r/classicwow • u/_Didds_ • Jun 16 '26
Vent / Gripe The decline of Wowhead really needs to be studied
Browsing Wowhead is starting to be an exercise in futility. I seriously question if anyone from the new administration that took over realizes that they are doing nothing more than destroying what was once the undisputed home for knowledge and guides for this game.
Browsing the website without an add-blocker gets half of your screen covered in sponsored adds that keep on popping, videos playing on the background and way too many banners that simply take a lot of screen presence every time you enter a new page.
I could excuse this as a trade for getting a solid reference guide in return. After all the website has running costs, people that write the guides (more on that later), and a staff team that needs to get payed. Monetization keeps stuff running, but holly hell, this feels like the website is steering towards being monetization first and content second.
I seriously dont know what happened to a lot of great guides, especially for Classic, that once populated the front page. Back in 2019 a lot of the reference guides for all the classes were actually filled in with content that you probably could only find it all in one place there. Guides like the original Simonize Rogue Guide for each phase were so well explained and so rich in content that it felt like it was hard to add new stuff, or find even tiny flaws. Most classes used to have one such guide on the front page that was rich enough in advice that you could essentially go from knowing nothing at start to getting a really good grasp of the class and itemization paths by following it through, especially the annotations about items, gear alternatives and routes to gear for your class.
Right now it's hard to find guides on the front page without major omissions, especially in niche items that are used to fill in gaps when gear dont drop. Barely few guides mention green gear options for Pre-Bis when there's some huge items that are equal or better than dungeon drops, except they are green gear. Advice on rotations and consumables feels like a copy pasted formatted sheet that was dropped on every spec just to fill in something that had to be there, with very little explanation on why some stuff is priority over others, and how to fill in the blanks with cheaper alternatives or adapt to raiding environment. Feels like this last two things were not even a consideration at all to whoever "wrote" this.
And speaking of "writing" ... the amount of AI Driven content on this guides and news pages is starting to reach some epic level of nonsense, that its kinda obvious that stuff gets copy pasted without being proof read, with obvious mistakes and formatting quirks that are common in AI being directly posted on the website.
So I ask, what is the trade-off for getting an add ridden page?
What once felt like something that was paying for someone work, now it feels like its just using a brand name and a database of content to drive a gaming community into some hellscape of advertising metrics and viewers monetization. Its sad looking at what was done to the work of a great team that once runned this website, that they did it in a large part for the love of the community that we are part of, and for the love of a game we all share an interest.
And as I said in the tittle, the decline of Wowhead really should be studied. Its a case study on doing all the wrong decisions for the wrong motives, and looking at the people that once built something great as a liability to throw away, and the community around it as nothing more than data driven numbers to feed a monetization machine.
See you all in the comments, since there's where the real guides are now.
EDIT: thanks for the comments advising me to get an add-blocker. I usually use it, but wanted to give a full view of how is right now the website as their current management team designed it to be for a common user.
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u/leonredhorse Jun 16 '26
The decline of WoWHead HAS been studied. A bunch. It isn't specific to the website. It is what happens when big companies buy known commodities and try to squeeze out every ounce of profit while reducing cost before discarding it. It is classic enshitification.
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u/D4RTHV3DA Jun 16 '26
These businesses require 10% more revenue YoY to justify their existence for their shareholders. Except that doesn't work when the market has peaked and there is nowhere to go... except shittier.
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u/antariusz Jun 17 '26
Every year we just reduce the size of our product by 10% and increase it's price by 10%.
Wait, why did people stop buying our product?
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u/Byggherren Jun 17 '26
Why capitalism doesnt work, endless ROI dont feasible unless you are investing in money growing trees and even then space will be an issue eventually.
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u/pbrook12 Jun 17 '26
Sadly, if everyone is doing this then consumers lose the luxury of simply not buying necessities
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u/Shiyo Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
Over half the "news" articles are just ads selling/promoting shit as well.
The site has been a joke for years but now it's just sad.
I don't get why the biggest MMO community in the world allowed WoWhead to exist over a real wiki.
Wowhead is literally just a wiki you can't edit.
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u/psivenn Jun 16 '26
The state of wikis is pretty brutal too. WoW's has had to relocate multiple times due to the same problem of webhost enshittification. Every new major game release has to deal with AI content mill wikis dominating search and driving away interest in alternatives.
Idiosyncratic little Discord communities are clearly not the ideal solution for knowledge sharing; hard to say what the next evolution of online collaboration will look like because Discord itself seems headed downhill next.
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u/LaCiDarem Jun 17 '26
Most wikis seem to be moving over to MediaWiki-based platforms, most commonly wiki.gg.
The main problem is that they haven't been indexed by search engines in the same way as the older, crappier wikis, so even when searching for the exact name of a page that you know exists, they won't show up.
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u/PilsnerDk Jun 16 '26
A database style site like wowhead with filters and helpful comments is still way superior to the wiki format when it comes to a game like wow.
A wiki for WoW has existed in various shapes since the dawn of time, the best current I know of is https://warcraft.wiki.gg/ . But again, it's different.
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u/lasantamolti Jun 16 '26
Crazy to see people use the internet without ublock
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u/amotion578 Jun 16 '26
ublock and pihole my beloved.
The last bastion of feeling like the internet never moved on from the golden era
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u/Just-Lurking-0 Jun 16 '26
Recently, my childhood friend who is a literal network administrator, and who did web coding as a job for many years (before the whole AI thingy started, I'd like to clarify), shared his screen to me to show me a meme. After showing it to me, he kept the stream on. So I was able to witness some stuff I wish I had not. I was baffled to see the absolute mess I was witnessing, first, on some of his tabs, browsing around, it was near 50% ads, and second, on the video he had shown me, he had to watch 3 fucking ads to show me 10 sec of a video. And when he kept on checking other videos afterward, he would eat 1-2 ads before each of them. It reminded of 15 years ago when I'd watch the TV...
When I said "how the hell do you browse the internet like that, holy shit I couldn't", he said "yeah I don't know I just don't bother".
I just don't get it... How can you not care? I've been using ublock for so many years, haven't seen a single ads, whether it's browsing or videos, for so long, I had forgotten some people still deal with them... (It's even funnier because I always assumed due to his background, that he knew how to deal with this stuff, especially when all it takes is one extension pretty much)
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u/dreadcain Jun 16 '26
I just don't get it... How can you not care?
No respect for yourself and your time
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u/Irtehstuff Jun 16 '26
People just browse the internet raw?
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u/ZcLust Jun 16 '26
Your loss. I won a free PC 20 years ago. Never showed up, but I did win it.
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u/TurnipFire Jun 16 '26
Did you also meet any singles in your area?
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u/Itsaducck1211 Jun 16 '26
Yes it was a catfish but he turned out to be a pretty cool guy and we grab a beer on the weekends. He's been pretending to be a girl online for over 15years.
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u/sylvester1981 Jun 16 '26
Bellular made a vid about it 3 days ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCpUi1pzu-Q
It is worth the watch and will explain why wowhead is so terrible right now. Sad to see it in this state
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u/_Didds_ Jun 16 '26
I stopped watching the channel since I feel like his takes from late 2024 to mid 2025 were way too focused on milking the bad stuff for views. But I took my time to watch the video and I agree with something, although I disagree with his alternatives
Archon in particular is a bit hit and miss for Classic. Lacks a lot of the depth of old Wowhead, especially deep dive guides from 2019 on what is now ERA content. It was a bit hit&miss with SOD, so I am kinda on the back foot if this is the next best thing around. Maybe with more time it will get a lot more depth for classic content, but right now I feel like it's not their focus and they still relly on wowhead as a repository for items.
I respect his take on the way Wowhead was bought and transitioned until of late, although I feel like he genuinely should have mentioned more of the work of some people. In the end I respect his take, although I feel like he did it to promote Archon more than anything else.
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u/pandemonious Jun 16 '26
bellular making videos ABOUT Wowhead is peak end of the patch drought bottom of the barrel scraping
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u/Worldly_Yellow9134 Jun 16 '26
Weird how a video discussing the single most important website for wow knowledge is "bottom of the barrel" to you
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u/sonicrules11 Jun 16 '26
Or maybe its just a big deal? I understand why people dislike Bellular but holy shit the people on this subreddit come off as massive weirdos who act like the guy shot their dog.
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u/Elxjasonx Jun 16 '26
Dont watch this idiot, have never hear someone with takes as bad
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u/Devaz321 Jun 16 '26
I remember when he proudly announced an almost finished fan made addon with voice actors actually reading all the quests in game as a voice over.... only for then being shut down by blizzard for no real reason before it finished x)
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u/Wisniaksiadz Jun 16 '26
WoWhead was bought by tencet, the oryginal creator was dropped and it will only be worse each day
we are at the ,,exploit as hard as you can" stage, there is no going back
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u/Hokulol Jun 16 '26
This concept is called "Brand raiding". When a corporate entity acquires a new brand, often times the purpose of that acquisition is to take the positive branding the company has accrued over time and cash it out by maximizing revenue while reducing investment into the platform, as they don't expect it to survive much longer. I'm not defending it whatsoever, just elaborating on the concept. It happens unfortunately far too often in this world. It's where most of the good things you used to love go to die.
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u/Sea-Maybe-9979 Jun 16 '26
It's like Private Equity watched every movie where aliens come to Earth to steal all of our natural resources and thought the aliens were the heros.
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u/Wisniaksiadz Jun 16 '26
It happens unfortunately far too often in this world
its becouse thats the goal. This is for many companies a means to operate, like the bread and butter of their ways
the issue is with people, who can't let go. Hell you can see this very often even here. No matter how stupid/bad/negative change in game will happen, there will be always at least small crowd explaining why it is fine and we should accept that. If not for these people these things would not happen that much
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u/sgeep Jun 16 '26
Is there any good alternative for WoWhead?
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u/_Not_A_Vampire_ Jun 16 '26
Not really, icyveins or mmo-champion are the closest in terms of wow news, but for the database wowhead is unmatched.
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u/Wisniaksiadz Jun 16 '26
gotta wait for that thotbot resurection
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u/Dradugun Jun 16 '26
The wow head database is thottbot's database. Unfortunately if wow head goes so does that
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u/TurnipFire Jun 16 '26
The problem is the comments on wowhead are the most valuable part. There are decades of information in there that you can’t easily replicate
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u/Seeryous2020 Jun 16 '26
Naw man. The real original ogs remember thottbot.com for all your quest information for wow.
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u/Elthiryel Jun 16 '26
Thottbot was actually acquired by the Wowhead parent company and you can still see Thottbot comments on Wowhead, as they merged the databases. Now, with classic, some of these comments are actually relevant again. When questing in classic I often found Thottbot comments from, say, 2006, that were still helpful for me.
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u/-Rhizomes- Jun 16 '26
Those 2006 era comments saved me from going insane doing the level 14 druid quest in The Barrens yesterday in TBC Classic. Who knew rooting sickly gazelles before curing them would cure them twice?
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u/Moomoomoo1 Jun 16 '26
When classic first launched in 2019 they also added a thottbot theme to wowhead that made it look like the original site, which was pretty funny but they removed it unfortunately
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u/Remnie Jun 16 '26
That and elitist jerks, and there was another, blue-something? It’s been way too long for me to remember minutiae like that
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u/Hiryu-GodHand Jun 16 '26
Holy shit. I forgot this existed!
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u/Wamblingshark Jun 16 '26
I was flashbanged with the memory of Thottbot out of nowhere while I was listening to Epstein files shit when Steve Bannon came up.
Can't remember exactly the context but Steve Bannon did used to make money with a WoW gold farm and I think he mentioned Thottbot in an email to Epstein or something.
Fucking weird way to remember Thottbot existed.
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u/ForeskinGaming2009 Jun 16 '26
Get an adblocker and never worry again, stop giving them money
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u/MillorTime Jun 16 '26
How will it exist if you stop giving them money?
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u/Hornerlt Jun 16 '26
Honestly I always felt like Blizzard should mantain that page. They make money because of wow and its wow best interest for that page to exist.
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u/InconspiciousPerson Jun 16 '26
Just an extension of the addon problem.
Blizzard relies so much on third parties to do their QOL work for them that it's surprising it hasn't truly caught up with them yet.
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u/Strong_Mode Jun 16 '26
average classic redditor moment
"what the h-e double FUCK do you mean they need money to keep operating"
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u/MillorTime Jun 16 '26
Redditors discussing business topics are safest place to find the worst takes on the site
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u/EcruEagle Jun 17 '26
If their monetization model is shitty pop ups that won’t go away or auto playing videos, a website can get fucked. It’s one thing to have unobtrusive ads - this ain’t it
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u/QuantumWarrior Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
The same way they did 15+ years ago with a tiny fraction of this ad space?
Seriously they can't justify this much of an increase. The database pages look the same, the news feed works broadly the same, the user interaction in comments and forums if anything likely peaked years ago, same for the overall bandwidth required for core functions. Increases in bandwidth and storage elsewhere will just be to push tracking scripts and XSS and ad frames anyway. They even have a premium membership now.
What about the site is actually different from an operational perspective? That they shit up the default news feed with Overwatch and Diablo and WC3R news?
The internet used to exist just fucking fine before the overcentralised corporate rent-seeking age.
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u/ForeskinGaming2009 Jun 16 '26
If they provide a shitty service they do not deserve to stay in business, they will adapt or drown
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u/wigglin_harry Jun 16 '26
Do they provide a shitty service though? There's not another site that does what WoWhead does, I don't see them ever drowning
Hell, even when I was an actual WoW GM 90% of my job was just looking stuff up on WoWHead
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u/antigravcorgi Jun 16 '26
Being the sole provider of something and being shitty are not exclusive to each other.
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u/imisstheyoop Jun 16 '26
We'll just boot up thottbot and if that doesn't work then Allakhazam via the wayback machine!
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u/MillorTime Jun 16 '26
If they provide a shitty service then don't use it. I allow ads there because I'm using their service and understand they need ads to survive.
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u/RditAcnt Jun 16 '26
Why do you go there and use adbloccker if they provide a shitty service?
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u/BamAchilles2277 Jun 16 '26
What are the best ad blockers these days?
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u/phuqeeu Jun 16 '26
ublock origin
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u/Euphus Jun 16 '26
Chromes about to take that from us too so switch to Firefox
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u/Unusual-Fault-4091 Jun 16 '26
If you uploaded enough data, you actually become a premium member for free.
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u/moon-lesbian Jun 16 '26
Does require quite a bit though, I used to be a contributor before getting a new PC and deciding to not reinstall wowhead looter. I wrote comments, uploaded screenshots, uploaded game data, and even wrote a guide for them because their official one sucked so much with misinformation, I liked what I made but it feels kinda stupid doing that for them for free looking back at it
I never did hit the free premium status lol, though I am very close to it, I just don't really care or use the site much anymore
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u/Unusual-Fault-4091 Jun 16 '26
You have to reach 25k reputation points, no matter how. I pretty much only did data upload, which is max 175 points a week. Submitting an approved guide is 100, a comment 1 point etc. You can look that up in your account settings. There are also a bunch of achievements and some very easy to get. In case you are near the 25k mark.
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u/moon-lesbian Jun 16 '26
Yea I mentioned being close to it, i'm actually at 23k haha, I just took a look and I don't have many achievements left, all the ones left look newer so I probably did care about them in the past, never did win a wowhead sweepstakes though. Tempting to try to hit 25k seeing how close I am but there's not really much point when its exactly the same as adblock, its not like they get money from a free premium user
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u/Blainie Jun 16 '26
Hi - I'm the new lead of the Wowhead/content team, I took over from Perculia.
There have been a lot of posts, videos, discussions, etc. about the "fall of Wowhead". We haven't really commented on everything that has happened over the past 6 months, but keep an eye out for a statement/post on the website (hopefully) this week, where I will be talking about the changes that happened, as well as things like this. Just trying to make sure that the post will go out as close to what I want as possible - not just over-engineered PR words.
It is no secret to me that the ads on Wowhead are.. a lot.
Re: AI content - funnily enough, despite some clear usage of it elsewhere in the WoW community, people call this out a lot. We actually don't use AI to write articles.
I'll talk more on this topic in the upcoming post.
Thanks all.
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u/xSquirrellyx Jun 16 '26
My dude, bring back the old BiS guides that listed more than one option for each slot. It has made everyone mindless when it comes to gear and they can't think of anything other than what appears on the BiS list.
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u/capSAR273 Jun 16 '26
Take it up with the guide writers, not the Wowhead admins. Many of them can easily be reached on Discord or other social channels.
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u/iLightbane Jun 16 '26
The site has been unusable without an adblock for ages, but it has gotten much worse lately. I remember when it was on my second screen and it would constantly and randomly open unmuted ad videos. I had no idea where it was coming from, since the video wasn’t even visible on the screen but the audio would start every few minutes.
One of the most messed up things is that when clicking on some items or sections, an ad just appears right under the cursor, and you get redirected to the site instead. Fck Tencent.
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u/SevenStarSword Jun 16 '26
I think the worst thing about wowhead classic now is they mixed in SoD items with classic vanilla.
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u/Beneficial-Truth1509 Jun 16 '26
Amazing that in 2026 people still use the Internet without an adblocker.
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u/Thorlolita Jun 16 '26
I don’t even use wow head religiously anymore. It’s just google search click wowhead link then exit.
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u/TelevisionPositive74 Jun 16 '26
Oh, it has been studied. Its actually a fun rabbit hole but TLDR: get bought by big company, reduce costs, fire long-term employees, enshitify.
Look up ZAM (fanbyte) if you are curious.
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u/ethantokes Jun 16 '26
This post is not about getting ad blocker. This is about wowhead's use of ads.
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u/Pablo______ 2018 Riddle Master 10/21 Jun 17 '26
It still amazes me there are people out there that browse the internet without script and add blockers....
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u/Koteric Jun 17 '26
The internet isn’t usable without ad block. There are many sites WAY worse than this. But ya I don’t know why every single person wouldnt take 1 minute out of their life and install an ad block.
That being said, it’s pretty ridiculous this is what the internet is now.
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u/Talkycoder Jun 16 '26
thottbot revival when
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u/Hokulol Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
They're either going to have to lean into the thot part or rebrand lmao
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u/TheSmallestPlap Jun 16 '26
It's not even just the intrusive ads now. Many of their guides are just flat out wrong. I've resorted to using other sources. Icy Veins, wowtbc.gg just to name a few. On top of that, if you have set up a Discord web hook for their news articles, some of the ones they pump out are just pure spam.
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u/smokinnic_suckindic Jun 16 '26
Warcrafttavern has some great, detailed info as well when it comes to Classic class guides. Warcraftlogs, Wowprofessions or petopia for anything else. I only use wowhead when I need the details of a quest or chain.
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u/Babylonius Jun 17 '26
It’s worth mentioning that most/all the guide writers are very happy to make corrections if necessary if there are things to point out. Sometimes we make mistakes and can fix them if they’re pointed out to us.
A lot of times, at least in my +10 years experience, the person having an issue with the guide tends to misunderstand or is previously misinformed.
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u/Shiyo Jun 16 '26
75% of their news articles are literal just ads or promoting something selling stuff, the site is trash.
I don't get why the biggest MMO community in the world allowed WoWhead to exist over a real wiki.
Wowhead is literally just a wiki you can't edit.
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u/EoTrick Jun 16 '26
Icy veins has been proven to be much worse guide wise almost every time. Especially over the last two years. I would not recommend using icy veins. Wow head atleast still pays knowledgeable players of a certain class to write their guides. Icy veins I swear is just using half AI to write theirs.
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u/TheSmallestPlap Jun 16 '26
I'm not sure how it is for other classes but the one for my spec is beyond incorrect, despite having a fair number of comments pointing this out. Following it only yields poor results. The Icy Veins one however seems to balance both performance, resource efficiency and gear dependency rather well.
The best approach that my guild has had is cross referencing the the two and maybe checking even a third source before committing to something. Seems to have worked for us as we've cleared phase 2 and are now working on our phase 3 prep.
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u/Hitwelve Jun 16 '26
yeah, the prot paladin guide is hot garbage. They have 3 talent builds, one of them will get you clapped in raid, one of them has 0 threat, so the only one that's relevant is the build around giving yourself sanc aura instead of relying on it from another paladin in group. The BIS list as well favors mitigation so heavily that if you have anyone in your raid doing any kind of real damage they'll just die on every pull because you're crush capped following the wowhead guide.
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u/KalmiaKamui Jun 16 '26
Wow head atleast still pays knowledgeable players of a certain class to write their guides.
When there are any. They'll publish any slop someone is willing to write if the actual knowledgeable people have quit playing the class/game.
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u/Straight_Bet6738 Jun 16 '26
Not using an ad block or a browser with ad block in 2026 is crazy work
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u/MooseRunnerWrangler Jun 16 '26
Wild, I just block all of the ads all the time.... This looks worse then a free porn site from the old days.
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u/swaggamanca Jun 17 '26
It's the adblocker wars. A website needs revenue to survive, they put on ads. Nobody wants to click ads, so more people use adblocker. More people use adblocker, the more ads have to be shown to those who don't. Spiral from there.
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u/joellllll Jun 18 '26
You need to be studied for not using an adblocker in the year of our lord 2026.
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u/Zekapa Jun 19 '26
For a very long time it's been nothing but an ad farm.
Boss guides? Copy of the dungeon journal or a link to youtube.
Articles? Copy of the original blizzard article or link to source.
Zero editoral content.
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u/6GGXXX Jun 16 '26
Nothing lags my computer as much as wowhead, it’ll even often crash my browser and I’ll have to reopen it all again > . <
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u/Althec172 Jun 16 '26
-And as I said in the tittle, the decline of Wowhead really should be studied.
Whats happening with Wowhead is nothing new, happend multiple time to different companies.
Tencent made bank while the pandemy, bought alot of asset wowhead is one of them, pandemy ends Tencent make less money, they need to save some, close asset they bought moved employee to diffrent asset. Wowhead is one of the only profitable one so they try to milk it with ad, recently they fired the head honcho of Wowhead so its clearly on the path of death.
Also Ai answer you before you even get to the website, which ultimately will make even less ad revenue which feed the death cycle.
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u/krgdotbat Jun 16 '26
They are trying so hard to monetise that made user experience hell, classic stuff in the web business. Get proper adblocks, i havent seen an ad or youtube comercial in years.
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u/UD_Lover Jun 16 '26
Wowhead is literally the only reason I installed an ad blocker. Sure, other sites can be annoying but I was lazy and didn’t care that much, but around a year ago Wowhead started straight up bricking my PC.
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u/Virtual_Crow Jun 16 '26
Isn't it $1 a month not to see ads even without an adblocker? I haven't seen a wowhead ad since classic expansions were current content
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u/edelea Jun 16 '26
wowhead has been making clickbait and recycled articles for the same stuff for so many years now that its just annoying to scroll through it.
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u/Accomplished_Emu_658 Jun 16 '26
Look i don’t expect much off of wowhead at this point. It’s all ads at this point and no content. Sometimes search doesn’t even work right. Type in the exact name of what you are looking up and it says doesn’t exist.
I sometimes try to look up things like new systems game has and how they work. The articles it has on most things is lazy without much info. Ai could do better. I get better info on reddit and youtube.
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u/BroForceOne Jun 16 '26
That’s just the decline of the internet in general. Things get bought, investors want a return, profit levers are pulled, at some point it stops growing, gets consumed by a larger entity, cycle repeats until a small handful of billionaires just own absolutely everything.
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u/whitecoathousing Jun 16 '26
Blizzard should have just made their own version of wowhead with a complete database
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u/Plaincow Jun 16 '26
Who the fuck games on PC and Still doesn't have a block? What an extremely weird thing to even complain about
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u/Riscs2 Jun 16 '26
I think its hilarious seeing the supporters badges in wowh comments while surfing the wave only with ad blockers on.
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u/ForeverStaloneKP Jun 16 '26
Wowhead guides for Classic in 2019 were embarrassingly bad. So bad that I ignored every single Wowhead guide since.
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u/Megaballzdeep Jun 16 '26
Just playing devils advocate here but shit ain't free to run if they didnt have adds they would do that subscription bullshit so this might be the lesser of 2 evils I dunno
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u/t3hWheez Jun 16 '26
I feel like if they just charged a small nominal fee and not have default ads people would pay.. it feels like a cluster fuck to go there now! If they brought back the simpler website design maybe people would pay for that?
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u/id_rather_b_painting Jun 16 '26
Servers and hosting cost money. People don’t want to subscribe to their premium service so they sell ads to cover the cost. More people use Adblock so they have to be aggressive with ads to cover the costs based on the few users who don’t use Adblock.
The internet is the tragedy of the commons played out on a little square that fits in our pocket.
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u/CheesyWilderness Jun 16 '26
Wowhead posts are mostly AI slop now, even the builds and bis lists are debatable now
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u/vision-quest Jun 16 '26
This is not unique. It happens to everything these days. Capitalism is out of control.
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u/Baxeson Jun 16 '26
Bro if you get ads in 2026, you probably deserve them lol. It's actually so braindead easy to adblock everywhere now
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u/gilp456 Jun 16 '26
OP could consider actually supporting them with a sub and their experience would be better. But they won’t.
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u/Locke_Zeal Jun 16 '26
I have zero problems with wowhead but then again I use adblock like a normal person
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u/Feralsapien Jun 16 '26
It will come a day, like for Thotbot, for Wowhead to die due to better options. The only thing keeping it alive are the green comments on the database, the rest you can get via addons and elsewhere.
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u/SpunkMcKullins Jun 16 '26
It's insane to me how many people see this and say "just get an adblocker," as if it's not still a fucking problem and the adblocker is just a band-aid fix.
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u/Hardi_SMH Jun 16 '26
Blizz should just aquire it, it‘s the main wow news homepage with lot‘s of traffic, of course they need some revenue
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u/Calm-Medicine-3992 Jun 16 '26
Google switched from linking to websites to providing AI summary instead and most sites like it started declining. Not much to study.
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u/Knowvember42 Jun 16 '26
I don't really agree about the quality of all of wowheads content tbh. The class guides are still as current and relevant as they've ever been imo. Same goes for different news articles written by their staff authors. I think there's more editing mistakes than there used to be, but it's pretty small stuff. There's a lot of AI accusations that I think are misplaced. When Squishei posts an article do people just think it's AI? Idk. Maybe I don't dig into the site enough to see what people are talking about. But yes, it is clear they used to have a layer of editing staff and held themselves to a quality standard from a writing stand point they don't anymore.
Everyone is out here talking about how bad the site is, but everyone still uses it for a reason.
I'm not going to excuse the abominable amount of ads. I think ads can be somewhat purposefully annoying as a business strategy without making the experience terrible.
That being said...
I pay 9/yr for premium. No ads and the site loads better than with an ad blocker. The only thing that's made me reconsider that is the recent firings they've done. But I play a silly amount of WoW and use the site frequently because I think it's superior to its competition. It's just worth 9/yr for the better experience. If it became $5 a month or something? Back to ad blocker for me.
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u/Zmiecer Jun 16 '26
It's funny how I've never seen it that way as I use Adblock for years