MMO Fashion – Visual Databases
Someone on Reddit really angered me this morning, so I decided to write this blog post to give people a little more insight into how the visual databases work on the MMO Fashion sites.
When we first start a site, Dulfy helps me by doing a great deal of the initial screen captures and advertising of the site. We spend a lot of time in a new game, because if we didn’t have something to start with, no one would ever look at the site. But, Dulfy.net keeps her very busy and she is unable to spend much time working on the Fashion sites in the long term. That leaves the majority of updating all eight visual databases to me. That’s seven separate games that I am expected to play, collect or craft items, take screenshots, and post to the site. Obviously, it’s impossible for one person to do that. There just isn’t enough time in the day.
When Dulfy first started TOR Fashion, she built it so that the community members could help update the site by sending in screenshots. In fact, I got involved with TOR Fashion in the first place because I was constantly sending in sets, but she didn’t have time to upload them. She also designed it so that no one had to create an account or had to do the work of posting the items themselves. This made it a lot easier on the community than a Wiki where each individual person has to do the updating. EDIT: We have to rely on the community because the sites don’t make enough to hire someone. No one is going to work on these full time and not get paid, so we have to rely on the people who use the sites to help out with items they already have.
This works great for as long as the community is willing to continue sending in pics. Unfortunately, many people believe that since it’s my site, its solely my responsibility to collect every item in every game and post it. They start complaining on the sites or in social media that something hasn’t been updated yet or that I “dgaf.” Others complain that something needs to be fixed, but don’t try to help out by sending in a pic.
These kinds of comments and the attitude in general are really wearing me down. I didn’t get into this to make money or get recognition (good thing because in three years I’ve never made a dime and everyone gives Dulfy credit for the work I do). I did it because I played SWTOR and really wanted a place where I could see the armor sets. We kept adding games because people liked having a site like TOR Fashion for the games they played. I’ve had to give up playing games except when I’m working to obtain items to put on the sites. That’s ok, because I enjoy working on the sites, even more so than playing the games I am covering. But the negativity and backlash are really making me reconsider whether this is worth my time.
What I want anyone who takes the time to read this to get out of it is: If you want a good resource, you need to help out by submitting items to the database. If you don’t want to help, then quit complaining.
Exile
P.S. I would like to sincerely apologize to those people who have sent in items to TOR Fashion, especially D. Rose. I am way behind in getting them updated. They are on my list, it just takes a lot longer to update TOR Fashion than the other sites because it is a much more complicated site. I really hope to have enough time this weekend to knock them all out. EDIT: I was able to complete them today (10 Mar 16).
Thank you for the work you do! ESO-Fashion is my go-to location.
Thank you. I wish I had time to do more with that site, but it is the worst with there not being a preview and having to gather all those materials to do crafting.
Honestly, I never once thought negatively towards this site or what you do. The game I play is Blade and Soul, and the sheer amount of stuff combined with RNG required to get it and the fact that 98% of it is untradeable makes it literally impossible for one person to do. It truly is a community effort.
It’s like that for a lot of games. I think ESO might be the worst with it’s crafted armor and weapons. There is absolutely no way one person could ever craft the thousands and thousands of different sets.
You suck, you should be able to do all the things at all the times. Duh! 😉
Those who complain should either help or go make their own site if they think that they can do better.
I don’t know how things are done but can you find another person who would be willing to help with one or more of the sites, like someone who can login when they can but aren’t pressured to check every day so it doesn’t feel like a job? I don’t know, just thinking out loud. Anyway, keep up the good work (you and all those who submit images/info).
We actually had someone do that for TOF Fashion and someone else for WildStar Fashion, but they don’t stick around for very long.
Ah, gotcha. By the way, I’m suddenly getting a “502 bad gateway” error when trying to come to this post, I had to get to the comments through Disqus.
Weird. Sometimes MMO Fashion breaks and I have to re-do permalinks, but they seem to be working fine. Maybe there was just too much traffic on all the sites right then.
I’m sorry there are those who are less than appreciative of free access to a visual database for some of the games they play even if it’s not comprehensive. The attitude seems quite prevalent in the video game community in general, like when some Steam players got all fired up about Valve’s program to allow modders to sell their mods.
All I can do is say thanks for stepping up and not letting tor-fashion slide into obsolescence. I know I couldn’t have maintained the dedication to these sites that you have. You’ve provided a very helpful service for so many players. It’s just a shame that some can’t be more grateful for what they have.
Thank you very much for the kind comments.
Being still fairly new to SWTOR, as I started playing only about six months ago, and pretty quickly getting into the outfit making and customization thing as well as strongholds, your sites were absolutely invaluable to me. Without them I’d probably have been completely and utterly lost. Actually “lost” is pretty much how I felt until I found your sites. Both TOR Fashion and Decorating continue to be invaluable resources to me, because they help me decide whether or not to spend an oftentimes significant amount of credits on decorations, find that one piece of armor that I needed to perfect an outfit, or just give me inspiration.
We rarely commend people on a job well done but are quick to complain when we think them at fault, and that is a real shame. It’s unfair too. Therefore, I also wanted to take the time to thank you for maintaining these sites. Saying “thanks” is a minuscule effort compared to all the work, time and money you put into keeping them running, but it is the least I can do as someone who uses the sites almost daily. I also think it’s silly that it took a blog post where you voice your frustration for me to think of it, but I guess it’s better than never saying it at all.
So, sincerely, thank you. Thank you for doing a great job.
(That kinda got longer than I intended. That “dgaf” thing just ticked me off so much though that I wanted to say something. :/)
Thank you very much. That “dgaf” thing pissed me off so much I wrote a long blog post. 🙂
I appreciate all the work you do and I’ve enjoyed the site for several years now. If there is anything I can help with, just let me know.
Thank you very much. I think this post kind of helped get my point across. I just spent 5 hours working on submissions that people sent in since yesterday morning. I am more than willing to work every single day on this, but I can’t stand it when people criticize and aren’t willing to help out themselves.
Wow, that’s a lot! Yeah, unfortunately the internet doesn’t always bring the best out in people. Ignorance is bliss :(.
People tend to have more time to send stuff in on the weekends. Luckily, I’m retired now so I don’t have to worry about losing my weekends to this. 🙂
Many people are quite rude on the internet. I’m going to keep calling them out for it though and maybe one or two will take a second to think about what they are typing.
Hear, hear. I have the same attitude. Although it can be difficult to not curse some times.
Tell me about it. 20 years in the military will make you talk like a sailor whether you were in the Navy or not.
I logged in to Disqus to say “Thank you.” I appreciate your efforts very much. I’ve spent several hours going through Star Wars outfits looking for stuff to outfit my toons and listening to guns and sabers.
Second, you haven’t made a dime? You guys have to be pulling in mad traffic with a set of resources this good. I feel like perhaps some other channels of income might be worth investigating if PPC ads aren’t working for you. You definitely deserve to be making a decent income for all the work you put in here.
Thank you very much. It really helps to keep me motivated when people say they appreciate the sites.
The sites make enough money to pay for the operating costs. In the two years since I took over completely, I’ve upgraded a lot of the infrastructure and did some major re-design work that has cost me a lot of money and costs a lot more to operate on a daily basis. I’ve tried switching to other another ad company and wasn’t able to come close to breaking even, so I went back to Google.
I’ve had people suggest Patreon. I’ve thought about setting that up and giving Patreon supporters accounts where they can create their own pages and make changes to their posts. They’d be able to write up character biographers and put whatever they want on their page. This would be a lot of work for me to manage since I would need to come up with a way for anyone to update their page, not just those people with HTML and CSS knowledge. I would also need to be able to limit their access to what they could change, so I could make sure no one deleted the standard code for each post. I can just imagine how much time I would spend fixing people’s mistakes. I have no idea how many people would actually be interested in that and whether it would be worth the amount of time I would have to put into it to make it work correctly.
I wouldn’t want to put any other content behind a paywall because it’s always been the goal of the websites to be a place where people did not need an account to take full advantage of the site, including uploading pics. I can just imagine how many people would get angry if I started making them pay to use the sites.