Patch 1.11
14th November 2019
Summary of changes:
- Transfer of ownership over to Furious of warcrafttavern.com, I will continue as administrator
- New guides section showcasing WT and BC guides alongside each other
- Introduction of light advertisement banners which are hidden for Donators
TLDR: A few weeks back I received an offer on barrens.chat from a fellow Classic enthusiast and web developer, which I have accepted, and as of today the website is under new ownership. I am still at this time the administrator, curator and maintainer of the site, and confident that this move will be healthy for Barrens Chat in the long run. This is by no means a goodbye from me! Please read on for more details.
As I have mentioned before, I've had a lot of different individuals and groups contact me over the last two years who have been keen to make offers of one sort or another. Some wanted to just work as advertising partners, others wanted to buy the branding alone, and others wanted comprehensive ownership. Mainly digital marketing groups, ad brokers, solo developers the like. Good, competent people overall but I just didn't have faith in their commitment to keep the site growing and maintaining it in a way that I thought would be healthy for the community here. This site is my passion and I wouldn't agree to sell it to just anyone after all.
When I received a sensible offer from Furious (aka NightElfMohawk) then it was a different kettle of fish. Furious ran nightelfmohawk.com, has been in private server scene for donkey's years, is an SEO professional and runs a very successful network of Classic related websites (such as warcrafttavern.com) to this day. He approached me with an offer that I couldn't refuse - a decent renumeration for the artistic and technical work I have put into the site over the years, the opportunity to continue leading the site creatively and administratively, and the certainty of more traffic and growth for BC in the future.
When it came to making changes, Furious considered everything I had to say about the site and I'm positive that he is on the same wavelength as me when it comes to what works here. Essentially the site will be integrated and linked with warcrafttavern.com in several ways. You will have noticed the advertising banners (which are invisible to donators) and the new Guides section. We both agreed that the site is functionally complete as you see it today and that no further radical changes will be necessary in the foreseeable future besides integration with Warcraft Tavern and Furious's other directives.
The way we both see it is a joining of two websites that lack something of each other's functionality and scope. For example BC has always been wanting in a significant quantity of concise and well-presented articles, guides and item databases/tools that are comprehensive for the whole game. WT on the other hand hasn't the same established forum community that we have here and Furious has said himself that he didn't consider building a forum already because liked BC so much as it was.
I'm very confident that the two sites complement each other and will both benefit from this. WT pulls in a rather large amount of traffic and I'm sure most of you will have come across it before on Google - it competes directly with the biggest guys in the business (wowhead) when it comes to information pages, tools, guides and opinion. This is only a good thing for BC as that traffic will translate across to this community too and provide us with more participants in the topics we discuss here.
I am also still the site's administrator - my colleague trusts me with the continued every-day running of BC. I work under his full creative direction now seeing as the sale of BC includes all rights and is a full transfer of ownership. Furious has shown to me that he is very receptive and considerate of my own suggestions. I believe he truly understands the what this place is about, and what will and won't work in the future. He is also involving me in other Classic related web/graphics projects - I feel like a valued member of his team and can take pleasure in the work I make for him.
With all these things on the table after much discussion, I knew this was the right offer from the right guy. I have a good feeling about what we can achieve in the future and that BC is in good hands. I really hope that this news is received more with excitement than any other emotion - I know how passionate you guys are about the site too. I pray that you can all see that this is a step forwards for us, and not me 'selling out'.
Lastly, BC has been an absolutely monumental project for me so far - I've logged over 3000 hours in development alone, not including the time I spend on the forum itself and behind the scenes every day of the year. This has meant sacrificing a lot of my personal time to work on the project which I could have spent on other professional endeavours.
Always appreciating your continuing support guys, and here's to a future with more members, content and development ahead!
Your boy, Teeb.