Gleemax

"Gleemax" is a website whose alpha phase was released by Wizards of the Coast on October 10th 2007. Its current functionality is limited to basic blogging features and personal profiles. Wizards has plans to make it "the home for gamers" at some point in the future, with major functionality to be revealed early 2008 including games such as and a board game portal. The website will be focused on those who play collectible card games, wargames, miniature games, and roleplaying games, including blogs and profiles from the people inside the industry itself. Wizards has said it will incorporate social networking features similar to mainstream sites such as Facebook and Myspace when it officially launches in early 2009.

Wizards of the Coast has stated that participation in the Gleemax site will not be exclusive to their own products (most notably and Dungeons and Dragons), an important point for many strategy gamers.

On July 28, 2008, Wizards of the Coast announced that Gleemax would be shut down in September 2008 in order to focus on their other digital products, D&D Insider and [http://ww2.wizards.com/Company/Press/?doc=20080728 Gleemax Announcement Press Release] ] [http://www.gleemax.com/Comms/Pages/Communities/BlogPost.aspx?blogpostid=96074&pagemode=2&blogid=2158 Announcement of shutdown] ] .

Controversy

The coming of Gleemax led to many changes within the community that caused a great deal of aggravation and upset among gamers. The forum moderators (known as WizO's to the Magic: The Gathering community) were reassigned to different forums, and many users felt that this made relations with the community less personal. Moderators living outside of the US were relieved of their responsibilities altogether, which upset the users who had known them for some time. Current moderation of the forums is handled by the same company that handles Wizards of the Coast's customer support, Right Now Technologies (http://www.custhelp.com).

The powers of moderators were also reduced dramatically, as the new community management team took over many of the functions. Moderators would have to report problems to the community management team, who would then take action they thought appropriate. This system proved to be terribly inefficient, and in a few cases, actions which would have taken moderators minutes took the community management team weeks. Since moderators were required to explain what they had done in each thread, users were able to tell from the post dates exactly how long it took community management to finally take action.

External links

* [http://www.gleemax.com http://www.gleemax.com] Official site.

References