AOL likely to close down Joystiq/WoW Insider

AOL's hardships are taking a heavy toll

After ten years of publication it seems AOL is gearing up to shut down Joystiq. For the past few years AOL has had trouble with their internal structures which led to various lay-offs or major re-structuring of several of their content sites. Recently AOL has turned their eye toward shutting down underperforming titles; one of which is Joystiq. For World of Warcraft players this means that the news/opinion blog, WoW Insider, is also going away.

What WoW Insider means to me:

Screencapped from Kotaku.com

Despite frequenting the website on a daily basis I'm somewhat of a lurker on WoW Insider if you go by how many comments(28 since they first introduced their comment system) I've made. I've seen it grow from a small blog with interesting news to a full social forum with various articles. A few of my favorites was the Gold-capped, Well Fed Food buffs, and Drama Mama entries. I enjoyed reading things about lore, tinfoil hat theories about expansions and watching the myriad of fanmade videos from other World of Warcraft players.

Zapwidget search results on WI spans over several pages

My husband whom posts as 'Zapwidget' visits just as often. He loves posting challenging questions and often theory-crafted quite a bit on paladin/warrior class articles at WoW Insider. He also thoroughly enjoys reading The Queue articles( and especially if it's written by Matthew Rossi whom shares a fondness for the warrior class as much as he does). WoW Insider to Zapwidget was a place to interact with a tight-knit World of Warcraft community.

For the both of us, WoW Insider was a community where we felt that even if only a little; we also contributed. It's a fun interactive blog for discussion and a great place to find the latest news. I honestly hope it won't be closed down but should it happen I also wish all the writers the very best in their future endeavors. We will miss you.

What does WoW Insider mean to you?
-Masaya, of
All My Alts


#SaveJoystiq #SaveWoWInsider