RPG Vault - Closing Down?

Richard 'Jonric' Aihoshi has said farewell at RPG Vault after IGN canceled his contract, saying he thinks RPG Vault will stop publishing. While the site has focused heavily on MMOs these last couple of years, in its hay day, Jonric was one of the premiere RPG feature writers and a daily trip to RPG Vault was mandatory to get the big interviews and developer diaries:

Today marks the end of a highly fulfilling period in my life. IGN has canceled my contract to work on RPG Vault, so this is my last day doing so. I've had a great run, starting back around 12 years ago when Vault Network was still an independent. I started writing about games as another way to enjoy them, with no thought of ever making a cent. So, I certainly didn't imagine that it would turn into a full-time career for a decade.

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Best of luck for the future, Jonric.
More information.

beeduh bump bump bump another one bitesthedust beeduh bump bump bump.

its too bad. I used to go there for my rpg news before I found the dot. they used to have quite a bit on Baldur's Gate IIRC. But I haven't looked there in years.

shame. can any of the other Vaults be next if the general one goes down? not that they are the least bit related anymore it seems. quite frankly I get annoyed at seeing IGN and Vault ads so prominent lately on NWVault.

Some of the GameSpy sites are going as well, such as RPG Planet - can't remember where I saw the announcement.

NW Vault hasn't been on its game for a while (other than as a file repository). I check there every day and noticed even official news like the release of MoW is late or missing.

Seems niche sites, no matter how big, are no longer part of the concept.

I was a regular at RPGVault when it first began. Then it changed too much and I haven't been there in years unless as part of a link from here.

Sadly all of that stuff is seen as non-revenue-generating cost ...

IGN itself has changed a lot--much more of a commercial site now, with a lot of its blurbs having more of a "press release" flavor than a reporting or editorial one...sad to see the Vault go, but really it's been mostly focused on MMO's for quite awhile now.

magerette said:

IGN itself has changed a lot--much more of a commercial site now, with a lot of its blurbs having more of a "press release" flavor than a reporting or editorial one...sad to see the Vault go, but really it's been mostly focused on MMO's for quite awhile now.

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I stopped going to Gamespot PC for this reason. It's just pages of pre alpha concept art HD video feeds.

I haven't followed RPG Vault for a few years. Jonric will be missed.
First Dessloc, now Scorpia and Jonric.

It's a sad day for RPG's, at least we can rely on RPGWatch for news.

Shaf

Is there anybody that actually makes money with a 'game news' website? Seems like it's a 'fan based' endeavor by default.

RPG vault was my primary source of RPG related news. Then it sold to IGN and went all commercial. It turned into garbage after that and I stopped going there.

Well, long live the watch. Let's all drink to Myrthos' health

I'll drink to that

GhanBuriGhan said:

Well, long live the watch. Let's all drink to Myrthos' health

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Totally . . .

I hope if there are looming issues for Myrthos that might make maintaining this site a problem that he'll give the community here a chance to help with them before it has to close.

Benedict said:

I hope if there are looming issues for Myrthos that might make maintaining this site a problem that he'll give the community here a chance to help with them before it has to close.

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Please correct me if I'm wrong but the way I understood the deal, if we buy enough games from gog.com using the top right banner, that won't have to happen. Buy DRM free games we like AND help our beloved site = awesome bargain.

Hedek said:

Please correct me if I'm wrong but the way I understood the deal, if we buy enough games from gog.com using the top right banner, that won't have to happen. Buy DRM free games we like AND help our beloved site = awesome bargain.

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There's not that much stuff on GOG that I hadn't played back in the day unfortunately, and it's a rather indirect way of supporting the watch.

At the moment the income from ads does not cover the cost (we're a long way from that). But at the moment I'm not interested in making any profit or even breaking even. I even decline requests for placing ads on RPGWatch because I find their proposals too intrusive.

Dhruin said:

Some of the GameSpy sites are going as well, such as RPG Planet - can't remember where I saw the announcement.

NW Vault hasn't been on its game for a while (other than as a file repository). I check there every day and noticed even official news like the release of MoW is late or missing.

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Hmm..I think I mixed up RPGVault with RPGPlanet..or BGPlanet. Regardless it seems to be the trend in this recession. IGN is closing down its free hosting service including my own webpage I designed for a class in college.

http://luckyday.nwvault.ign.com/

(sorry about you high res screen users. frontpage defaulted to a fixed frame size and I would only really learn HTML in my PHP class 6 months later. I never bothered to fix it).

I agree with your assessment of NWVault too. Like RPGVault with Jonric the domination of NWVault over all other NWN websites including Bio's own forums was largely due to one man too, Maximus. He was promoted within IGN some time ago which is good because since the birth of his children he hasn't had time for it which is a good thing.

Beyond the Pale largely runs it now, and as you said most of the information is automated now. The slow down in quality is largely due to the age of games and obviously the second game hasn't had near the longevity of the first.

When The Vault didn't bother to mention the passing of Dave Arneson (who claimed a few times to be a NWN enthusiast) I thought that was very telling of the interest level the staff has for the site now.

One of the other reasons for its success IMO is that it was created before the IGN merger and didn't have some of the silly rules enforced on other Vaults such as the TQ one. It required you to register befoer you could download anything IIRC.

I'd be curious to know what happens to the Terabytes of info if and when IGN decides to close it down.

In a similar vein, what keeps me coming back here is the work Dhruin and other staff members put into it and the obvious efforts Myrthos puts into the maintenance behind the scenes.

Curious Myrthos, does this server sit at your house or in a lab somewhere?

No the server is rented from Strato (a German company).