wowdb
Latest
Breakfast Topic: Do you contribute to your favorite WoW database site?
You know that site you use every day to learn about quests and where things drop? All of that data -- who drops what, the percentages, the map locations -- comes from players who take the time to collect it and contribute. The more people who contribute, the more accurate the data. These lightweight addons collect the pertinent information in the background and upload when you exit the game. The Wowhead Client will let you collect data for Wowhead and upload it at your convenience The WoWDB Profiler addon works in conjunction with the Curse Client to contribute to WoWDB %Poll-84874%
Aion NDA drop and first database revealed
We just received the official word from NC West and can confirm that the North American NDA has dropped for Aion. This is great news for the 5% of testers who exhibited enough self-control to uphold the NDA, while the other 95% spoke freely as if it didn't exist at all. Some bloggers even took the loophole approach and downloaded the Chinese client so they could share their early impressions without breaking the NDA.We can expect to see all sorts of new goodies release now that the NDA is no more. One such tool is called the Aion Armory, which is a database project partnership between AionSource and Curse. Anyone familiar with WARDB or WOWDB will find themselves quite at home on this site. AionSource also opened a new free guide subforum you may want to check out before participating in the Asmodian beta event taking place this weekend.An early September release is looking more and more likely every day.
The Queue: Battle.net
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. So we said that we would have a special edition of The Queue this past Saturday. It never happened. Why? Well, the intent was for it to be entertainment while we all sat in the queue for BlizzCon tickets. Yammer about BlizzCon, get excited, all of that sort of thing. Adam and I put ourselves in the ticket queue, were getting ready to push the post out, and then... ticket sales were over. It was kind of a pointless post at that point! So it never happened. We apologize for that.The ticket sales went surprisingly smoothly. We're always going to find something to gripe about (holy crap why don't they have more tickets) but the whole thing didn't come tumbling down this year, and that's such a massive improvement over last year. It was a good thing.Dusseldorf asked..."Is there any benefit to converting my account to a Battle.net account? I see problems with Battle.net users logging in all the time, and was just wondering the point of converting."
Player receives Developer item in the mail, one-shots Ulduar
Update April 30th, 2009: Karatechop's account has been closed. Read the full story here. We first received a tip on a mysterious guild that was blowing through Ulduar's hardest achievements one after the other, all in one day, about a day or two ago. Their gear and raid experience stated very well that they were in no position to do any of those achievements, but we sort of shrugged and let it pass by. It was odd that these players were barely in Naxxramas gear, and their first recorded Kel'thuzad kill was only two weeks prior to their explosion of Ulduar achievements, but we initially ignored these reports because surely, nobody could be hacking the game. On top of that, the forum threads submitted to us all had so many posts deleted from them that they were completely incomprehensible. There was nothing solid about any of it. Tips on it are still flooding our mailboxes today and a bit more information has surfaced, so let's look into it a little, shall we? The guild is The Marvel Family of US-Vek'nilash. The character Karatechop is the one that has attracted the most attention, and you'll see why in just a moment. If you look over his gear, it's not that bad, really. Epic tank gear, a lot of it from Naxxramas, so it's feasible that he could make some progress through Ulduar. It gets weird when you go to his Statistics and/or Achievements panels. Let's go to his statistics first.
Legal action between ZAM and Curse results in dismissal
So remember when Curse introduced their database last year called WoWDB, and we pointed out that it bore a strong resemblance to that other popular WoW database, Wowhead? Turns out ZAM, the owners of Wowhead after the acquisition a little while ago, agreed: completely under the radar last May, they filed a lawsuit for copyright infringment to the tune of no less than $1.5 million. ZAM says in the suit, copies of which we've obtained, that they've "expended substantial resources to maintain, update, and promote use of the WOWHEAD website so that it would become... one of the most recognized, and utilized websites designed to attract individuals" who play World of Warcraft. They claimed that WoWDB stole their look and layout purposely to create confusion among customers. This story wasn't reported in the WoW community at the time -- we hadn't heard about it at all until now.And then, in January of this year, the case was dismissed completely by a judge. We've also seen a copy of the order for dismissal, and from what it says, both sides wanted out: "Pursuant to the parties' stipulation for dismissal, the court hereby dismisses the above-captioned action without prejudice." We don't have any information, however, why the case was suddenly dismissed, but there may have been an agreement made between the two parties -- either money changed hands or WoWDB offered to change its look (as you can see, there's still many similarities between the two sites). Or, as a third option, ZAM just decided it wasn't worth fighting -- according to the comments and activity on both sites, WoWDB doesn't seem to be a serious threat to Wowhead.We've contacted both sides for comment, and we'll let you know if we hear anything from either one. On the front of it, this looks like ZAM was merely covering themselves -- they filed suit just in case, but never found cause to follow through. But there may be some other agreement between these two companies that lead to the case's dismissal.
Alternatives to WoWJutsu
It's very, very rare that pioneers are actually the best at what they do. They have great ideas, and those ideas revolutionize their field... but they're just ideas, concepts. It's not long before someone else improves those initial concepts and makes them the new standard. This more or less describes the situation around WoWJutsu.WoWJutsu was once the number one guild ranking website, tracking progression, boss kills and all of that great stuff. Unfortunately, it hasn't kept up with the times. WoWJutsu's tracking relies on the Armory, crawling the whole thing and using gear that characters have equipped to determine progress. In order for your guild's Malygos kill to be marked down, members of your guild need to have Malygos drops on their Armory profile. This is the only way, as far as I know, that WoWJutsu will list your kill.What does that mean? Well, it implies that guild progression isn't tracked properly at all. The first guild on a server to clear all of the content can easily come in third or fourth or twelfth on the ranking list. If your armory page doesn't update right away, that alone is going to throw your guild's progression record off. As minor as it may seem, it actually has some bad side effects, specifically when it comes to recruitment. If you claim your guild has cleared the hardest content in the game when you're looking for applicants, and people check WoWJutsu to make sure you're not making false claims... well, WoWJutsu's inaccuracies could imply that you're lying, when you're not at all. It's damaging.
The Empire of Zul'drak issue resolved with a new quest
A lot of players aiming for the Loremaster achievement were hitting a snag in Zul'Drak. Because of one or two quests that were only able to be done while on a single questline, a lot of players that missed it initially were blocked from going back to it and were stuck at 99/100 quests. Patch 3.0.8 brings some great news for those people: A new quest has been added to the zone so you can finish your achievement.Chronicler To'kini in the quest hub Zim'Torga now offers the quest Tails Up, which as of this posting doesn't appear on either Wowhead or WoWDB yet. It's another of Blizzard's awkward humor quests, though luckily it's not poop related. Genitalia is the name of the game this time around. The Chronicler wants to bring some Zul'Drak wildlife back to Zandalar to study, but he specifically wants females from you. So you pump the beasts full of tranquilizers, do what you see in the picture to the right there, and you pray it's a female.
WOWDB introduces Simplified Chinese language option, promises more upgrades
In more international WoW news, Curse's foray into the realm of WoW database sites, WOWDB, is now available in Simplified Chinese, joining Allakhazam among the major database sites that offer the language. In addition, Curse's announcement post also hints at additional features coming to WOWDB "soon," which seems like it may be a direct answer to Wowhead's recent extensive features upgrade. WOWDB has already been accused of copying Wowhead in the past (and, to be fair, opposite accusations have been made). Of course, Wowhead doesn't yet have a Simplified Chinese language option, so in this case, it seems WoWDB has come out ahead. We'll be eager to see if these new options coming to WOWDB make it stand out from the pack.
Wowhead to add character models
A couple of months back, we relayed that Wowhead gained 3D models. Now, they're set to become better. We mentioned in the previous post that player models were in the works, and I'm here to bring you an exclusive preview. Users will be able to see items on any race and gender character model, so if you're trying to figure out how those boots look on a female Tauren, you're in luck (although it's a good bet that they'll look odd). Wowhead sister site Thottbot will be receiving this improvement as well.Competitor WOWDB has had the ability to preview items on a character model since they launched a bit over a month ago, tying into their profile system. However, they seem to lack Wowhead's impressive high-quality mode.In fact, the quality of Wowhead's 3D renders will be increased in the upcoming update, especially in the high-quality Java version. See the gallery below for some examples and comparison shots; the image above is also a Wowhead render (not a screenshot). This has got to be the most accurate preview I've seen on any database site. %Gallery-19306%
Curse launches oddly familiar WoW database
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Curse_rips_off_Wowhead_in_new_site'; There are quite a few WoW database sites out there. Thottbot was the first big one that I was aware of; other big sites include Allakhazam, the Goblin Workshop, and of course Wowhead. Then there are some lesser-known contenders (at least to me; it took me a bit to come up with them), like WoWd.org, WarCry (I use their news constantly, but never saw the database), GameAmp, WoW Guru, WoWDigger, and TenTonHammer (again, I know TTH for news, but didn't know they had a DB).And now Curse, long one of the big names in Add-On and news sites, is throwing their hat into the ring with the very capitalized WOWDB, which appears to be in beta right now. It seems like a pretty complete database; it's got all the items, quests, NPCs, and so on that you would expect from a serious act like Curse. But hold on a minute, doesn't it looks a bit similar to a certain other WoW database site of which Curse doesn't seem to be too fond? (Update: Curse has contacted us to say that the linked article wasn't written by anyone on their staff-- instead, it was posted by a user of their site, and that they have no ill will towards Affinity Media or Wowhead). Ignore the Wrath of the Lich King-esque blues for a second, and...oh. Oh dear. Well, at least it's a good design they're copying from, I suppose. See the gallery below for more comparison screenshots. What do you guys think -- is this within the bounds of inspiration and homage, or a blatant rip-off? Update: Someone named Kody, who claims to be a representative of Curse, has appeared in our comments, and claims that Curse has obtained an "exclusive content contract" with WoWWiki for the use of their information. An interesting claim, especially since most of the content on WoWWiki (written by users) should be covered under Wikia's terms of use and the GNU Free Documentation License, and thus available for use to anyone who credits and sources it. We've sent requests to both Kody and WoWWiki for more information.Another update after the jump.%Gallery-15333%
