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Given she’s a Lesbian, openly and unabashedly so?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Given she’s a Lesbian, openly and unabashedly so?

You would be surprised how little that actually matters to many men TBH

I’m friends with the BoLS ‘old Guard’.

One bloke. Just the one.

Like i have a question
What happened to BOLS? Did it just try to make money off it so it just hosted ad after ad?
How does a site go so bad?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Like i have a question
What happened to BOLS? Did it just try to make money off it so it just hosted ad after ad?
How does a site go so bad?

I think it's a matter of both chasing ad revenue and not wanting to actually put the work into the site to garner growth and make the community it hosted sustainable. It's far easier to give into click-baity articles and have their own "old boys club" than it is to have quality content. There may have been some people with enough passion initially but once you lose the first few critical people and you have no-one to really replace them, you just go downhill from there. Doesn't help that with the advent of social media, there's so many different sub-groups on either facebook, discord, or more useful blogs like Goonhammer people can just join now, so it's not like there's a particular niche they fill well at all tbh.

Paying BoLS sounds like a perfect waste of my hobby $.
The few times I've logged in over the recent years I've found less & less worth reading and I've never found anything worth paying for.
So unless their content has drastically improved.....But I'm not going to pay them for the privilege of finding out.

Now i remember.

Yeah, i agree with ccs.

Yeah....what? In my very few interactions with BoLS (normally following a link from somewhere like Dakka without checking the URL first) it's been about the least pleasant website I've ever encountered, including ones set up purely to deliver malware. Seemed like it was entirely clickbait headlines and wither regurgitated "news" or straight made-up crap. Given the ease with which you can find good wargaming material on the internet for free I'm struggling to figure out who this is aimed at except the terminally gullible and stupid.

BOLS used to have more pages of js running in the background than a major porn site. Not 1 or 2 pages more, but a couple of dozen more pages.

When you are less likely to get your computer infected by a porn site than a "gaming" one, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.

 chromedog wrote:
BOLS used to have more pages of js running in the background than a major porn site. Not 1 or 2 pages more, but a couple of dozen more pages.

When you are less likely to get your computer infected by a porn site than a "gaming" one, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.

what have the danes been up to now?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
BOLS used to have more pages of js running in the background than a major porn site. Not 1 or 2 pages more, but a couple of dozen more pages.

When you are less likely to get your computer infected by a porn site than a "gaming" one, there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.

what have the danes been up to now?

Well, we’ve never quite forgiven their rancidness after that Shakespeare guy went and wrote a tragedy about pork product there. Bad meat or something.

I've never had any actual issues with the site and only swing by there maybe once or twice a week at best. The whole prime paywall thing has been around for at least a couple months on certain content as I remember encountering the popup after clicking on headline articles a few months back.

As for the quality of the content, they're basically the buzzfeed of tabletop wargaming with random gaming Top 5 list articles and other empty filler taking up way too much screenspace; I wouldn't be surprised if they added recipes and wrestling articles soon just to generate more content. I do like their occasional retro model line reviews though.

I dunno how ANYONE could look at the quality of BOLS' articles and say "ya know what? I'm gonna subscribe!" gaming news is pretty niche, but I'd consider paying for it if the articles where amazing, they had some intreasting exclusive content (interviews with developers etc) etc. but for what it is now? yeaaah no.

hell given the malware issues others have noted... I'd not trust them with my CC number

I think the only reason they've not vanished into darknes is because they pay a lot to advertise. I know that on Facebook their articles and spiky bits keep appearing randomly whilst somewhere more reputable like Beasts of War hardly appears.

Clearly they've found a balancing point where they can just about push out enough articles and advertising to keep themselves popular for the casual market; whilst turning enough profit from clicks and subscriptions.


It likely doesn't help that they also title everything with clickbait titles. "NEW Edition next week" actual article "we talk about what might happen if it were to happen for 2 short paragraphs whilst putting an add between each line"

I also gotta say the behavior of one of their "reporters" was pretty disgusting.
So the guy in question was their guy who reviewed the video game BFG:A and honestly it was a pretty lame review https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2016/03/battlefleet-gothic-armada-get-this-game-now.html

you can just feel the guy's ego on that can't you? well anyway on the BFG:A fourms he was absolutely TOXIC but bragged about how he should be respected "because Im a game reporter for BOLS!"

after BFG:A launched the company making it did a NDA's tester program for future patches etc (I BTW was part of it, it was a lot of fun to test out Space Marines before anyone else got them) this jerk despite being full of himself wasn't put on the program (Tilandos got a nice cross section of the player base, and didn't cater exclusivly to "RTS try hard fanatics") so he basicly starts leaning on members of this program and enchouraging them to leak, and was eventually caught. he got banned but the damage was done and basicly they could no longer trust their test group.
very sad. And that ladies and gentlemen is the type of person BOLS has writing for them.

I stopped going to BoLS a few years ago and only recently followed a link back to look at something or other. I remembered quickly why I stopped going there. it's just rage click articles and junk. Not worth giving them a click.
Haven't been back, no plans to either.

The day I walked away from BOLS was the day someone barraged me with quotes from Kat Blaque to tell me I was wrong for being an egalitarian.

somewhere more reputable like Beasts of War

I guess that depends on whether you prefer up front advertising or accepting money to produce editorial content as the business model for commercial sites.

I imagine that it's very difficult to keep producing new content for the hobby. Goonhammer's currently on the upswing, but they have what seems to be a VERY large number of people contributing out of the goodness of their heart. They have a Patreon, but it's completely optional. It also doesn't have a forum, just comments sections (which I avoid out of habit).

I think BOLS tried to monetize an online presence in the hobby too early in the life of the hobby; I don't think there was (or even currently IS) the critical mass needed to support something like that. There just aren't enough eyeballs with $5 a year (which seems to me to be a sustainable business model for most gamers) to be able to make a living off of it. Most sites that don't have intrusive ads (either some ads, like Dakka, or Patreon supported) are just trying to pay server costs.

It sucks that it happened. I've interacted with some of the BOLS folks a LONG time ago at Adepticons, and they always seemed very enthusiastic about what they did. They also seem to have attracted some unsavory personalities to their site (this is purely based on what's been said in this thread, and other grumblings around the internet; I've not personally experienced this myself). That's because people want to be included in <The Group>, where <The Group> is a faction keyword that can be anything you want (my primary <The Group> is very, very small, and I'm peripherally part of a few other small <The Groups&gt.

Unfortunately, BOLS seems to have locked in their reputation, so changing it wouldn't be a quick process. It always makes me a little sad, as I respect anyone who's honestly trying to generate good hobby content. As a friend of mine once said, "Ninety percent of the hobby is talking about the hobby".

Ooh, there's an idea: Forum keywords and faction keywords.

Well, at least this thread pointed me in the direction of Goonhammer!

So yeah, BoLS kinda sorta did some good in the end...