New WoW Map Uses Google Local API

Lord Satri writes "The WarCry Network lead me to the world's only ultra-high resolution map of the World of Warcraft universe. From WarCry: 'The site leverages the powerful Google Maps API to create a revolutionary scaled map with detail and precision never before seen on the Internet. A user can display any number of ore, herbs, or, treasure. Currently there are more than 15,000 resources in the database. All this, on one easy to navigate page.'"

Comments

Already /.

[UberHoser]

Wow, 2 min after this is posted and it is already hosed. Guess I will wait till later to see the herbs.... mmm herbs....

Site FARK'd

[llamalicious]

Site was FARK'd before it could be slashdotted (at least the map images are).
Good luck trying to view anything now.

Re:Site FARK'd

[Anonymous Coward]

Redundant? This was the second post on the article.

Holy jeebus, meta-mods start your engines!

mapwow.com

[MapWoW.com]

Thanks for the /.! We just got digged and then farked. We've disabled all dynamic php content, so much of the useful functionality isn't available right now. If you want to see how useful the site is normally, please feel free to bookmark/delicious the site and come back tomorrow. :)

The site is up for now, let's see how we last!

-- MapWoW.com Team

Re:mapwow.com

[TeamSPAM]

This looks pretty cool. I didn't think you could use alternate maps with the Google Map API. I would love to do something similar for the BattleTech Universe. Would you mind giving pointers on how to get your own map setup for this?

P.S. Any other BTech players interested in trying to develop a Google Map for the Inner Sphere?

Re:mapwow.com

[KiloByte]

Well, the Google Map API isn't that complex.

I've once created a simpler thing for my T2T map page -- it doesn't have zoom and uses only one image instead of a bunch dynamically fetched, but generally it works in a similar way. And I'm a complete beginner in JS.

I would say, an experienced programmer would be able to recreate the API in less than a week. It's not the complexity what is cool -- it is the idea.

Re:mapwow.com

[jkerman]

I would also be very interested in how you used external maps with the google API

Re:mapwow.com

[TeamSPAM]

I developered the IS Atlas and along with help from another keep the data updated. If you have the SVG plugin, you can see the maps that I made on the site. Similar to those maps, I would like to have the ability to zoom in/out as well making the map point links to the planet's info.

Re:mapwow.com

[KiloByte]

Hmm... SVG... it would be just _great_, except for the fact that most people use a certain poor excuse for a browser.

Just a technical note: why would your page force people to get a SVG plugin if most modern browsers already can handle it natively?

Re:mapwow.com

[astroman74]

Well if there is any way possible to get "better" hosting and add back in the herb/ore/etc information, that would be great. This is something that is really _THAT_GOOD_ and with about 5 million subscribers, the WoW fans around the world will flock to this place if they knew it existed.

Re:mapwow.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Would there be any way to view this in google earth?

Re:mapwow.com

[HunterZ]

Nice idea. I don't like the gold selling ads though, and there's also an in-game mod named Yatlas that does something similar.

Re:mapwow.com

[TeamSPAM]

Mostly because I wrote the code about 2 years ago and have not paid much attention to SVG since then. A quick google and I found out that I was using the wrong content type in the embed tag. The map should now work just fine in Firefox 1.5.

Re:mapwow.com

[Ryan Amos]

The gold selling ads are from AdWords. One of the few profitable businesses built around WoW (other than selling boxed copies of the game itself) is selling gold. Gold probably has a higher profit margin than selling the game. So obviously gold sellers are going to pay the most for the keyword "World of Warcraft." It sucks, but these guys have to pay for hosting somehow.

Preventing gold selling in an MMO is next to impossible anyway, and WoW is far better at mitigating its effects than any other MMO I've played. By comparison, FFXI's economy was totally screwed after about 6 months (over 1,000,000 gil for midlevel items? yah right.) WoW is over a year old and prices haven't jumped more than 25% since launch, except for certain specific items made more desirable by changes in the game mechanics.

Yatlas is actually a nice replacement for the default map screen. Bonus is it's smaller so you can actually see/control your character while looking at the map.

Re:mapwow.com

[Anonymous Coward]

As a side note, one of reasons that gold selling isn't having such inflationary effects in WoW is the prevalance of all the gold sinks at the high level.

If you're raiding on a regular basis, you need to pay for
* Item repairs -- for epics, this can top 8g a night.
* Consumables
* Ammo & Food (for Hunters)
* Reagents (candles, seeds, runes, etc)
* Transportation
* Bandages (although these are typically farmed, most DPS classes will still need a few stacks of hrc bandaids a night)
* Rep turnins (AD and the neutral TB rep turnins force you to buy things for the turnin)

It has been mentioned before that many of the gold buyers customers aren't some guy trying to buy BoE epics off of the AH, but that raiding guilds often buy cash just to cover repairs. A single night of raiding can result in a collective 200g bill for repairs, before consumables (the cash rewards from the bosses are never enough to cover what it cost to kill them).

While it's certainly possible to farm for the gold as a guild, really, a typical raiding schedule doesn't leave time for 5 hours of cash grinding. It's just easier to buy it.

Re:mapwow.com

[Snaller]

The site is up for now, let's see how we last!

Yeah, just wait until Blizzard sees you have used their graphics ;-)

Re:mapwow.com

[HeyBob!]

You'll get lots of info by looking at the page source. For example, this is in the code:

(Sorry, I had to remove the formatting to get around the slashdot whitespace filter)

yourMapType.getTileURL = function (x, y, zoom){
if (zoom>13) {return "http://mapwow.com:4382/gmap/zoom_in.jpg";}
else if ( (x0) || (y0)) {return "http://mapwow.com:4382/gmap/water.jpg";}
else {return "http://mapwow.com:4382/gmap/zoom"+zoom+"maps/"+x+ "_"+y+"_"+zoom+".jpg";}

Hi-Res

[sogoodsofarsowhat]

Back in 1980 maybe this was hi-res but it is by no standard a hi-res image.

But does it leverage...

[Yst]

The site leverages the powerful Google Maps API to create a revolutionary scaled map with detail and precision never before seen on the Internet.

But does it leverage the power of insufferable marketing lingo to pro-actively develop a synergistic user-oriented information transaction? Yes, yes, I think it does.

No

[lbmouse]

'... All this, on one easy to navigate page.'

All this, on one smoking server.

Hmm..

[SeekerDarksteel]

Resources, herbs, thats great...but what I really want to know is...

Can I zoom in on Darnassus to look down Night Elfs' shirts?

Re:Hmm..

[Lemental]

Why? All you need to do is wait around IF. Will see a underwear clad dancing NE female in no time asking for gold.

Re:Hmm..

[aapold]

And there's a patch to fix that last remaining obstacle...

Re:Hmm..

[Anonymous Coward]

IF? NE? fix what?

Instances.

[LoyalOpposition]

Wonderful. Next, could we have high-resolution maps of instances?

-Loyal

Re:Instances.

[SydShamino]

This was my favorite site for instance maps, when I played:
http://worldofwarcraft.gameamp.com/game_map/viewGa meMaps/0.php!orderBy=17

Re:Instances.

[MapWoW.com]

Thanks for the idea, we're planning on adding instance maps in the future.

BTW, any other features that you'd like to see added? We're always open to suggestions.

Re:Instances.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your site is still down, so I can't see how it works. Do you keep track of the main roads in the various zones, and how long they are? It would be neat to have the "political geography" seperate from the "physical sattelite" view like Google maps does.

I was thinking along the lines of a trip planner, with time estimates based on a 60% or 100% mount, and taking into account the flight paths constant times.

It would finally prove to people that, yes, it's faster to take the Zep to GG and fly to Kargath than to fly from UC to Kargath....

CL

[photojunkie]

"Gnomish Spy Satellite" Crafter Lvl: 335

Re:CL

[cratermoon]

Spy-o-matic Orbitagizmo - Requires: Mithril Tube, Goblin Rocket Fuel, Green Lens, Mithril Gyro-Shot

Is it just me....

[TrickFred]

Is it just me, or does the main continent look like a big chicken head, red dangly thing under the beak and all?

Used google api, but not their servers

[192939495969798999]

I wonder if even Google's servers could've handled the load fired at that poor site. Then again, I wonder what they were thinking, to make a WoW interactive app, post it on the internet, and then allow just everyone to go use it. Of course, now that all the WoW people know about it, it'll just be slammed forever. I'd love to see a graph of their traffic:
satuday: 9 hits
sunday: 10 hits
monday: 9999999 hits
tuesday: 999999 hits
wednesday: 9999 hits + holding, ka BOOM! goes the server...

Re:Used google api, but not their servers

[l0tu53at3r]

yet another form of traffic-related money making, brought to you by "Do no evil", Inc.

Re:Used google api, but not their servers

[XXIstCenturyBoy]

The site got on Digg, Fark.com and /. all within the same 2-3 days. I went to it sunday following a link from someone in WOW, and they already had a "help us pay our bandwidth" banner, without having even been hit yet. Hopefully the exposure will produce someone who want to host them...

Donate

[Onan]

If this seems like a cool idea, and something that you're glad someone did, give 'em a few bucks through that donation link on the right. Encouraging and facilitating nifty things helps produce future nifty things.

(And no, I'm not affiliated with the creators or ISP here. Just sayin'.)

Re:Donate

[dswensen]

This is Slashdot, we'd much rather sneer at them derisively for having too much time on their hands and / or no girlfriends (actual facts concerning social or sex life notwithstanding).

Copyright Infringement

[Sparr0]

Has anyone considered the legal ramifications of them ripping media from the game and distributing it online? Unless I am mistaken, this map is generated from the minimap's textures. Problems arose in the same sort of online maps for other games (EQ, DAOC, AO).

Re:Copyright Infringement

[Anonymous Coward]

this isent riping but added comunity value. most games
have surch fan site whit information(screen shot, walkthru, tips)
about the game. often publisher provide "fan pack" whit official
icon and images to use.

anyway, thise king of site is only usefull to actual players.
even if the screenshot of the map was restricted like music is
blizzard would prove them self again moron if the would sue them.

Bob

Re:Copyright Infringement

[Loco3KGT]

wow grammar surprise.

If your name really is Bob then my last name is Chang.

Re:Copyright Infringement

[WetBeaverSRU]

Don't visit that site!!!! The WOWIAA will attempt to sue you because your browser's cache is being shared within your computer! Quick, clear the cache, clear the cache!!!!

Damnit Jim I'm a rogue not a priest!!!!

Re:Copyright Infringement

[slashrogue]

IMHO, Blizzard should host this stuff on their servers and pay this guy(s?) for the effort put into this. This is just one of those things companies can be so stupid about when they could do a lot more good by promoting it.

Face on Mars

[b1t r0t]

I found the face on Mars! Okay, so it's a different face, but you know what I mean. It's in the Eastern kindgom, just south of the big ice area and north of a pentacle island in the middle of some magma. You can see it best at the second or third highest zoom level.

If that site had bookmarking, I'd post a link.

Re:Face on Mars

[MapWoW.com]

The site does have bookmarking, but it's half-way disabled for now because of the load.

To use the bookmarking, first scroll to your face on mars or where-ever. Then at the bottom of the right-hand menu, you'll see a small "Link to this Location" link. Copy the URL for this link (vis right-clicking, clicking on the URL, or reading the Ethereal dump). Once the site is back to using PHP, then this link will take you to the location you visited. For example, this is the future-link to Darnassus:

http://mapwow.com/?lat=-179.69959259033203&lng=85. 03840665961734&zoom=2

Re:Face on Mars

[Evangelion]

For anyone in WoW, the face he's talking about is in the Searing Gorge. Go to the blocked off cave (Blackchar Cave) in the extreme southwest of Searing Gorge, and look at your minimap.

Re:Face on Mars

[Anonymous Coward]

I think an easier reference point would be "north west of blackrock mountain", but maybe thats just me.

Re:Face on Mars

[Evangelion]

It's actually just due west of the entrance to Blackrock Mountain, but because of the geography you're going to have to go south a few hundred yards after going west from BRM.

Next Question...

[ThePepe]

Ok so the next question is, Who wants to do this for Guild Wars?

..Says the lazy guy that doesnt want to take the time

Re:Next Question...

[Mithrandir3791]

I was thinking about doing this for Guild Wars months ago, but I don't have the time or the knowledge/skill needed. I have a friend who has the knowledge/skill who was willing to help, but he doesn't have time for it either, so it never got done.

Curses!

[Wombat]

It was just you, but now I see it too.

In fact, I can't stop seeing it that way.

Thanks!

Better tool is...

[stinkbomb]

...WoW Cartographe. French-made tool with fabutastic feature set.

Yeah, but where are the driving directions?

[voxel]

Er, I guess it could be flying directions.

I should be able to click on one place, then click on another (after specifing alliance or horde), and it should show me the Boat/Zepplin/Flight paths to most efficiently get from one place to another. :-)

Asheron's Call???

[MBraynard]

Is it just me, or does that map look a LOT like Asheron's Call?

Another version.

[deemaunik]

Something moderately similar to this was made awhile back, and a friend of mine clued me into it about a month or two ago. Don't ask me where it came from, or anything else about it, really... just, showing.

http://www.kaldorei.com/worldmap/

Granted, it's not ultra high resolution, but it was the best I'd seen before this.

Wow they had access to closed areas

[Foo2rama]

They got Hygel and got it right, at this time the only way to get into that area is on a self run server. But alas they did not find GM island... Also looks like pre patch 1.4 the AQ section has more stuff in it now and extends farther east. Hacked server, but missed one crucial location.

Re:Wow they had access to closed areas

[xlcus]

Wrong. You can still get in to Hyjal in version 1.9

Looks like another country...

[Hanzie]

If you zoom way out, you'll see that there are actually 2 continents.

The resemblance of the continent on the right to North and South Korea is just too much to be coincidence. It even has a DMZ. (a very straight waterway between North and South.

Not being a WoW player, I have no idea of the place's name.

no your right!

[r3m0]

your right and here is the proof