It's no secret that Blizzard has been very busy in the last year. Much like the sweeping changes made to the face of Azeroth in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the web-side presence of both the game and company have undergone some extensive revamps starting with the complete overhaul to Battle.net last year. And while the services category received a much needed facelift just in time for the launch of StarCraft II, perhaps an even bigger change has been seen on Blizzard's official game community sites. Likewise, after years of ignoring Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social networking, the developer finally took the plunge, big time.

But, much like Cataclysm, some of these changes have thus far proven to be bittersweet. Where once the official WoW site contained comprehensive lists of pertinent fansites for players seeking expanded information on everything from class information to companion pets and everything in between, that has all been thrown out the window once the new site went live.

What remains is an official site that claims to be fully in support of the game's community, yet largely only officially supports a handful of business partners once you cross the threshold of the landing page blog. Even then, unless you invest the time to search through blog posts to discover which ones contain links to the cool things being created or maintained by passionate community members, you likely wouldn't even know those types of links exist anymore.

In terms of community development, it's a bit like forsaking one community in favor of attracting or embracing a new one that more closely mirrors your own agenda, or at least helps further its advancement. At the same time, much like those Sourpatch Kids commercials, maybe the bitter will ultimately be worth it once we see how sweet things end up being further down the road. After all, even Cataclysm won't receive a final judgment from fans until we've seen the final patch in the expansion's lifecycle.

While this subject obviously hits far too close to home considering Ten Ton Hammer's World of Warcraft community site is nearly seven years old, and we've since added the PlayerScore community tool which rivals anything you can find on the official Armory or WoWhead, the official community site changes really aren't about us. They're about you; the players and community that supports Blizzard's games with your hard earned money.

So the question remains: have the sweeping changes made to Blizzard's official game sites been genuinely sweet or, much like a big old bottle of Liquid Nyquil, just sweet enough to cover up a bitter aftertaste?

In recent months, we've certainly been seeing something quite different transpiring on the community front. The global community has been tapped for questions on specific WoW-related topics, Ghostcrawler has been blogging semi-regularly and even Cory Stockton took the time out of his busy schedule to post on the thorny subject of Tol Barad. Before this explosion of interaction, Blizzard was somewhat reserved, to say the least. They communicated primarily via the Forums and if your question was answered it was a cause for much joy and celebration, even if the reply wasn’t quite what you expected. This kind of last-century thinking was also how Ghostcrawler became such an important figure in the pantheon of Blues.

The previously mentioned Global Q&As are the icing on the cake of this newer, more open and conversational philosophy. In case you haven't followed them, the devs open a thread on each of the regional forums, announce the topic and we, the players, ask the questions and vote for the ones we want answered. A couple of weeks later, Blizzard will release them and the whole process starts again. It’s easy to think this means that Blizzard has become a little more laid back and easy going in terms of communicating with its massive legion of fans. At the same time, we all fully realize that marketing types often have the final say on which community questions are ripe enough to be cherry-picked from each fresh batch of questions.

Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's still something worth keeping in mind. Dazzle camouflage is only as effective as its ability to fool you into accepting only what people want you to see, after all.

For a more specific example, just look at Ghostcrawler’s extremely popular “Coffee with the Devs”/“Dev Watercooler” series that he’s been doing with semi-regularity since late last year. Each post focuses on a specific subject like tanking, interruption or stats on gear, but reiterates that while these blogs are meant to be conversational, there are no promises or subplots. By impressing those rules on readers, it’s still a form of control and hardly free-conversation either. Thankfully, due in large part to the new blog formatting of the official site, they do at least allow comments but that’s more to do with the platform they’re using than anything else.

The Q and As are giving the fans more time with the devs but on their terms.

Blizzard has also started using social networking to get the word out, to appear as hip as all the other developers who’ve been using it for an age already. The shiny community site, the blog posts and the Q and As, they’re just giving the illusion that Blizzard are more approachable when, really, nothing has changed. The community site - like the forums - is just an avenue; it just so happens to be easier to access and update.

Blizzard’s attempts at narrowing the divide between itself and its game communities does seem good in practice. They’re making all the right moves with Twitter, Facebook and their frequent blog posts. They’re attempting to engage by asking for the playerbase’s questions. They've even expanded the scope of what types of community creations see regular promotion through official updates beyond traditional fan art mediums.

Still, each of the things listed are only surface level changes. To bring the Cataclysm reference point full circle, the world of Azeroth may have undergone massive devastation and zone changes, but at the end of the day you're still running the exact same types of endgame content that we've seen in the previous expansions. What got sacrificed in the process are the fond memories of locations, destinations, and the time spent sharing them with the people you started playing the game with six years ago. In that same sense, the new face of Blizzard's community site has sacrificed official support of the loyalist of fans - the ones who have spent countless hours of their lives building and maintaining amazing fansites - in exchange for a shiny new interface that ultimately offers less to its community than it did before.

What are your thoughts on the revamps to the official WoW game site? Do you find them largely positive and sweet, or is the lack of any real community support still a tad too bitter for you to swallow? Voice your opinions in the comments below and, if you'd prefer to use a more familiar format, be sure to dive into the discussion on our forums.