I trialled WK up to L3 back in April. I come back to buy and go further but things have changed. And people on here are upset.
Has it been ruined? Or will the kind of unpleasant but effective method of learning I experienced on the trial remain the same as I am expecting?
I donât think it has been ruined at all.
No matter what change you do, there will always be people who would get upset.
Iâm not saying that WaniKani is perfect, and Iâm not saying I absolutely agree with absolutely every decision that has been made, but Iâd say it remains a great resource for studying kanji and Iâm very grateful to it! 
Actually, most of the changes that got some people upset â happened in previous years, so if you liked WK in April this year â there is no reason you shouldnât like it nowâŠ
If you still have doubts, Iâd recommend levelling up (as you are level 1 again) while waiting for Christmas sale. By that time youâd be able to see for yourself.
In any case, best of luck with your studies! 
Overall WK will probably be mostly as you experienced it in the free trial. It will still be a kanji learning experience that provides ârailsâ and a set study path, and will take you through a good chunk of kanji. If thatâs what you want, go for it. (Although maybe wait a couple weeks- there is often a year-end sale on lifetime memberships)
There will probably be changes you donât like as you use it, but I havenât yet felt like any of the changes are dealbreakers for me, and itâs been overall helpful as a piece of my learning journey.
Nah Iâve been here since 2013 and itâs never fundamentally changed, and you can customize the experience with browser mods or by using the unofficial apps. Donât let the negativity dissuade you if you liked the concept already 
I feel like most of the changes people are upset about (such as the missing hover function) affect mostly long-term users who had gotten into the habit of using the site in a certain way.
Itâs also hard to know exactly what percentage of users is upset with the changes since not everyone voices their opinion/uses the forums. So who knows how many people are fine with it or even prefer how it is now.
As a fairly new subscriber I personally donât feel like anything is missing or hindering my learning process.
The way WK teaches Kanji hasnât changed - but of course, if you found the method unpleasant during the trial, it might not be the right tool for you after all.
I was one of the people complaining recently about some of the kanji changes.
But considering how many words and kanji WK teaches, a few of them having a primary reading I donât agree with wouldnât exactly be enough for me to tell someone not to get WK. Itâs a pretty darn good tool. Iâd still recommend it overall (though I think there are also some awesome alternatives out there). I just think it could be even better.
For reference, I started in October 2024 by the way so just a bit over a year. That means Iâm not upset about the big changes that happened significantly earlier (like the mythical summary page Iâve read about).
I found WK to be very effective and immensely helpful. If you found it to be effective so far, Iâd say get it. The things that need to be improved arenât that bad, theyâre relatively minor annoyances.
Iâd recommend getting third party scripts or the apps to get a redo button though. Some people are firmly against it, and thatâs their prerogative, but in time I think a lot of people end up getting tired of being marked as wrong for legitimate typos.
PS: Maybe wait for the holiday sale to get lifetime, if you can afford it.
Ruined???
Its fine. There are a few issues with some readings but nothing that would be considered a complete halt situation. Iâm looking forward to getting wani kani lifetime soon hopefully. There is a holiday sale that is maybe coming soon. Like less than a week soon. Its Christmas. Just two weeks away. Wow.
Youâve gotten a lot of advice from others so I will focus on this part here
What was unpleasant about the trial before? There is a chance that one of the things that changed on the dashboard was something that you didnât like and you may like it better now.
I agree with trunklayer here:
Try it out again, see if you like it, or if the original unpleasantness you had is enough to keep you from subscribing then thatâs up to you.
I am a newer user and have experienced some of the negative changes. But, I have been on wanikani everyday for almost 4 months. So it does something right. I think the changes are unfortunate, but that the program still has some value. I have found the advice on the forum more valuable than the program itself. If the price is not a problem, I donât see any reason not to give it another try. People on the forum will help you work out how to use wanikani in a way that works for you.
Lol, thatâs my sense of humour, doesnât interpret well to the internet. Probably doesnât interpret well in irl either. Haha.
Thanks for the replies. Iâm going to go ahead. Some of the threads on this forum though, they make it sound like the sky is falling in. Doesnât look good from the outside.
I can do my best to sum up the changes in a more neutral way if it helps?
The biggest debates going on deal with the new dashboard and reading changes.
The changes the dashboard went through were massive, itâs completely customizable now, including native heatmap, streak counter and other âwidgetsâ. What happened here is that in that update, the font of the main level vocabulary etc when you click to the separate pages got smaller and that visible accessibility is a big unaccounted for change. The site still works, but the font is smaller than it was before. Another thing that wasnât accounted for was the removal of a âhover progress checkâ. Essentially on the âlevel progressâ area before it became a widget, you could hover your mouse cursor over it and see a âNext review in ___ hours/daysâ It also had a funny little quip like âThis kanji quivers in anticipation! Review this kanji in ___ hours to unlock related vocab!â. In the new widget configuration, the level progress has scrollers and it removed this hover feature. Now to check when the kanji comes up next, users have to go to the kanji page to see the next forcasted review timing. Some users never knew it existed, some users used the feature to practice the kanji before the official review, and some users just took note of the timing to prioritize when to do their reviews if they wanted a timely level-up. This specifically has been addressed via giving an option in the user settings to have apprentice reviews come first, (to speed line the process) and on the review forecast widget there is an option to show when apprentice items are included as well, but there is no plan to bring back that hover function.
The reading changes debate is regarding how kanji is learned on WaniKani. When you learn a kanji for the first time, the pink card will have usually only one reading, (either onâyomi the Chinese reading or kunâyomi the Japanese reading) Often, the first reading you learn is the onâyomi but this is not always true. The current debate is that a few kanji have flipped their readings. These are early level kanji but the ones I know off the top of my head have been ć and æ. They were originally taught with onâyomi but the WK team decided to have the main reading kunâyomi now. These kanji use both the onâyomi and the kunâyomi very frequently, and so the debate threads are a bit more heated than if we were talking about a kanji like è”· which WK asks you to learn the ă reading first since the most common vocabulary with è”· are the verbs è”·ăăăè”·ăăăè”·ăă and WK has you learn them right away. WK has always had a mixed bag of onâyomi kanji and kunâyomi kanji. They never stated they always pick one over the other, although many kanji use the onâyomi first. There is a warning when an item changes and it comes into the reviews, saying âoh this was changed recently,â or âWeâre looking for the on/kun readingâ so even if the official announcement on the forum is made, regular users can see that it was changed and are encouraged to exit reviews to check what it was changed to.
It truly comes down to what trunklayer said that many people donât like change. I knew coming into WK that it was still developing and adding things removing things and generally an evolving platform where the content is adjusted. There are threads where users request different kanji added all the time, same with new words, giving reasons etc and looking at that feedback the teams try their best, but thereâs also thousands, maybe a million? of users all wanting different things at the same time, and when people are upset they tend to be very vocal about it, Which is good!, so that way they can get it fixed.
*also disclaimer that there might be other things that Iâm not aware of within these big threads but if thereâs anything I missed I would appreciate it being addressed but without doomer-ism
Donât let those threads get you down though, and see it for yourself, so go ahead and try us out and take some things with a grain of salt and form your own opinions about it
Most of the people on the forum are using wanikani. To get what is possibly a more balanced perspective you might look at Reddit which is not biased towards long term users.
Itâs here!
I didnât submit myself to a lifetime but I did bite off an annual. 
I use WK daily and if the homepage didnât change Iâd not have noticed anything was updated.
I will also add that there are lots of scripts and things out there that you can use to customize Wanikani to a certain extent.
E.g. this script allows you to undo an answer: [Userscript]: Double-Check (Version 2.x)
If thereâs something in particular about the platform that youâre not super fond of, try checking out if there is a script that can act as a work around! 
Happy first post in seven years.
If I could go back in time, I would tell myself not to subscribe to Wanikani!
Not only Iâve learned a lot of kanji, but through this forum Iâve learned how to properly learn Japanese. Now Iâm at a pretty good intermediate / advanced level, I read in Japanese every day but still, I have a pile of things to read and play in Japanese that never stops growing.
So yeah, I am doomed. You can still turn back, itâs not too late for you.
Congratulations! 
Best of luck with your studies!
Regardless for subscription type, a useful platform is a platform that you use. Regardless of speed as well. Try to maintain daily streak for a whole year.
You can try scripts, be aware that they are fragile workarounds. Mobile apps are more stable, but they are still third-party, not managed by WaniKani team.