No matter where else you might go for World of Warcraft-focused content, you’ve probably been to MMO-Champion at least once (I’m a daily reader, myself). It’s hard to ignore the siren song of unfiltered leaks and the vast database of item and loot drops filtered into the site by owner Boubouille and his vast army of volunteers. It’s rare that you’ll hear news any sooner unless you have an IV line direct to the Blizzard forums or you’re a member of the data-mining community, yourself.
But let’s face it, the old design was getting on a bit (three years, in fact), and the site wasn’t really optimized for efficient delivery of the ever-growing myriad of content nestled deep within its servers. With its recent acquisition by Curse Gaming, it was only a matter of time before MMO-Champion got a fresh coat of paint, and that time has finally come. The site now more closely follows the general Curse them (though not exactly), and here are the major the new features:
- A feed of the latest Blue Posts is finally available on the front page!
- The left menu is gone, news posts can now use the full width of the page. It will allow me to post more information when I have to use tables, lot of pictures, etc …
- Patch menus have been moved to the top right of the site.
- The forums are much, much, much, much better. You can now go through a couple of posts
- Overall, the site is much nicer and is a lot more polished than the previous theme.
Of course, the most noticeable (and welcome) change may be the switch from an eye-killing neon color scheme to a cool, muted forest green. I do enjoy the new usability, but it does start to move the site away from its indie roots. That’s not a bad thing, per se — a natural evolution for any website over time, really. And it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that will impact MMO-Champion’s content, but it does lose a little bit of that special, intangible something.
Maybe I’m just nuts, though. The redesign is a positive overall, but what do you think Lore Hounds?
I’m just happy the front page loads 5x faster than what it did. That’s all I had to gripe about.
Granted, as you said, it was three years old and over-loaded servers.
You’re just crazy =P
Honestly, it is a VAST improvement, and will probably cause me to use MMO-champion more often (neon was terrible, green is the best color)