Feldon 
From the EQ2 Forums:
SONY ONLINE ENTERTAINMENT BREAKS NEW GROUND WITH FIRST ‘WIKIA OFFICIAL COMMUNITY’ FOR UPCOMING MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER VIDEO GAME PLANETSIDE®2
Powered by the Fans, New Official Wiki Takes Community Collaboration to New Level with Tools that Support and Empower Players
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. – October 10, 2012 – Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a recognized worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online games, has joined forces with Wikia, the collaborative media company, home to some of the largest fan communities on the Web, to launch the first-ever ‘Wikia Official Community’ for the highly-anticipated MMOFPS PlanetSide®2. Under the new partnership, SOE and Wikia will collaborate with the player base through official Wikia communities to empower players to help each other succeed in games, and offer them another direct line of communication and support to SOE’s Community and Development teams. PlanetSide 2 players and Wikia users will also be offered a wide range of exclusive and unique official content, such as videos, interviews, chats, game guides, and more.
“Teaming up with Wikia was the natural next step for us in providing the necessary tools to further embrace and empower our players,” said John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment. “This new partnership is truly about community collaboration, and Wikia’s reputation and respect for its dedicated global network of players offered the ideal platform for SOE to further support its players and the community. We are excited and looking forward to the creative and compelling ways fans will utilize this custom channel to expand community engagement outside of the game.”
By publishing official and community driven content alongside actual game development, SOE is forging new territory by endorsing fan communities to create, engage and collaborate around their favorite game with the developers throughout production. SOE and Wikia are working together to develop and design the official PlanetSide 2 wiki that will allow fans and gaming enthusiasts to contribute unique and valuable content on a regular basis to be seen by the community at large. The partnership and official fan wiki will allow both companies to embrace and further empower their communities by creating a meaningful two-way flow of valuable information.
“We are thrilled that SOE, which understands the power of the community, is launching their first of many official communities amidst our very enthusiastic and knowledgeable network of fans,” said Craig Palmer, CEO for Wikia. “As our lifestyle, gaming and entertainment communities continue to grow and populate, we look forward to an active PlanetSide 2 community as a model for the best user generated collaborative content on the web.”
As part of its dedication to supporting existing community efforts, SOE has also designated EQ2i, one of the longest-running and well-populated Wikia sites, as its official Wiki for the popular MMO, EverQuest® II.
“We want to work with vibrant, existing Wikia communities at the grass-roots level,” said Linda Carlson, Director of Global Community Relations, Sony Online Entertainment. “Partnering with sites such as EQ2i serves to recognize and support the efforts of thousands of dedicated fans on Wikia, be they individuals, guilds or fan-sites. It’s about time, and we can hardly wait to get started!”
The Official Communities will complement Wikia’s already recognized 250,000+ wikis on the site, ranging in subjects from pop culture, fashion, TV to sports. Wikia Video Games, is the leading source of global video game content on the Web today and is home to some of the largest video game communities, accounting for over 50,000 gaming wikis and 2.48 million pages of gaming content, averaging over 25,000 user edits each day. The Wikia Official Community will utilize new curation features, while continuing to engage players in traditional wiki formats around large-scale and social video gaming.
Click here to go to the official PlanetSide 2 Wiki!
Click here to go to the official EverQuest II Wiki!
As tweeted by Brasse:
#WIKIA Hurrah! SOE has announced our official support and collaboration with Wikia! I am so happy to be working WITH players!
We built the #planetside2 wikia site and will support player efforts to populate and run it! SOE moving to be PART of the community!
#wikia is one more place where we can connect and collaborate with our fellow players. We are NOT imposing corporate control, just support!
#wikia I am also delighted to say that EQ2i will be our officially supported Wikia page for #EQ2 – thank you Kodia and Uberfuzzy!
Hmmm… I bet ZAM starts getting more traffic.
Zam is so much better these last few years. Good job SOE. Way to suck even more.
Seems odd to me as mentioned above Zam has surpassed Wikia imo. Wikia was THE go to site but waned. Also, seems to me that when I use the ingame browser that the Wikia web site is down more often and sometimes doesn’t display very well.
Any successful wiki requires a team of dedicated content writers, backed up by a competent group of editors who value the content being submitted. It’s far too easy easy for overenthusiastic editors to devolve into needless sweeping recategorizations and hatchetry. I haven’t looked seriously at EQ2 Wikia in a while, but a quote from Voltaire comes to mind:
Don’t forget about the ads that wikia hosts that do drive by infections with no user interaction with them. More half-assedness displayed by SOE here. It isn’t like there are just a few of them there there have been lots of them.
Well the basic idea would have been good 3 years ago. I had the distinct feeling that Eq2 Wiki was deader than a doornail. The info that is there is OK but outdated. Will all now magically start to add info to the Wiki again?
Didn’t SOE suckle up to zam a few years back?that cam to nothing in the end didnt it.
I lose track of SOE’s stupidity at times.
SOE provided Item, NPC, and Loot Table (drop) info to Zam for about 2 years. That information seems to have stopped flowing around last December as there were never any Skyshrine updates. Rumor has it the contract ended this summer.
The format of the data received by SOE underwent massive changes, eating up a lot of development time on Zam’s part. It’s worth pointing out that the SOE Data Feeds API (Census) that EQ2U, EQ2Players, and other sites operate on is an evolution of the data that Zam used to get, so we owe a debt to Zam for the initial work they did in improving how this data is exported from the game.
Looking back at the original announcement of the partnership, Zam had some very lofty goals:
Neither of those happened, although the Items, NPCs, and Loot Tables/Drops did show up. Zam did launch a Live Broker Feed, but user traffic was insufficient to support dedicating a server to it.
As for what SOE got out of the deal, $$$$ of free advertising on Zam.
I have always favored Wikia and think this is great. I have contributed to dozens of articles, too. It’s really easy to use and easy to edit.
After playing some of the newer MMOs I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that we actually need a wiki to get quests done. That’s pretty old school these days, where newer MMOs are making quests guided, intuitive or both.
I like EQ2i, but wikia itself not so much. you can turn off ads though by registering and login in, but the interface needs to be polished up a bit to make it EASIER to add content. I know a bit of wiki syntax, but it’s just a pain in the butt really mostly if youre new. they need to add more easy basic funtionality to create an entry or edit one.