The Impartial Fallout Wiki and the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP) have introduced a brand new partnership becoming a member of the 2 endeavors. Each websites’ curation, expansiveness, and, crucially, consumer experiences with minimal/unobtrusive advertisements make them cherished assets on the web of 2025.
“We’re now proud to be the host of the Impartial Fallout Wiki,” UESP wrote on Bluesky. “We do not need to grow to be a kind of wikifarms that tries to lure websites, so we have additionally set issues as much as enable for them to freely change hosts sooner or later in the event that they ever want, with out us leaving a zombie website behind.”
That final bit was a reasonably direct jab at Fandom, previously often called Wikia, the internet hosting service behind nearly all of well-trafficked popular culture wikis on the web. Fextralife is one other outstanding wiki host avid gamers might be aware of, with a particular give attention to RPGs and Soulslikes.
There is a lengthy, difficult historical past behind the internet hosting of wikis, however as a reader, it is unattainable to not discover the best way their consumer experiences have degraded up to now ten years.
Fandom wikis are typically saddled with sufficient advertisements that they grow to be gradual to load, significantly on cell, with autoplay movies taking on half the display screen—and that is after they load in after a delay, partially resetting the web page.
Fextralife, in the meantime, has extra user-friendly pages however a critical curation/manpower problem: I’ve discovered incorrect info, hyperlinks to lacking pages, and placeholder textual content on its wikis years after video games launch. Wikis for Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and even explosively well-liked video games like Elden Ring and Divinity: Unique Sin 2 all have irritating gaps in info.
These detriments allowed the extra well-maintained BG3.wiki to supersede Fextralife’s pre-existing Baldur’s Gate 3 wiki, which was began on the time of early entry, after the sport’s 1.0 launch.
Each Fextralife and Fandom are likely to dominate the search engine marketing (website positioning) of properties of their portfolios (Google search: [Insert Game] Wiki), making it troublesome for opponents to grow to be seen. There’s additionally a respectable query of long-term upkeep.
Many wikis turned to Fandom internet hosting within the first place for the soundness and continuity of a giant group. For extra area of interest video games and matters, a wiki farm is insurance coverage {that a} website won’t be fully deserted if curiosity within the topic wanes. There’s additionally the query of maintenance prices for internet hosting such massive web sites.
Even nonetheless, many wikis have chosen emigrate away from Fandom in recent times, a course of outlined in a Medium editorial from 2023 by Wikipedia fanatic Linden Clayton.
A earlier nice migration from Fandom to the internet hosting service Gamepedia had an ungainly ending, nevertheless, when a portion of guardian firm Curse was purchased by Fandom in 2018, bringing the schismatic wikis again into the fold. We come full-circle again to Fallout, whose Fandom wikis appear to have had a very lengthy and complex historical past.
UESP, in the meantime, has been unbiased since 1995, and has not too long ago expanded its choices to incorporate podcasts, a fan Discord, and Elder Scrolls merch drops whereas accepting reader help by way of Patreon.
UESP’s retro, no-frills interface seems to be a lot because it did once I first went there across the releases of Skyrim and Oblivion, a stalwart previous good friend who has survived the years unchanged. The Impartial Fallout Wiki seems to be to be in good arms.
PCG weekend editor Jody Macgregor shouted out Bulbapedia and the Crew Fortress 2 Wiki as notable independents in his latest love letter to UESP, and I would additionally prefer to reward the Baldur’s Gate 3 Wiki another time: It truly is an incredible useful resource. I will additionally at all times carry a torch for the Souls sequence Wikidot wikis, though Chrome flags them as a safety danger—I nonetheless have not gotten a virus there but!