Wowhead's 2022 Year in Review and Happy New Year

Posted 2023/01/01 at 7:05 PM by perculia

Dragonflight LaunchWotLK Classic LaunchExpanding Into DiabloSite Design ImprovementsWowhead News and GuidesPride Pin FundraiserPride fundraiserThe Trevor Project.Wowhead Team MessagesArchimtiros (News & Community Features)I'm happy to have continued the great work here at Wowhead, bringing news and information to the playerbase, while helping to highlight community concerns and interests. Between new releases, mergers, and upcoming content roadmaps, this an exciting time for both World of Warcraft and all Blizzard games, and so it is my hope that we can continue to rise to the challenge of serving our community as we navigate an exciting new year.Arokan (Gnomish Engineer)As a software engineer at Wowhead, I can confidently say that 2022 has been a wild ride. From debugging code that inexplicably caused llamas to rain from the sky, to introducing a new feature that allowed users to turn their text into a soothing lullaby for their plants, it's been a non-stop adventure.

But perhaps the most memorable moment of the year was when we accidentally merged a branch that turned all of our servers into sentient beings with a thirst for world domination. Luckily, we were able to reverse the changes before any real damage was done, but it did lead to some awkward conversations in our weekly meetings.

Overall, it's been a strange and hilarious year at Wowhead, and I can't wait to see what weird and wacky challenges come our way in 2023. In the meantime, I'm going to go feed my pet rock some organic avocado smoothies and see if it helps with its anxiety.

(This summary generated by AI because arokan was too busy fighting off a swarm of rabid murlocs.)Cinereus (Diablo Content Manager)I'm Cinereus, Wowhead's Online Content Manager for Diablo games. I want to offer my thanks to our readers and to our writers for a great year in Diablo! I'd also like to specifically thank everyone who took the time to comment on how we could make our guides better and more useful. You help make us great! We achieved many firsts for Wowhead, and as the Diablo Content Manager I am looking forward to a smashing 2023.

Sally forth into the New Year, adventurer.

We are proud to have finished our first full year of Diablo coverage.
We battled our way through most of two seasons of Diablo II: Resurrected!
We crafted many runewords and ran innumerable boss runs.
We explored the brand new Diablo Immortal mobile release.
We went from four fearless Diablo contributors to over a dozen adventurers.
Many of us had the opportunity to slay demons in Alpha, Beta, and PR Preview versions of Diablo IV, and to tell our readers about it.
We're busy sharpening our swords and gearing up for the release of Diablo IV in June of next year.

We hope you will join us next year as we battle the minions of Lilith to save Sanctuary once again!DiscordianKitty (Retail News and Lore)As my second year at Wowhead draws to a close, I’m still amazed I get to be part of this incredible team. 2022 is ending on a banger of a note, with Dragonflight already knocking it out of the park. I couldn’t be more excited to be writing about World of Warcraft lore right now.

My favourite article that I got to write this year was the one about the Primus, speculating that the Primus is really the Jailer. I had a lot of fun writing it and even more fun seeing how many people loved the idea. As for my guides, I massively restructured my story guides for Dragonflight so that they’re more comprehensive companions to the lore. We publish a lot of articles about easter eggs, fun questlines, and cinematic analysis, but they can often be lost over time. Now, my lore guides keep them all in one place.

With so many fun things to look forward to coming in the new year, I wish everyone a wonderful 2023 and may all your dreams come true. As for my 2023 plans, I have one big one: For the first time in my life, I hope to attend Blizzcon. Maybe I’ll see you there!Erorus (Goblin Engineer)I'm at Christmas dinner with my extended relatives, and the conversation repeats from last year.
"So, where do you work, again? Still working from home?"
"Yeah, I work for a company called Fanbyte, on a website called Wowhead."
"Uh huh."
"We support a game called World of Warcraft, and the site's like an online strategy guide for the game."
"So you write guides, then?"
"Not really. I maintain the systems to help others write guides, though. I also dig into the code of the game to discover new stuff, and write tools for players to check out different parts of the game."
"... Uh huh. Well, that's good."Dragonflight Talent CalculatorProfession Tree CalculatorDiablo Immortal Build ToolvariousentitiesHunter Pet Talent CalculatorxaeilRekkisPigeonDarokanJerekStivanKetsuki (Community Manager)Another year has come and gone. I feel many of us have grown in many ways, and we can only look forward to the future as we continue to do so. It has been a bit of a small rollercoaster for me in learning new things and balancing others, but overall it has been an excellent experience! With Dragonflight I feel as though I have rekindled a relationship with an old friend and feel as though many share the same feeling as well.

I look forward to this new year with optimism and excitement for the new and wonderful things we have to share with the community, as well as looking forward to Blizzcon once again! Here is to another year, and I am glad to share it with my Wowhead family. Neryssa (Retail News & Guides)Thank you everyone for yet another year at Wowhead! 2022 has been a great yearm with many new things for me personally, and a new expansion for the WoW playerbase! Hope everyone is enjoying Dragonflight as much as I am.

Working on discovering all of Dragonflight both through its development cycle and now, after its release, has certainly been the highlight of the year for me. It does look like the train won't stop anytime soon, as we already have our work cut out for us in the first few weeks of 2023 with Patch 10.0.5 and beyond! Looking forward to continue working with as much drive and passion as ever, and interacting with the community as well.

I would like to wish everyone who reads this small block of text, as well as all the great people I have the pleasure to work with here on Wowhead, an amazing 2023! Season's greetings from my little family to yours :)

Paryah (Retail News & Guides)I'm feeling very privileged to be writing guides and news stuffs for you all, and am looking forward to more from Dragonflight, as well as Diablo IV later in the year. Think of all the brand new guides we'll need to get ready for that! Many thanks to all of the lovely staff, readers, and subscribers of Wowhead. Thanks also to Blizzard for continuing to give us lots of stuff to write about, and to my guild and raid team who put up with me, possibly more than they should. I hope that 2023 is wonderfully full of warm fuzzies for everyone. See you all in Azeroth!Perculia (Site Director)Happy New Year from Perc and Brightpaw! I've been focusing on behind-the-scenes management this year, so we can keep all the different plates spinning as we fire up for Dragonflight, WotLK, and Diablo at once. Between covering more games than ever before and handling all the surprises Blizzard throws our way, it's been very helpful to dedicate more of my time on keeping tools and feature projects on track. I'm really proud of all the care and polish our development and content teams brought to the games Wowhead covered in 2022. While I do miss posting news from time to time and seeing how fast I can type for liveblogs, I feel like we've achieved more than ever before with in-depth tools and coverage! Plus I get to feel like a rogue orchestrating things from the shadows as I plan everything out :)

As for Brightpaw, his biggest accomplishments for the year are learning how to unlatch the door to the basement and carry his treats jar onto the bed.

I hope you have a wonderful and healthy 2023!

PigeonD (Datamining Team)At the time of writing 2022 is almost over and I still can't beleive Dragonflight was announced only around eight months ago. I felt our whole team has worked on a million things for this new expansion, and we're already getting to 10.0.5 very soon too! On top of that there is also new Wrath Classic updates to work on so it's busier than ever. I know I say this every year but I will say it again. It's been wonderful to work with everyone on the Wowhead team. Lots of fun moments. I'd also like to thank everyone who has given feedbacks and bug reports to the Wowhead Client and the Looter addon throughout the year.

I wish everyone a wonderful new year. Enjoy Dragonflight!RenataKane (Retail, Classic & Diablo Guides)"Crazy busy" is how I would describe 2022! With three major releases -- Dragonflight, Wrath of the Lich King Classic, Diablo Immortal, with the much-anticipated Diablo IV coming in 2023 -- there was never a shortage of things to research and guides to write.

Dragonflight has been a breath of fresh air, with a return to familiar lore and humor and a comprehensive revamp of one of my favorite systems, Professions. We also welcomed a large group of new writers to Wowhead this year; I'm consistently impressed with their dedication and quality, especially given the many challenges Dragonflight posed for us.

Looking forward to 2023, especially with the news of the first in-person BlizzCon since 2019. Even though I've played since 2006, this will be my first BlizzCon. Looking forward to meeting my Wowhead compatriots in person (finally!), my many podcasting friends, and all Blizzard enthusiasts. And Professions team, the first round is on me.Rokman (WoW Classic Content Manager)2022 was quite a year for the Classic Wowhead team! Together we updated guides for all of the Classic Season of Mastery phases, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas on Classic's first Season. We witnessed the hardcore community kill Ragnaros with Soul of Iron, a truly magnificent feat! For the Burning Crusade, we prepared best in slot gear guides for Black Temple, Zul'Aman, and the Sunwell Plateau. During the Scourge Invasion Pre-Patch, we put together class guides for Death Knights, a new class for the Classic community. Additionally, the team put together hundreds of guides for the Launch of Wrath of the Lich King Classic, covering professions, class mechanics, boss strategy, and everything else in between.

I also had the opportunity to interview WoW Classic Developer Brian Birmingham, leading up to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, asking the community's most common questions. After it was announced that there would be significant changes to item levels for Ulduar, I also had the opportunity to interview Kris Zierhut, to get clarification around the item changes and why the team decided to go down that road.

Looking at 2023, there is a massive update we've been preparing for with the launch of Ulduar on Wrath Classic, as well as the entirely new Titan Rune Dungeon system being added. We are also very excited for the possibility of a new Season for Classic World of Warcraft and the potential for new content in 2023. Cheers to the amazing Wowhead team and to the entire WoW community, I can't wait to meet everyone at Blizzcon!Stiven (Datamining Team)Year 2022 was a really challenging Year for me and team at Wowhead. Together we worked on launching Dragonflight site but the most challenging was working on Diablo Immortal datamining and preparing database for site launch. I must say I even learn Chinese langauge while doing this. And after all this madness now we have Diablo 4, that I been working on for a few month, and so far I really enjoy looking at what Blizzard is preparing for us next year, and having Diablo 4 modelviewer and site is my primary objective. I'm very proud of the Wowhead team, and I am really happy to be the part of this family for 7 years, and that family is getting bigger each Year!

I also want to thank for the all support of our community. You are great. I look forward for the next World of Warcraft major patches and back with datamining streams. And yeah I do plan to stream Diablo 4 next year :)

I wish you all Happy New Year 2023!Tharid (Diablo News and Guides)2022 has been an exciting year for Wowhead's Diablo section! First, we successfully covered Diablo II: Resurrected's inaugural ladder season. In June, Blizzard released Diablo Immortal, and we aimed to provide as much information as possible about Diablo's first foray into the mobile world, including a comprehensive Diablo Immortal database and several tools like the Character Build Tool or the Paragon Skill Calculator. That also included coverage of numerous controversial topics discussed within the community, and we learned a lot during that time as content creators and long-time members of the Diablo community.

To me, the highlight of 2022 was the reveal of Diablo IV's release date! 2023 will be an even more exciting year for Wowhead's Diablo section as we will strive to provide excellent and up-to-date Diablo IV content and tools for players of all kinds.

Happy New Year and see you in Sanctuary!Zee (Datamining Team)Hello everyone, I'm Zee, or some may know me by my real name Flavius.

It was 3 years ago that I was messing around with the Unity engine, making a model viewer for Warcraft 3 Reforged when the Lord of Datamining Stiven and I met on Discord and he offered me the opportunity to come work at Wowhead. That hobby project evolved over time, we added support for many games and is now called Wowhead Studio.

It's hard to describe how amazing it is to be able to turn your hobby into a career, learning how video-games are made, writing tools to play with video game models and maps and so on. And I would like to thank everyone at Wowhead for the opportunity, and for the chance to create something that I love.

With 2023 around the corner, I think this year has been truly great for everyone at Wowhead, but also the players. The direction that Blizzard took with World of Warcraft has been absolutely great so far, I've seen so many positive reviews, and I think that lifted everyone's spirits. Especially since 2023's plans for the game have been publicly revealed recently, I think it's gonna be a great year if you're a WoW player.

Last, I would like to wish everyone a happy new year, and pursue your dreams!

Comment by Wof2pHappy New Year team! Thank you for your efforts.Comment by HemingrayA big heartfelt thank you to everyone involved in developing & maintaining Wowhead! You all rock.Comment by sambonzA huge Thank You to everyone @ Wowhead for your hard work creating the most amazing WoW resource for us all as players.
I've lost count of how many times I've come straight to Wowhead to solve a quest or read up on lore, or to look through one of your guides on crafting, builds, or items.
I can't imagine playing WoW without Wowhead. Happy New Year!Comment by SaavedraThank you for all your efforts these years! You're all amazing!Comment by CTEKKThank you :)Comment by lovelywazThanks to the whole team for their hard work throughout the whole year 2022 and wishing them very best for many more years to come.

🥳🥳🎊🎊🎈🎈 Happy New Year! 🎈🎈🎊🎊🥳🥳Comment by GreyshadowzHappy New Year and a Big Thank you for your efforts wowhead team. You doing an amazing job. Couldn't live without this page and it is in use every day.Comment by vinicabralHappy New Year!

Where is Anshlun´s end of year message? :DComment by ScaryfoxI sure hope DF will continue to improve at least in terms of content because almost $50 to play only a few days of the week really isn't a good idea. I also hope they're going to work on the bugs. I admittedly don't know if I need to replace something or if millions of players on at the same time is impossible to fathom. I find it really odd I have to risk getting kicked out on a loading screen. And I've played multiple online games. And don't get me started on that convoluted crafting system.

On another note, I know concerns about COVID has been raised again when it comes to BlizzCon. I just learned that we might enter another pandemic later this year. I wouldn't be surprised since I have a relative who recovered from COVID...only to remain dirty. And the scary part is I know everybody wanted the pandemic to end yet most people did everything in their power to not combat it.Comment by KenjiT28Happy new year, wowhead 🎆🎉Comment by CronoLinkThanks and happy new year!Comment by KerathrasOh my heart! Brightpaw Is Alliance, confirmed! 💙💙💙

Keep up the good work into the new year!Comment by WillowwhispI love this post. Happy New Year!Comment by HareticThanks for all that you folks do!