Exactly, and WoW.com is all-too-quick use “we’re not a news site” as an excuse when they wrongly report something or have a questionable opinion piece.

The vast majority of WoW.com’s posts aren’t news, keep in mind, because as others have said, it’s very difficult to break news on a game that auto-tracks developer forum posts and data-mined incessantly. Just an example of topics they cover:

- EIGHTEEN separate posts about preparing for Blizzcon 09 (really, we needed that many?)
- A weekly gossip column that links to drama on guilds’ forums
- A screenshot and machinima of the day
- “Guides” for just about everything, such as leveling your Druid to level six, or new gear for Warriors from the new 5-man.

I actually believe Adam when he says he has reliable sources, but ultimately it came of as just a way to attract attention to their site.

heh byron actually it’s because of the NYT and Wash Post, and NY Post, Star Trib, LA times, and others, over the past decade that I’m sick of anonymous sources. The Sulzbergers have run it into the ground. Any time the NYT wants to publish a hit piece on some politician their editors don’t like, they drudge up an anonymous souce who agrees with them. The most ridiculous stuff gets printed right on the front pages with no evidence but rumors.

A whistleblower and a disgruntled employee are two different things, but some newspapers that used to be the most respected don’t seem to understand that.

It doesn’t bother me what wow.com does or doesn’t post about because they’re basically just a blog and not the New York Times or Blizzard’s official website…. Also, print media that claims to be actual news publishes all sorts of dumb and untrue junk all the time. I’m just saying that you can choose to trust the National Inquirer, drudge report, or the New York Time’s stories, or you can choose not to. Information sources can decide how reliable and respectable they want to be. I’ve seen news stands in the grocery store say the most horrible things about people, and fake things that are obviously not true. There are also more reputable sources that have more integrity and don’t purposefully publish false information. The public doesn’t get to decide how reliable or respectable they are, they are basically allowed to build or destroy their own reputations as they feel fit.

However, there are times where it’s more respectable to not reveal who your source is… like when revealing your source would get them fired from their jobs and cause the person who gave you the great story tip to live in a cardboard box on the side of the road…

One of the things I’ve noticed as my blog has grown is that the “blowhard commentor factor” grows along with your blog exponentially. I realize that WoW.com has problems, but I blame most of the nasty comments on the fact that WoW.com is the biggest fish in the sea. We all know that people like to tear down the leader and call him an idiot.

I also think a lot of the nay sayers miss read WoW.com’s post. Many of the people I saw saying that WoW.com was wrong are people seemed to think that WoW.com was using MMO-Champion as its source, when the post clearly says that that many people speculated that they were two new races and linked MMO-champion as a source of that speculation.
Graylo´s last blog ..Patch Notes 3.2.2

You seem to be stating News reporting websites shouldn’t hold any responsibility for what they post and that they should post anything they hear regardless of authenticity or reliability of sources?

You also seem to be of the opinion “You don’t trust their stories? Don’t read them” which is an incorrect attitude to take. I don’t read many of my countries newspapers but still end up hearing about some of the ridiculous stories in them. What I’m saying is even though I don’t read Wow.com I still end up hearing of their stories as speculation and stories spread from one unreliable source to another.

Vanilla has/had one
Burning Crusade has/had one

WotLK already has a full zone dedicated to trolls and their animal gods. Only some of the lore exsisting and/or potential has been realized. Trolls are a big part of a different evil in WoW, the Trolls in ZD specfically fight with the scourge(some not all)

Ultimately its one of those things that everyone feels and knows will come.

Wow.com is not a ‘news’ site, it’s a blog. The end.

Get your news from the front page of the official site. Everything else is commentary, opinion and rumor.
Petal´s last blog ..RAF Update!

And again, most of the people with problems don’t understand the ethics or real life consequences of journalism…they just hate Adam because (a) they do not like the news, or (b) they are jealous of his inside sources. The playerbase does not understand that it is better to have anonymous information than none at all, so kudos to wow.com for putting up with these people.
DFitz´s last blog ..The Spirit of Kindness: Pay It Forward

- Data-mining
- Blue Post Recycling
- Speculation

It’s hard to make a real news website out of these, especially when the biggest source of news is readily available to readers through Blizzard’s own website.

Websites like MMO-champ do thier business by filtering out the crap and showing you the important stuff as well as doing the Azerothian equivilent of investigative journalism. The only informer is the game client itself.

What websites like WoW.com do, which is something I admire in a wierd way, is take the very business like manner of WoW news reporting and try and spice it up.

I honestly think that most of the reporting on that site is somewhat good-natured and honest, but when you ham it up as much as they do you’re bound to make a slip up and sound more serious than you are.

As for plaguerism, when I used to write for the Warcry WoW site I found that it was damn near impossible to ‘break’ a story when we’re all getting our news from the same source. I got lucky once finding some screenshots and details from the Headless Horseman encounter on the Test Realm forums days before other news sites, but even then I was just rehasing (and crediting) some random player on the forums.

So at the end of the day, I think that the nature of WoW news makes it nearly impossible for the same rules of journalistic integrity to exist as do in real life.

That said, how often have we really gotten ‘zomginsiderinfo’ from a source at Blizzard? They’ve got us eating out of thier hands!
Criseyde´s last blog ..Onyxia to return, DOTs suddenly in demand!