- 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
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.
Hey @Teebling
I totally understand the reasoning behind taking the best offer that presented itself, especially if there is a good future options for BC by doing so (notably in regard to SEO and general traffic) - You put a massive amount of work into this place, so its perfectly fair that you get some sort of compensation for it, at the end of the day!
Regarding the ongoing integration of BC with the Furious platforms, what should (and i call it this reluctantly) content creators expect in terms of cross-platform integration; will BC guides be linked to WT (and vice versa) or is there any plans here?
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Even though I can understand your reasoning and your points are well explained, in my experience a change of ownership very rarely turns out for the better mid to long term. Sharing a vision is always the product of given circumstances and may easily turn into disagreement once these are subject to changes. I simply hope my cautious scepticism will be proven wrong in the future.
Nonetheless I want to congratulate you on establishing a partnership and thank you for all the work you put into this project.
Congratulations @teebling, you certainly deserve remuneration for the ridiculously good work you put in to this website. You continue to have my full support moving forward with this partnership. WCT is a great resource, so the partnership makes a lot of sense.
Lvl 60
Lvl 35
@teebling Appreciate all the kind words in there! It's been great working with you so far and I'm looking forward to the continued partnership here.
@Xcellers To chime in, the current plans for the integration I would say are from a navigation standpoint (the new guides page, certain BC tools are now listed on WT, etc). Currently, I am looking at the best options for showing recent threads from BC on Warcraft Tavern, good ways to show some of the amazing guides from BC on the Warcraft Taverns guides page.
They are still separate sites and you are welcome to posts guides here on BC, or if you want you can post them on WT, completely up to you!
I think the increased traffic here will be for the better in the long run. At worst, if everything goes to shirt and BC is ruined by this move, I feel like the pserver scene has taught us that we are capable of making our own stuff if we don't kine what is provided for us. Aside from easing any concerns people might have with what I think is an obvious plan B, I hope that sentiment provides an incentive for our new overlord to treat us well.
All that said, I'm sure this was a positive move that will do more good for the community in the long run. Cheers and congrats to @teebling .
Vennrick - Human Warrior
Keatts- Human Rogue
Grobbulus - US
Congrats man. I'm looking forward to seeing how this place evolves over time!
I usually check guides on WT and when I pressed forum it redirected me to barrens chat, so for me it is going to be even better now.
Congratulations Teebling, from the moment I found this forum I thought you would soon enough go far, this platform is very well made and with good heart intentions, trully happy for you.
I'm glad that something good came your way, Teebs. Specially after all of your hard work. But man, do these ads take away from the site. I understand money has to come from somewhere, don't get me wrong, but right now, they totally kill the vibe of the site. Hope future changes can address this as it destroys the 'classical immersion' I used to get from the site and was the primary reasoned I became I member. All the best :)
I'm happy you got something (I'm guessing?) for the work you put into this site.
As to the actual changes apparent upon visiting it after a fair amount of time, I can honestly say it sucks.
I had uBlock disabled for this site (and a few others I appreciate) under the previous ownership.
At the moment I can almost see the text between the the banner add up top and the 4 corner ads partially obscuring it.
So long and thanks for all the 
| EU-PvE | English Speaking | Alliance | GMT+1 | Family & Work friendly | Mid-Core]
Hey Roadblock, could you post a screenshot of this so that I can improve it if possible?
@Selexin understood I know what the issue is and will be fixing shortly.
