:19] from Archon way faster than a guide
[19:21] updates. And because of that, suddenly,
[19:25] well, you'll have found yourself with a
[19:26] genuinely better alternative. I mean, I
[19:29] know going to a discord isn't faster
[19:31] than bookmarking a Wowhead guide. But
[19:33] that's only true for as long as a
[19:36] Wowhead guide is gospel, and in many
[19:38] cases, they no longer are. And if Zam
[19:41] isn't willing to invest in the expertise
[19:42] and the experience, then the community
[19:45] will provide it elsewhere. Let me put it
[19:48] this way. Everyone else is slowly
[19:50] starting to eat Wowhead's lunch. And
[19:52] they have no real answer to that. It
[19:54] seems they have no site director to
[19:56] drive innovation and ensure standards.
[19:58] Two of their major staff actually left
[20:01] ages ago. And one of their main assets
[20:03] said, "Zam has, as I said earlier,
[20:06] quote, truly broken me." The people who
[20:10] run the site are the site. And if
[20:13] Wowhead loses a few more key people, Zam
[20:15] are going to learn a lesson that we all
[20:17] learned in 2009. No king rules forever.
[20:21] And I'm not trying to be an anti-Wowhead
[20:24] doomer here, by the way. It is the
[20:27] default experience for a lot of people,
[20:29] and I think Wowhead will remain that way
[20:31] for a long time because of its legacy,
[20:33] its database, its history of comments.
[20:36] All I'm saying is times change, vibes
[20:40] change. I've noticed it over years and
[20:45] more rapidly over recent months. Seeing
[20:48] Park being laid off, seeing quality
[20:50] regressions in some of the content,
[20:52] seeing some of the most key staff in
[20:55] that team talk about how the owner of
[20:59] the site has truly broken them. That
[21:02] does worry me. At this rate, Wowhead
[21:05] won't stay on top for long. And once
[21:08] it's not making the money that Zam
[21:09] needs, it's probably going to follow
[21:12] every other game site, manage decline
[21:15] until it's just a shell of its former
[21:17] self. I don't want to see that come. But
[21:20] without the leadership that got Wowhead
[21:22] to where it is, and many of the other
[21:23] people who have defined what Wowhead is
[21:26] for the last 10 years, I think that
[21:28] decline is almost inevitable. The good
[21:30] news, of course, is that when something
[21:33] big falls, there is opportunity. Someone
[21:37] else will step up and take the crown. Or
[21:42] maybe in true World of Warcraft fashion,
[21:44] it'll be a council instead. A council of
[21:48] Archon and all of the different sites
[21:51] that have sprung up to fix specific
[21:53] problems. Maybe that will leave Wowhead
[21:55] just as a database that's left with some
[21:57] ads on. Who knows? But what I think we
[22:00] do know is that for the longest time,
[22:04] Wowhead was insulated from a lot of the
[22:06] rot that happened to a lot of the rest
[22:10] of games media. It now seems it's no
[22:13] longer insulated from that. In many
[22:15] ways, for us as players, that's going to
[22:17] suck. And for Blizzard, it's also going
[22:20] to suck because let's be real, Wowhead
[22:23] has been Blizzard's crutch for years as
[22:26] well. I would love to know what your
[22:28] experience with this has been. And I
[22:30] would also love to know, and I think
[22:32] many people watching this video would
[22:33] love to see in the comments, what sites,
[22:36] what tools, what things do you find
[22:39] yourself using today? I mean, using the
[22:41] likes of Archon has been so great for so
[22:43] many members of my guild. I am sure
[22:44] there are sites out there that I don't
[22:46] know about, loads of other people don't
[22:47] know about. So, if you've seen something
[22:49] cool, let us know in those comments. And
[22:51] if you want to take a different track
[22:52] and enjoy what I think is a banger of a
[22:54] story, it's very important to where WoW
[22:57] is going. Watch this next.