To me the SIM has gone the way of what was once described, somewhere that I have forgotten, as the greatest malady of Wilt Chaimberlin. "All he cares about are the small things and the big things he doesn't even notice."

The SIM gods are much more concerned about the look, and the little tid bits ie. who is the allstar MVP, etc. than about the substance of the game. They are totally focased on the mintuae and the large real big issues that many of us have concerns about don't even phase them.

We the owners want to play a realistic game with realistic outcomes. But none of the changes that we are begging for are ever implemented. Therefore, we stay focased on the flawed product and never get off of that point resulting in frustration and apathy.

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"With our computer on a roll after correctly picking North Carolina to win it all before the 2009 NCAA tournament, the 2009 Stanley Cup champion, the Lakers over the Magic in the 2009 NBA Finals and the Pittsburgh Steelers to win Super Bowl XLIII (by four points), we at WhatIfSports.com focus on baseball."

this is funny stuff - (from thier link to the world series predictions)

nevermind that they are congratulating themselves on getting the NBA and NCAA prognosis right only after getting it wrong and having to reset the finals

but hey congratulations WiS

not only are their predictions ridiculous...they're also a waste of time. I'd rather see tinmanpb working on the NBA sim, as opposed to running games 10001 times to produce results that nobody cares about with BTB. The company simply does not know how to prioritize...this is whatifsports.com not foxsports.com...my college football rankings might get as much pub/viewership as WIS'.

Took a minute to review their NCAA picks for this weekend for the 1st time. It appears the NBA SIM isn't the only thing that needs a lot of work. Why not scrap the prediction crap (which I don't think anybody reads, and I know nobody pays for) and concentrate on making their games better?

they went the other way and they are going to stick to it

WIS has its faults but the landslide out of town has been exasperated by FOX's decisions and direction for WIS. After Tarek was removed it lost most of its identity. I am not saying if FOX wasn't here it would be "perfect"..... but I think the direction is coming from FOX and they are slowly ruining all aspects of the "What If" experience.

I agree with emonk and others that it seems we are not talking players so much as we are talking databases and programming. Sad state of affairs as alluded to earlier... 5-6 years ago the site was so much better in terms of total experience (game play, forum discussion, comraderie....). Now its a shell of its self with a corporate owner who is ruining it.

Who is/was more likely to listen to the users? TK or FOX? Sure the damage is done but at least with TK you have a fighting shot.

I agree the deterioration had set in while TK was still there. Perhaps he was positioning for the sale and setting up as needed. Who knows. But the bottom line is, at least from my perspective (having been out of work since December) is good for him. I would have done the same thing except demanded a longer contract... lol.

I also agree it is a gold mine... but only for die hards. The curious come and go. The frustrated eventually leave (which needs to be addressed). And the casual fan (the biggest population/sector they can draw from) just aren't into it. Also, it has been apparent since the launch of HD that the priority of the site is Dynasty games. Aside from baseball and maybe hockey, the other two are doomed to be what they are. The real irony is in the fact that football and basketball are the most watched on TV. FOX broadcasts both as well... yet they would never consider putting a logo up or having someone on the pregame show simply mention the site. Its a pretty cheap plug and would help get some people in here.

Another issue... customer service. I have not had problems with support getting caps raised and rosters fixed or even realignments for that matter. But here's the mentality we see now:

LOCO HDB world is idle for one month. Its a private world and the core owners predate WIS. The league has been together for 30+ sim seasons and 14 HBD seasons.

After sitting idle for 30 days we are eligible for a merger with another world. We get a one day notice to clean things up for the merger. We ask for time to discuss it and decide not to merger because we would lose out history. While deciding, we lose several owners, some the site entirely because it appeared they were forcing the merger. They also cleared out a couple new owners to make the merger work (owner quantity). So we decide not to merger, lost several owners... and asked them to help us get them back. No help was offered. They restored us to private status which is what we wanted. We were able to get two owners to return. The end result was them offering the handful of guys in the other world a $10 credit towards next season and essentially stuck us with less owners and no incentive. 40 plus seasons of play and we get shat on for not wanting to lose 14 seasons worth of history. And lost 5 owners due to their handling of the situation (in a private forum for the merger).

I do not think that would have happened if TK was around. He may not have staffed himself properly but we did get regular updates (sure, some were superficial) and a decent understanding of our preferences.

If they were understaffed before, what are they now? Its certainly not any better so FOX feels the same as he did. If thats the case and one is gone, blame goes to the one still standing. Fox is no more interested in improving staff quantity than those in charge before. Changing the head coach doesn't always mean a change of results.... you know this as a Lion's fan like me.

Good post. I really don't understand why FOX doesn't see WIS as a viable commodity...I think part of it is, they look at it and think that the staffing is appropriate compared to the numbers money its drawing/not drawing, while not understanding or attempting to understand that more staff and a couple of peeps here and there could make this site do a 180. Especially in this economy (as you mentioned, sorry to hear the lack of work, here too, but that's a different story) there are probably plenty of programmers out there who would work for cheap, or less than regular pay doing something like this. Get some more customer support people and a good leader and make something of this site.

The employees' egos get in the way quite a bit...I personally have encountered this with seble, tinmanpb, tk, and norbert...maybe a few others as well. I think WIS needs to offer FREE full seasons to new users, or at least a choice of 1 free full season in anything you like. I think HD and GD would have more participation if it were just D1...nobody wants to coach Penn State-Altoona...CRD has gotten worse with its new update (read the NASCAR forums if you like) participation has dropped and I guess its harder more than ever to move up to the Cup level, so again, people don't want to meddle in lower division BS.

I don't think WIS employees understand how dire the situation is right now....they treat their jobs like RIGHTS instead of PRIVILEGES...why Paul Bessire gets paid I'll never know. I think the thing I've become most ****** at is the arrogant monarchy of employees that run this thing...if these boobs had any business sense, they wouldn't be trodding in the knee deep mud that dirties them now.

The biggest factor is still the economy. People have less to spend and things like this get axed.

I just found this thread (due to my lack of hanging around the site like I used too), guess I have some reading to do.