WarChan

The World of Warcraft forums are a beast. It's been said by many players that the ultimate endgame for WoW isn't the raid content, but the forums themselves. There are some players who claim to continue their subscription to the game solely to participate on the forums, and barely log into the game to play at all.

There are those who will dispute this, but once upon a time the forums were dominated with strategies and talk about play and mechanics. This period didn't last long however, so most people don't remember it, and by the time the first good drama bombs started showing up ("so-and-so disbanded the guild and handed out all the elementium to random people in Orgrimmar") the standard helpful chat was forgotten. Everything was originally in one place, so the RP posts overlapped with the Elitist Jerks and the Mankrik's wife hunters and I-can't-connecteds, and it was a rapidly expanding mash of nonsense.

The forums were rebuilt almost right away and a separate home was given for any subject with a significant following. Each class and realm has its own forum, there are forums for customer service issues, technical support, role playing, guild management, and just about any core section of the game worth considering. Each section has a set of familiar faces and sub-community and they analyze issues and digest content and events in their own way.

The hub of all the forums - the beating heart of the state of the game - is the General Forums. On any given day a quick breeze through the posts will give you a sense of the issues that concern players, and also a sense of entitlement they feel at having paid their precious fifteen dollars that month to have their every whim catered to. Topics that are not related to the game are moved to the dreaded Off Topic forum (abandon all hope ye who enter here), and items that are outright stupid and offensive are deleted.

The social networking segment of WoW players - those who treat WoW like a 3D chat client - are heavy influencers of the General Forums, and they often fail to take into account how insignificant or inappropriate their issues are before they post them. For example, with millions of players in North America enjoying the game, do we really care if one person has quit the game because they aren't entertained anymore? It's a phenomenon you just don't see anywhere else, people who get so tied into the happenings of the community that they assume the community will miss them if they leave. Sorry pal, even if you're a one-in-a-million player, there are 11 more out there just like you, grinding rep and farming badges.

So for nagrand cherries and giggles, I decided to do an analysis of what everyone was talking about in December, 2009 on the General Forums. I copied out the subject line of every topic and made a word cloud giving us a visual representation of the concerns of the month.


I also have some quick statistics for you about the common users on the forums. These names can be found everywhere in December, though you might not recognize them.

CHATTERBOXES: Most common thread starters
31 Wildberry
28 Zhaan
27 Ineedflesh
24 Hingarn
23 Zahrkon
22 Iegend
20 Eltrollo
19 Boffo
19 Toroh
18 Battousaix
18 Furtastic
17 Lògosh
17 Maeltum
17 Slipenslide
16 Coldbear
15 Auralise
15 Glatorian
15 Googlehex
15 Shamantankz

THREADKILLERS: Most often having the last word in a thread
51 Sternbridge
48 Fanahlia
39 Margamanthak
36 Tacotaker
34 Blodøks
31 Fivestyle
31 Kalganized
30 Murianna
29 Sohuggable
27 Aetarian
27 Kinkarcana
26 Crepe
26 Kaioon
26 Scatmàn
25 Yeria