EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7Jgvel6.jpg)
For a bit of backstory behind this, go to the end of the post
Hey guys,
In light of recent community response to the launch of liquiddota.com, I wanted to share my own opinions on the site. Expanding to LiquidDota was not a light decision, and much deliberation and planning went into its launch. As such, it's a bit saddening to see a fairly negative community reaction, so I'll try to summarise my own thoughts about the site.
While it pains me to link to a StarTale fan's post, Zealously has already written a post detailing some staff opinions to some popular criticisms. While I am also staff, I'd like to talk from my own views as a user and contributor of the site. My staff status is more of a convenience for me anyway (to manage the calendar and LRs and so on), and not because I'm involved with executive decisions, so you shouldn't take this as an official TL stance - it's just opterown's 2 cents.
TeamLiquid and Dota 2
When Dota 2 was first introduced on TeamLiquid, it wasn't exactly to unanimous appeal. While many people were positive, there were concerns that Dota 2 would bring excessive clutter, split staff focus up, and that TL would lose its longstanding focus on StarCraft.
With the announcement of the Liquid Dota pro-team and TeamLiquid coverage, there was an initial increase in the number of users who registered specifically for our Dota content. However, there have always been small issues with TeamLiquid and its Dota coverage. For example, Dota 2 favourite teams took a while to add, and user icons were still Brood War units. The Dota eSports scene isn't particularly suited to the TeamLiquid Calendar, which had otherwise worked fine with StarCraft before that. Sure, Brood War and SC2 share many similarities, but most do not extend to Dota 2.
While there was some initial interest in the Dota coverage, over time it became clear that our Dota section was not growing as it should. If you look through the announcement thread, you can see many users have single-digit post counts - which reflects a fleeting interest in Dota 2 with the announcement, but little retention of that interest.
Furthermore, TeamLiquid coverage started to become very crowded. With the sheer volume of eSports content from both games, news and spotlights got half the screen time they would have otherwise had. TeamLiquid started as a StarCraft site, and inevitably users who visited for StarCraft would have an impaired experience, due to the presence of other featured coverage on the front page too. Dota fans who wanted Dota content would be inundated with StarCraft news, which was always TL's priority.
Even though filters were available to allow users to customise their TeamLiquid content, the vast majority of TL's userbase were either not logged in, not aware of the filter options, or never bothered with it despite knowing it was there. Filters are a way to keep the power user or the hardcore member happy, but they are near useless for most users. This means negatively impacting the users who wanted StarCraft only, or Dota only. Thus, TeamLiquid did not become a site that catered for a fan of Dota - it was a site that catered to fans of StarCraft who also liked Dota, and TeamLiquid became "that StarCraft site that covers Dota as well."
So, in the end, our TeamLiquid staff were in favour of splitting the Dota 2 coverage off the main TeamLiquid site, and moving it offsite, much like LiquidHearth.
The justification for LiquidDota
An offsite hub for Dota-specific content had
Yes, it may seem that LiquidDota is stepping on veteran users' toes in order to attract new users, but sometimes progress must be achieved. If TeamLiquid's Dota coverage had a stagnant userbase that was not attracting new users, eventually it would peter out as forum members age and move on.
Another positive about moving Dota 2 offsite is the benefits for StarCraft fans. As I talked about above, TeamLiquid was becoming crowded with too much coverage. Without Dota 2, StarCraft news should be more strongly featured, which is ideal for fans of StarCraft who are not interested in Dota. LiquidDota itself is ideal for fans of Dota who are not interested in StarCraft. For fans of both games, we're hopeful than an extra bookmark is not too great an inconvenience.
General community
The discussion on whether to keep or leave the community forums was complex - while almost all staff were in favour of splitting coverage, opinions were divided on keeping the existing non-game communities or to build anew on LiquidDota. LiquidDota, as it is, has a brand new community forum without any existing links to TeamLiquid's communities, such as Tech Support, Media & Entertainment, or Sports. In part this is due to technical complications, but there are also ramifications for newer users.
For a recently-registered user, it may not be easy to be a part of those non-game communities. If you visitthe TL General Forum, or larger threads such as Korean Music Discussion, it is daunting to participate. Hell, I've been on TeamLiquid for nearly three years and I'm too scared to venture into the General forum, and I'm sure many newer users think the same.
Bringing those forums over and integrating them on LiquidDota may provide that sense of community, and appease veteran members, but it is not an organic way to build a site community. New users will be similarly deterred by threads with tens of thousands of posts, and the LiquidDota site could not build its own culture with its own userbase - rather, the community still would be carried over from "that StarCraft site that covers Dota."
Of course, there were technical issues with integration of the databases anyway, so the decision was taken out of our hands. While our resident wizard R1CH may be able to address this in the future, it's a difficult discussion with its pros and cons.
What LiquidDota can offer
I'm sure you've noticed many of the new features on LiquidDota. Perhaps the biggest change to the forum is localising it to Dota - with hero icons instead of BW unit icons, Dota 2 favourite teams, and a better forum structure to present Dota, it should be more welcoming than TeamLiquid's StarCraft presentation.
The calendar, too, is brilliant. It was the feature given most thought when designing the site, as the current TeamLiquid calender was woefully inadequate for the Dota eSports scene. You can see the matches of the event, set them to pending/live/done, have clear Liquipedia and Live Report Links, and more. The weekly and monthly views provide a great preview of games to come, and you can filter out games of your favoured teams only. Frankly, as someone who does a lot of calendar and live report work, this is by far the most exciting thing.
LiquidDota has introduced a few new things too, such as the Player and Team threads, where you can discuss, criticise constructively or fanboy over the eSports personality. It's hoped that the players and teams themselves would interact with our community - and EE in particular has taken well to it.
Our coverage team will step it up now that we've got our own site, with regular content and features. As LiquidDota grows, our forums will expand as requires. We don't really have plans for this yet, as it's best for organic growth and to cater to what the community needs, and not what staff thinks the community should be.
Of course, staff will be looking to port any suitable features from the LiquidDota forum over to TeamLiquid and LiquidHeath in due time.
Looking forward
LiquidDota, as you may have noticed, is not quite complete. There are features such as user items not fully implemented, and some design changes may be implemented (such as the colour palette). This is in part due to the launch deadline being before the TI4 qualifiers, but rest assured staff will continue to work on those site features.
As always, constructive criticism is welcome.
Shoutouts
Huge shoutout to wo1fwood and R1CH for being absolute wizards and implementing the site as it is.
Shoutout to the Dota 2 Staff - Heyoka, riptide, TheEmulator, editors, writers and all contributors. I hope we can make LiquidDota into the best place it can be!
Personal shoutout to my TL buddies - you guys know who you are, and you're too numerous to list. I've made too many friends on TL to risk not mentioning one of you here, for which I'd be crucified ;p.
Shoutout to my Dota 2 stack! My in-game team is yth, or Yes Tidehunter. Now, that's not exactly an original name with nth being around before they were Alliance, but it stems from our solo mid player (MaGiCTimE-) essentially forcing all the newer players in the stack to play Tidehunter, and Tidehunter only. He thought it was a fairly easy hero to play, and difficult to feed with. While everyone in the stack is fairly experienced now and plays a wider variety of heroes, Tidehunter remains the most iconic hero of our stack. I was pleasantly surprised when LiquidDota adopted a Tidehunter banner ;p.
And finally, shoutout to everyone reading this post. I hope you can make the most of LiquidDota, and that you enjoy your stay here for many years to come. It's a bit of a long post and I lost my train of thought halfway, but I hope it's coherent. Feel free to leave any comments, criticisms or queries around!
