It’s been quite a while since my last Fireside Chat, and there is actually quite a bit of information to divulge. Firstly, I’ll begin with a bit of light-hearted news by saying that we are officially affiliated with the Hidden Triforce, listed as “Legend Zelda” on our affiliates list. This marks the official end of a three month stand off of sorts between us and them due to a disagreement over some posted content. Rest assured, however, that this relationship is founded on renewed hope for a better friendship than last time. We are pleased to welcome them back to our list of Affiliates.

However, the meat of this Fireside Chat is, of course, about my very frank opinions of the going ons of the rest of the Zelda community. Just to summarize, I will be talking about: Zelda Dungeon‘s revamped forums, Zelda Informer‘s new layout, and the community at large.

Zelda Dungeon has never been known for its forum community, and this has always been because the rules at their forums have always been stringent and restrictive. The main topics of discussion were Zelda, and Zelda, and Zelda, and posting about anything else has always been a headache. Their philosophy has worked for them, though, and as it stands, they get far more activity than we do here. Given, this is due to the sheer massive amount of traffic that Zelda Dungeon receives in general, but it is still an accomplishment. They, a site known for their strong game content, has a strong forum community without even trying.

Recently, though, they underwent a revamp. The layout from before had already existed for two years, so a change of any kind would have attracted attention. However, the thing that makes this layout change so significant is the integrated look that they achieved, identical to the effect we produce here at our site. Why is this so significant? It signifies that Mases has finally decided to actually care about his forums enough to make them a real part of the site, instead of just an attachment that is maybe worth going to (if you have the time). Looking at their index, the prevalence of all discussions Zelda being more important than anything else, including site and forum updates, is unchanged. The game discussion boards dominate the index, with one general category at the bottom. What I notice, though, is that it is larger and has more forums to choose from. Perhaps they are trying to appeal to a more broad audience to compete with the likes of Zelda Universe? Their most users online in one day at Zelda Dungeon was actually two days ago on the 23rd, with 192 people having logged in that day. While ours is higher (at 541) it was almost two years ago.

This is yet another chapter in the history of Zelda Dungeon and its never ending goal to be the top Zelda site. Who knows? In a year, their forums may be more active than those at Zelda Universe. Mases can only hope.

Another significant community event would be Zelda Informer 3.0. Just look at that for a second. Zelda Informer. Not noticing it? Well, what I’m noticing is the fact that they are no longer “ZeldaInformer”, as one word. It is a sort of silly thing to point out, but it definitely signals to me that they are going in a new direction. Since the site’s inception, it has been known as “ZeldaInformer” with no space, and I’ve been alerted multiple times, along with other webmasters, that inserting a space is incorrect and somewhat offensive. For it to change is highly significant. To what ends remain to be seen, but I have a hunch I’ll explain in a minute.

The biggest thing about their layout is the sheer contrast it is to not only their last layout, but pretty much the layout of every other active Zelda site. Nowhere on it is there a prominent image of the Zelda series. Now, I’m referring simply to the static layout, and not the content posted on it. The only real image I’ve found that is from the Zelda series and recognizable is down at the very bottom, with all the shortcut links. If you don’t already know where I’m going with this, then you’re in luck because I was going to explain it anyway.

Overall, the new layout looks nothing like the traditional “zelda site” and rather, looks like a generic gaming site. This isn’t to say that Zelda Informer is going in that direction, but they are certainly straying away from the typical. The layout is, as you can see simply by viewing it, sleek, functional, and mundane. There is nothing that overly stands out as “wow” about it, but rather it all goes together to form a layout that just gets the job done. Whether this atypical style will work in their benefit or not remains to be seen, but I’ve seen some pretty terrible layouts in the community over the years and those sites still exist strong, so if I had to guess, I’d say it will work extremely well to their advantage.

A huge disappointment for me, however, is their lack of forum integration. The forum layout has contrasting, dark color scheme, and the only connection it really holds to its host site is the modified banner at the top, and the URL. This is no easy way to navigate back to the front page from the forums, and it really feels as if I’d left Zelda Informer and gone somewhere else, rather than simply moved from one section of the site to another. For a site that prides itself on innovation, moving forward, and striving to be the best, especially when staffers there have expressed interest in bringing more attention to the forums, this is not only disappointing, but almost just unacceptable. Especially given their recent merging with the VGRC forums, an entirely separate gaming site, one would think that they’d pay more attention to things such as this. Whether or not this will be corrected as an update to the current layout, or in a future layout change for the site in general remains to be seen.

Overall, though, the new layout, so soon after their last layout change, which came back in late July after two years with the same layout, reveals that the overall unenthusiastic response it garnered wasn’t as inconsequential to their staff as they made it appear to be. The last layout was, to put it bluntly, black and white and boring. This new layout, though divergent from typical Zelda themes, is none of those three things. Though it is neither flashy nor overly exciting, it at least is interesting and designed with striking expertise. Hopefully this foreshadows a future as bright for Zelda Informer as their new layout is compared to the previous.

To conclude, it saddens me that after visiting over twelve other Zelda sites, these were the only two really significant events I could find to comment on. This is a bleak time for us in the Zelda Community; the hype and general excitement from the release of Spirit Tracks has died down, and we are between Zelda games, eagerly anticipating the next release. At least we know it’s coming on 2010.

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