Blizzard Exposes Detailed WoW Character Data

Gavin Scott writes "Blizzard has introduced a new web site called the Armory which lets you get information on any World of Warcraft character, extracted from their live databases, in near real-time. This exposes a great deal of information that was not previously obtainable including profession choices, skill levels for all skills, and the character's complete talent specification and all faction reputation data, along with all gear currently equipped. The complete roster of any guild or arena team is also available. Some players are upset about this, such as arena PvP teams who now have all their gear and talent choices exposed to the world, or players with non-standard or less-popular talent choices who fear they will have difficulty getting into pickup groups now that people can instantly find out everything about them. Are these complaints fair? Blizzard claims to own all the data and the characters, but at what point does this data represent personal choices and information about their players which would be covered by their own privacy policy? In a virtual society, should people be able to present a view of themselves that differs from (virtual) reality, or should all details be exposed?"

Comments

I don't see the big deal here

[Samalie]

I'm a WoW player, just back & very casual in my playstyle. Do I give a crap if anyone can see my Character's build/gear/etc? Not one bit.

I can see where some of the hardcore types might want to conceal their information, but IMHO its not a true "Your rights" issue - they are not revealing any information about YOU, just your character.

The only "risk" here is if someone has some "secret" character build that kicks ass, its now exposed to the world - but on the same token, its not just about the build, but the player behind the keyboard.

So a long-winded post to say "No I don't give a crap" :)

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Anonymous Coward]

Will please someone think of the children !!??!

-- a concerned parent

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[cgori]

It's arena matches (especially among top-ranked players) that people care about. It's very different to know that 3 of the 5 opponents have engineering, therefore some crazy trinkets, and oh, that rogue is mutilate-build vs combat, or that mage is frost/fire/arcane spec'd. You might figure it out within 10 seconds of the match starting but if the match lasts 60 seconds tops, you lost a decent fraction of time to figuring it out, and probably didn't play the optimum counter-strategy.

For the median player, or at least median arena participant it's a non-issue. It's only at the very top of the arena rankings (which are now going to be done like chess rankings...) that anyone will care. Those players will probably just respec before any match anyway so not as big a deal.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Anonymous Coward]

if you face the same team again, you pretty much know what to expect and how they killed you before or what methods worked. that also brings up the point of information overload: there are a lot of characters! I mean a *lot*.

What I would be more concerned with (at least in the pre-BC days) would be if a character had a ton of BoE epics/rares ... which means they probably bought gold [or ran an AH mod]. Now though, gold is in such flux everyone is spending and receiving huge amounts, so 1-2 BoEs arent going to mean they bought anything (maybe just delayed thier epic flying mount purchase).

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Cali Thalen]

It's more of a on-issue then people think...and most already think it's a non-issue.

If you go into the arena, as soon as the battle starts (which is the first time you can see who your opponents are), drop into this website and look up one of the player's gear...by the time you see anything, you're already dead. The website isn't that fast, and you don't have that kind of time to research anything.

Sure, you can look up every arena player on every server in your battle group, and try to memorize it all (thousands of players on each of 8 or so servers), and assuming that no one changes equipment in the mean time, and assuming that no one has equipment that they use only in arenas, and assuming that knowing all that will give you any edge at all (which usually it won't), then you may have an issue.

Me...I'm less than concerned about it, and it's a cool toy whether or not it poses any kind of problems.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[I(rispee_I(reme]

The website isn't that fast, and you don't have that kind of time to research anything. Sure, you can look up every arena player on every server in your battle group, and try to memorize it all (thousands of players on each of 8 or so servers)

Or you could cache the pages locally :)

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Anonymous Coward]

Engineering stuff can't be used in arenas.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[hsa]

Engineering is not usable in Arena.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[AikonMGB]

Except that when you have a very high ranking, you are typically somebody who cares alot about winning, and you're generally pitted against teams of equally high ranking as you. There would be significantly fewer of these, and you do indeed get to know the teams and see the same people over and over again. To be able to check up on all your big opponents before you start the arena day, and see if any of them have changed their build/spec/gear, would give a lot of insight into how you will play against them.

Having said that, since the other teams can do the same, it doesn't really constitute an unfair advantage.. but I'm still not sure I'm sold on this =/

Aikon-

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Tjebbe]

I stopped playing long ago, and didn't do much pvp, nor have i used the interface plugin system, but i was wondering:

wouldn't it be possible to make a plugin that uses this information to provide tips or maybe on-the-fly configurations etc to maximize your effectiveness in pvp? I can't see a problem with this site if it isn't possible, but if it can be automated it could very well throw the game balance completely to the side that uses something like that.

I know 'the other side can use it too' (if it's public) but even if that wasn't a lame excuse, it could very well change the style of playing pvp completely (for better or for worse, but still).

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[SpiritOfGrandeur]

You do know that people can build UI's and by using other data on the internet display this information. Brings up some interesting possibilities.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Endo13]

I'm a WoW player, just back & very casual in my playstyle. Do I give a crap if anyone can see my Character's build/gear/etc? Not one bit. I can see where some of the hardcore types might want to conceal their information, but IMHO its not a true "Your rights" issue - they are not revealing any information about YOU, just your character. The only "risk" here is if someone has some "secret" character build that kicks ass, its now exposed to the world - but on the same token, its not just about the build, but the player behind the keyboard. So a long-winded post to say "No I don't give a crap" :) I gotta agree with you. But on the "secret character build that kicks ass"... well, there really is no such thing in WoW. There's about five different ways any class can spend their talent points that actually work well, and everybody who's been playing a while knows all of them and how to fight against all of them. Sure, the added talents and points due to the expansion might have temporarily muddied the waters a bit, but that won't last long. As for gear.. most gear doesn't drastically alter your playstyle. WoW gear is just not that diverse. Mostly what it does is alter how powerful you are, and there's not a whole lot another player can do in changing their tactics to compensate for that. And on top of that, most experienced players (and by "experienced" I mean pretty much everyone who's leveled their own character to 60+) know what just about every piece of gear looks like, and can tell at a glance what an enemy is wearing and how powerful he might be.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[illumina us]

It's arena matches (especially among top-ranked players) that people care about. It's very different to know that 3 of the 5 opponents have engineering, therefore some crazy trinkets, and oh, that rogue is mutilate-build vs combat, or that mage is frost/fire/arcane spec'd.

This whole point about arena matches is rather moot. When an arena match starts you have 60 seconds to hand out food, water, health stones, buffs, etc. During this time, however, you are given absolutely no information about the other team except for how many there are. You cannot target them, you cannot query their names, races, class, etc. Ergo, unless you feel like losing your rating to scout for the teams you have no time to look up what spec they are or what gear they have. Furthermore, given the existent of battle groups and how the arena system works you have very little chance of fighting the same team over and over again unless you are in the top or bottom percentiles of your respective league. On top of this, many people already have their profiles available on Allakhazam or Thottbot and hopefully most are honest when using CTProfiles. Any guild roster information is freely available on WarcraftRealms. Just because this data now comes directly from the source as opposed to gathered by many third parties doesn't mean it didn't exist in the public scope before. I really don't see the problem and I hope Blizzard goes even further with this by showing things I can craft with my professions as well, just so I don't have to keep an updated list myself! Anyone complaining about their privacy being violated doesn't really know the meaning of the term. Perhaps if Blizzard displayed the account name your character was associated then a privacy concern would be valid. However, this is not, and will never be, the case.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[vimh42]

There are millions of people playing the game. There are no "secret" character builds. If you have a one in a million idea, supposedly 8 others in WOW did too. And somebody made a post to a forum and everybody knows about it.

I can understand the complaints though specifically with PVP. If I'm in a 2,3, or 5 man arena match the other team not being fully aware of what I'm using and my character build can give me an advantage. On the other hand, if some PVP group is hardcore enough to bother looking at that wow stats page in order to plan a PVP strategey, they can easliy figure out what everybody is using and for the most part figure out thier build just by observing them.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[avronius]

Will please someone think of the children !!??!

-- a concerned parent Right.

If you were a concerned parent, your children wouldn't be playing WOW.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[yoyhed]

*Whoosh*

That's the sound of one of the more recent overused (and not funny) Slashdot inside jokes flying over your head.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[Anonymous Coward]

"Inside joke?"

*whoosh*

That's the sound of one of the more overused The Simpsons jokes flying over your head.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[yoyhed]

Listen. That's the sound of me hating the fucking Simpsons because they haven't been funny for years, and thus not knowing it was a Simpsons joke. I guess that just makes it worse than if it was a Slashdot joke.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[avronius]

I'm a fairly good judge of funny. This wasn't it.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[yoyhed]

It wasn't intended to be funny (and nor is the "think of the children" joke funny), it was intended to point out that you took the joke seriously.

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[avronius]

I admit that I took the anonymous poster at face value.

If they had posted "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!", I likely would not have given it credence [as per thinkofthechildren...], but the anonymous posting coupled with the 'a concerned parent' signature...

Perhaps I should steer clear of phishing scams for the next few days...

Re:I don't see the big deal here

[yoyhed]

Haha, yes, I would recommend that. You just might believe you're getting a 20% commission on a $25 million sum the prince of Nigeria needs transferred to the US ;-) Oh wait, you said phishing...

Bad Idea

[celardore]

I don't play this game, but I imagine that it would put people at a significant disadvantage in many situations. Trolls could find weaker players and go kill them easily. Personal privacy aside, I think this is a really bad idea. Imagine a war game (computer, real, whatever) where you know your enemies weaknesses, and they know yours. And it is not fair to say that everybody has access to this information and is fair game, because many will not know how to access this or even care about it. Bad move.

This could make things like the WoW funeral massacre much more easy, and common. A group of assholes could easily pwn a group of noobs. Not fair, not cool in my eyes. I did download the trial after hearing a load of hype recently; Not my thing. Found it unentertaining, so I played Counter-strike instead for a bit with my real life friends over Ventrillo. That was much more fun.

Re:Bad Idea

[frosty_tsm]

Trolls could find weaker players and go kill them easily. I imagine that the dwarves and night elves might try to do the same thing...

Re:Bad Idea

[LordLucless]

Firstly, PvP in WoW is pretty much dead. There is no real point to it, apart from grinding rep in Battlegrounds. Nobody cares enough to look at their opponents builds. Now, with the addition of Arena teams, it might be different. If they take off, and there are some really skilled teams there, then that information might be useful. But knowing your opponents build and equipment is only going to be useful if you both teams are a) reasonable skilled and b) equally matched. Also, it's not hard to figure out most builds after fighting someone a couple of times, so it's not like the information couldn't be found anyway by hardcore players (who are the only ones who will really be able to benefit from it).

Re:Bad Idea

[Barny]

There was a add on for dark age of Camelot (heavy pvp game) that scanned the incoming data and got the name, did a http lookup on the server to get info on level, class, amount of kills, etc and would then feed it back into the game as a graphic floating above the players head, expect similar for WoW when the pvpers get wind of this, the DaoC version is of course banned and if you are caught with it you will be suspended.

Re:Bad Idea

[Ustum]

If WoW were more serious about PVP (a la EVE Online, even with its...quirks?) then I'd call this a really egregious violation of player rights. However, since I regard WoW as largely PvE, that's where I would look for disadvantages. The harms here come up when someone doing something somewhat unique gets screwed out of grouping/looting/guilding/whatever because someone checked out some stats, and says "that's not what I think a fighter/healer/caster should use," and snubbed them. I play nonstandard builds as a rule; I've taken flak a number of times from people who expect a cookie-cutter response from me and find something slightly different. This is especially true for folks performing central roles in nonstandard ways: clerics, tanks, crowd controllers, and such. When I play those classes, especially with groups I'm less familiar with, I sometimes have to play a role I'm less than perfectly suited for. I get by and so does the group in the end, but you sometimes wouldn't have thought it likely given the builds I run. Making this information available shifts the social burden of being a "good player" one more step towards equipment and away from play skill. Is that shift outweighed by the very real convenience of having your character gear visible outside of the game environment? Maybe, but that's the question at hand here, not just a blanket statement about player privacy.

Re:Bad Idea

[ZombieRoboNinja]

Funny part is, that would be a legitimate addon for WoW, and Blizzard probably wouldn't even try to stop it.

Anyway, the level and class of anyone nearby is already readily available info, and at one point the "kill count" sort of was (when PVP rankings were in effect).

People knowing what gear you have? All they need to do is look at you; most high-end gear is pretty unique in appearance. Priests have been complaining for a year Benediction (a popular healing weapon) makes them a target to enemy players.

Re:Bad Idea

[germ!nation]

apart from it's impossible to "stream" data into the wow interface in that manner. if you managed to do so then that would certainly have to use a method that would be 'illegal' (in an addon sense)

Re:Bad Idea

[Hubbell]

Too bad there are absolutely no risks involved with dieing in WoW beyond time being wasted and a couple gold being spent on repairs. MAYBE if the game had some actual penalties for death such as drop on death like Asheron's Call, it would matter a LITTLE bit, but in Asheron's Call everyone knew what skills everyone had for the most part anyways, and it didn't matter cause player skill > player template almost every time. Too bad WoW is built around character(item/class/level) vs character(item/class/level) instead of player skill vs player skill.

Re:Bad Idea

[Endo13]

I would consider your post insightful, except that WoW just isn't very flexible in that way. Maybe you can scrape by at lower levels filling a role that your build is not designed for, but at 50+ not a chance. This is not to say that any given solid (though non-conventional) build is not useful in its own way. For example, lets say you were playing a druid. And then lets suppose that you liked your own personal variation of a balance talent spec. Now your build may be good in its own right, but if you're running this build at level 62 and your group needs you as a primary healer, you will not be able to function that role in anything of any real difficulty. You'll run out of mana too fast, if your heals are even powerful enough to begin with. Or if you're playing a warrior - a fury build may work ok for tanking at the deadmines, but it sure won't cut it as the main tank build for Naxxaramus.

Now if we were talking about Guild Wars it would be a different story. GW is made for people like you who like to come up with their own builds. WoW sadly is not.

Re:Bad Idea

[Res3000]

This wouldn't be possible in WoW. You can't open something from your addon that wasn't in your Interface-directory when you start WoW. Of course, you can copy paste the infos into a specific file in your Addon and reload the UI, but looking up the informations and reloading the UI... You will be dead.

And the other problem is that you won't see the names of the other team until the match starts, so withouth cheating it won't be possible.

Re:Bad Idea

[C0rinthian]

I don't play this game, but I imagine that it would put people at a significant disadvantage in many situations. Trolls could find weaker players and go kill them easily. Yeah, because doing '/who Level MyLevel' is soooo difficult.

Re:Bad Idea

[C0rinthian]

bah, there was a 'less than' in there.

Re:Bad Idea

[PastaLover]

That's all very good and all, but if you're organising a raid you can still keep track of these things. Put dps warriors in dps roles. Pick and match classes with certain builds. It sounds like you're saying that you can't do endgame raiding with other specs but the "standard" which really isn't true. If you're in one of the good guilds (to me that's the ones that don't mind trying something new) you'll often see all sorts of weird combinations being used.

It's unfortunate that I do not have the time for the hardcore raiding bit (do some casual stuff though) but then it'd probably be full with 'tards who say "you need to spec XYZ, and have that specific gear and grind 5 hours for blah". The ones I really respect are the ones that will try to rotate the tanking roles between feral druids and warriors, put a balance spec druid in their line-up, try out how shammies and pallies can work together, you know, getting the most out of the game instead of following the same damn tacs everyone knows by now. I think that was also blizz's intention with the way they (re)did the talent trees.

Re:Bad Idea

[Endo13]

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not saying that unusual builds can't be useful. What I am saying is that while a feral druid build is good for some things, it will never work for healing effectively. If I'm the leader of a guild, and my guild needs some more healers, and in particular resto druids, (Note that I'm just using healing druids as an example as they're generally rare and in demand.) I'm going to be looking for a resto-spec druid. If you're playing a feral druid (and refuse to re-spec) while your build may be a good build, and work very well for tanking, you're not what I'm looking for. As a guild leader, this new information is an invaluable tool to see if someone really is what they claim they are, and not just someone claiming to be using the talents that I need.

Or in other words, if you're going to be a druid healer there's about 2 or 3 slight variations of talents that you can use and still be effective. No matter how skilled a player you are, you cannot heal effectively with any spec that deviates much from a pure resto spec.

Contrast this with Guild wars, in which there are dozens of skills and combinations of skills that can be used to heal effectively, some of them quite bizarre and unusual. Every once in a while you'll happen on someone using a combination you've never seen before, even if you've been playing since release.

Re:Bad Idea

[Toridas]

You can still have a mod that saves the data local then it can be uploaded elsewhere. It's not live steaming but it's close. This is how all the WoW database sites work (allakhazam, thottbot, wowhead, etc)

Re:Bad Idea

[powerpants]

Priests have been complaining for a year Benediction (a popular healing weapon) makes them a target to enemy players. Healing gear... in PVP? Can you do that?

Re:Bad Idea

[Endo13]

So nice to see clueless people on the loose with mod points.

It's just a video game

[kasek]

There is no personal information being made available. There is no privacy concern. This is just a case of pvp kiddies getting upset that they might lose a slight edge in a PvP system that isn't even based off of skill, but rather time invested. It remains to be seen if the new arena system will change that at all. That, and arena matches are pretty short anyways, so the odds of someone looking you up to see your gear/build before a match are pretty slim.

and yes, I play, and I could really care less if anyone sees what PvP team im on or what gear/skills/etc i have.

Re:It's just a video game

[QuantumG]

I love the way people play MMOs and don't even understand their attraction to the medium.

Re:It's just a video game

[zippthorne]

What I don't understand about the arenas is, Why bother? There's no role playing there, they don't even take place "in the world" but in a shard with no effect on the world whatsoever.

So they're basically souped-down versions of 3D multiplayer FPSs where any element of skill (say.. being able to hit someone in mid-air with the spinfusor) is replaced by a button that automatically does the thing.

also, no jetpacks.

Re:It's just a video game

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, turn your back on the rich Tribes 2 traditions and forgo that flame.

WOooo hooooo, go Team Rapture and Team Nutshot!!!!!!

Me

[friedmud]

I just took a look at my own character: http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet .xml?r=Thunderhorn&n=Friedmud

I personally really like it. I've used similar services in the past (Allakhazam / Thottbot)... but they left a lot to be desired.

I often want to check what people in my group have both gear and talent wise, so I know what I'm supposed to be doing. For instance, I'm a full Prot spec warrior (as you can see on my page above)... so my main purpose in life is tanking and holding aggro... so I really need to know if that other warrior in my group is also full prot-spec and maybe has better gear/talents for holding aggro... 'cause then I can defer to him. Sure we could sit around and talk about it for a long time (which is what goes on now for the most part)... but it would be a lot simpler to just look him up and compare our stats....

Anyway... I think people that get overly worked up about this are just too damn serious about the game... it's just that, a GAME! Cool off and go kill something....

Friedmud

Re:Me

[QuantumG]

it's just that, a GAME! Yep, and clearly you've come to this conclusion after reading all the literature on the subject. Cause I can tell you, the guys who made WoW sure have.

Re:Me

[dbIII]

Cool off and go kill something....

Not enough rage.

Re:Me

[gangien]

I've never played wow.. but.. let's look at your eq
Lofty gauntlets of the bear, ok
Heavy mithril boots, sure
Carrot on a stick, WTF?

Re:Me

[Macgrrl]

Out of Range

Feles L70 Boomkin, Muradin. The most fun you can have with your pans on!

Re:Me

[SYSS Mouse]

Not everyone is a warrior, nor a druid using bear form.

Re:Me

[Rebelgecko]

They help mounted characters go faster.

Re:Me

[Vampyre_Dark]

Cool off and go kill something....

Jack Thompson just pasted that into a long file of quotes for his next case. He might send someone to dig through your garbage.

Re:Me

[Das Modell]

I personally really like it.

I first got errors. Then it froze all my browsers, and the problem persisted even after I restored my Firefox session. Lost a forum post I was making.

Blizzard's WoW site has never been very stable.

Re:Me

[Ubergrendle]

I'm OOM you insensitive clod!

Great idea

[obeythefist]

But like most corps, Blizzard forgot that people like options and they like to feel like they have rights.

This should have been opt-in. Instead, I don't think you can even opt out.

Sure, 90% of players won't care, but what about the high end gamers who develop a secret 2v2 PvP secret sauce?
Since they don't actually have real lives, their performance and uniqueness in WoW PvP means a lot to them!

Blizzard jeapardises this quite a lot without thinking too hard about the consequences.

Re:Great idea

[MooseMuffin]

You can't directly opt out, but before you log off you could remove all your gear. Your armory profile will show you wearing nothing, and only your talents will be exposed.

Err...maybe that came out wrong

Re:Great idea

[gweihir]

Sure, 90% of players won't care, but what about the high end gamers who develop a secret 2v2 PvP secret sauce?

I don't think that is really possible. Despite some peoples conviction that equipment is everything. I don't agree. Playstyles and reflexes do count as does communication between teammembers.

Re:Great idea

[obeythefist]

All else remaining equal, skill and co-ordination are decisive.

But WoW is quite simplistic in terms of gameplay (really, it is very simple, warlock for example, dot-fear-dot, it's not complicated). As a result of the straightforward nature of gameplay, skill is a backseat compared to equipment.

I know this because I play warrior a lot, and playing warrior is painful. It's painful because the blizzard developers balance the entire class around the 1% of warriors completely equipped with orange gear.

It's true there's not much room to be unpredictable in your class, but you can keep an edge by keeping your capabilities hidden until the very last moment, just ask Sun Tzu. Blizzard have removed the ability for players to be secretive.

And what about world PvP? You can now stalk your favourite enemy, work out how tough he really is, and exploit that information. Or, just as likely, he'll do that to you. Think about that next time you stroll out of Tarren Mill. Talk about emergent play.

Re:Great idea

[gweihir]

But WoW is quite simplistic in terms of gameplay (really, it is very simple, warlock for example, dot-fear-dot, it's not complicated). As a result of the straightforward nature of gameplay, skill is a backseat compared to equipment.

Not my impression. I have a Mage, a Shaman and a Druid, and it is quite complicated what to do in what situation. Especially the Druid with changing forms at the right moment. By even the Mage allows advanced styles (it is an ice-Mage, fire-Mages are simple: do maxdamage, then die). I think that many players just don't realize what range they have at their disposal.

And what about world PvP? You can now stalk your favourite enemy, work out how tough he really is, and exploit that information. Or, just as likely, he'll do that to you. Think about that next time you stroll out of Tarren Mill. Talk about emergent play.

That may be an issue. But personally I think those playing on PvP servers get everything they deserve. Fairness is not really possible there. I am a bit too old for this type of foolishness.

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that many players just don't realize what range they have at their disposal.

fire-Mages are simple: do maxdamage, then die I love contradictions more than WoW, hurray!

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

really, it is very simple, warlock for example, dot-fear-dot, it's not complicated Bad enough that players like you QQ all over Blizzard's forums about warlocks. Now you do it on /. too?

DoTs got nerfed back to pre-TBC levels after all the QQing on the forums. Fear has been changed more times than I can even remember. Lasts 12 seconds maximum now on the first application. If they get another on you it sure won't last 12 seconds thanks to diminishing returns.

Do you even have a warlock? At 70? Do you remember when deathcoil wasn't called noobcoil? Remember when you were a "free honor kill?"

Remember rogues stunlocking you from 100% to dead with absolutely no chance to do a damn thing the whole time? Oh wait, that was just yesterday.

Warlocks are just fine. You bunch of little QQ-babies just won't stop until we're all the way back to being free honor kills.

Go DIAF. Kthxbai.

Re:Great idea

[VGPowerlord]

I'll say this, Hotbabe has nice equipment.

Re:Great idea

[gweihir]

I love contradictions more than WoW, hurray!

Instructions: First read. Then understand. Then comment.

Hint: Fire-Mages can turn into Ice-Mages with small effort.

Re:Great idea

[jfodale]

"And what about world PvP? You can now stalk your favourite enemy, work out how tough he really is, and exploit that information"

World PvP in WoW? Wha...Ohhh, corpse camping, now I remember.

Re:Great idea

[SilentChris]

That's nothing to worry about. The scary part is people will still know your Reputation and Specialization. *cough*

Re:Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, I inadvertantly found a way to "opt out". One of my characters has a special character at the beginning of the name (ß), and isn't listed as existing. Nor are any of the others that I know about with ß as the starting char. My warlock, Demoníc, (note the special char "í") is listed however. So, I suppose, if you don't like it, reroll with a ß as the leading char...

Re:Great idea

[obeythefist]

Nice kneejerk reaction! Free cookie. Now please read my post and put your knee back where it's supposed to be.

Nowhere did I say locks were overpowered. Or underpowered. I just said they're simple to play. You can write a macro that does your casting sequence (dot fear dot etc). Then you just keep clicking one button and either stuff dies or it doesn't depending on how good your gear is. Many classes are quite similar in terms of very low skill requirement, hunters, mages, locks, priests in particular. Melee classes and short range classes require much more careful attention to positioning, but even then it's simplistic in terms of the buttons you're mashing when you're in combat.

I'd like to quote Guild Wars as an example of not-so-simple, because the skills you take into combat can be used to create a customised combo set, which depends on both your pre-game design and your in game sequence. I'm not saying GW is better than WoW, either, just illustrating an example.

Re:Great idea

[kittywampus]

You can opt out. Cancel your subscription.

I'm Holy Spec'ed!

[Anonymous Coward]

Priest: I'm Holy Spec'ed!
Raid LeadeR: We know you're not Holy spec'ed anymore... your heals are casting way too long, you're always out of mana.
Priest: Look at all my healing gear! I am holy spec'ed!
Raid Leader: We checked you out on Armory!
Priest: Really!? Those bastards. Blizzard is not respecting my privacy!
Raid Leader: Well, also the fact that you're in shadowform doesn't help your case. :D

[I sympathize with the priest nerfage this patch.]

Great - now fix Inspect

[Phs2501]

Maybe now that they have this they can frickin' fix Inspect so you don't have to stay within 3cm of another player to look at their gear. (Inspect was "broken" several patches ago such that the window closed when the other player walked out of the [tiny] range allowed.)

Re:Great - now fix Inspect

[synoptism]

See the third-party addon SuperInspect. While at the time of inspecting a player you must be within a 5 yard radius, it won't close if the player moves away. It also supports caching of the most recently inspected players as well as summarizes bonuses and statistics gained from items and weapons.

Re:Great - now fix Inspect

[sarahbau]

It was actually "fixed." I don't feel like trying to find the patch note, but Blizzard said that the former long range of inspect was a bug, and the recent patch fixed it. You used to be able to inspect by typing /inspect at a farther range than the menu would let you inspect. Now they are the same. I still think they should go back to the old way. I never understood why they made it so once you inspect someone, the window should ever close unless you close it (or that mousing over items should simply say "Head" or "Legs" instead of the actual item info).

Re:Great - now fix Inspect

[Anonymous Coward]

The inspect range is to reduce the amount of data your computer has to deal with and be ready to deal with. How would you feel if your computer crashed every single time someone new came within 100 meters of you in IF/Org/Shatt? I know I'd be pissed. ;)

Re:Great - now fix Inspect

[NFNNMIDATA]

Ummm, I already have the inspected data on my screen when they remove it. Keeping that data there in no way raises anything. They just need to stop trying to make it real-time.

Not a big deal - like sport statistics

[dbIII]

None of this is private information at all. It's like publishing sports statistics for everything from school games to professional sportsfolks.

Re:Not a big deal - like sport statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

None of this is private information at all. It's like publishing sports statistics for everything from school games to professional sportsfolks.

If you really want to use this stupid analogy, then I'll say it's like publishing what supliments, drugs, and streroids each player is using. I'm sure you agree they'd be very upset about this, even if it was just legal supliments being published.

I am not too concerned

[gweihir]

I found out about this today. First I thought this may be a privacy issue. After some browsing, also of my own characters, I don't think so. One thing is that even if all your details are exposed, most players of other classes cannot really judge what works well and what does not. Also I doubt people will invest the time to ckeck on everybody they are inviting into a group.

What I really like is the ability to get an overview over guilds and to get inspirations about skills and equipment by looking up people I know to play well.

All in all, I think this is an interesting addition.

BTW, it is fun to see how often names are used. Sadly, I don't have a single uniquely nameed character....

Re:I am not too concerned

[Jack9]

First I thought this may be a privacy issue.

You never really explained why you thought this. Seems ridiculous to me.
Have you tried to read all the TOS? Blizzard revealing information about assets they own is not even comparable to the Warden program.

Re:I am not too concerned

[gweihir]

You never really explained why you thought this. Seems ridiculous to me.

Pretty simple: In a very real, emotional sense it is your character. Never mind the legalese. Should be quite obvious, though.

Re:I am not too concerned

[geekoid]

I have several uniquely named characters.. so Nah!

Re:I am not too concerned

[Jack9]

In a very real, emotional sense it is your character.

No, it's not. It's a CHARACTER, which is not something I own, but a persona that's fictional. That's obvious. Taking emotional ownership, is aberrant.

Re:I am not too concerned

[AnalogFile]

In a very real, emotional sense it is your character.

No, it's not. It's a CHARACTER, which is not something I own, but a persona that's fictional. That's obvious. Taking emotional ownership, is aberrant.

It is not aberrant. It is the actual meaning of the RP in MMORPG.

It would be aberrant if you were unable to log out.

Gweihir reaction is totally appropriate: initial emotional involvement and subsequent ratonale analysis.

Re:I am not too concerned

[Jack9]

It's aberrant. See a therapist. Reality versus fantasy. RP does not mean to lose sight of the difference. There should never be a question, when it's obvious fantasy.

Re:I am not too concerned

[AnalogFile]

Aberrant means abnormal, atipical, anomalous. Being emotional for a fictious character is neither. Loosing sigh of reality is aberrant. Being emotional for something that is not real does not imply loosing sight of reality. A lot of people feel emotional for something that is fictional (crying for a movie is a non game related example). This is both normal and tipical.

Actually, not being able to feel emotional for something for the sole reason that it is not real may indicate fear of loosing control of ones emotions.

The RP case is more complex. RP is very much like acting. Good actors learn their character inside out and try as hard as they can to actually think and feel like it during the performace. They struggle to feel the emotions the character is feeling. Sometimes it does happen that they behave like the character for a minute or two after the performance is over. And the same happens to hard core role players. This does not mean they loose sight of reality.

In fact the opposite is true. Since you do not loose contact with reality, you risk reality to "overflow" into the role playing. Succesfully role playing a character that is either similar to you or similar to how you would like to be is extremelly difficult because reality tend to flood in the playing. That's a typical error of many new to RP. That's why the tipical advice is to start off with a character that is deeply different from both you (as you perceive you are) or your fantasized self (as you would like to be). Pick something totally extraneous and that you do not totally like, for your first RP character.

What would be most useful

[paladinwannabe2]

I would like to see aggregate data, I do not really care about individuals. Knowing the percentages of people who play different classes, those classes preferred skills (and least preferred ones) is much more interesting than the choices a simple character makes. But then, I don't even play the game, so other people's opinions may vary.

Re:What would be most useful

[ADRA]

I agree, basically one gigantic pivot chart would be where its at.

Re:What would be most useful

[crabpeople]

You mean like this? http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

Its a bar graph but its been online for a long ass time. I used it back when I use to play wow.

Re:What would be most useful

[AnalogFile]

You mean like this? http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

Its a bar graph but its been online for a long ass time. I used it back when I use to play wow.

Unfortunatelly it is not precise nor up to date. In other words it's very inaccurate.

But Blizzard is probably hiding that sort of data on purpose.

I'd like to see everyone's /played...

[AdamTrace]

I'd like to see everyones /played values.

Nevermind... that would be too scary....!

Re:I'd like to see everyone's /played...

[WillAffleckUW]

I'd like to see everyones /played values.

I think you mean their /p0wned values.

Does this mean they can now fix hacked accounts?

[lytlebill]

So if Blizzard is so proud of their "comprehensive and up-to-date database" of character and item info, are they going to stop giving people who've had their accounts hacked the total BS "we can't restore gear because we have no way of knowing what you were equipped with" excuse anymore?

Please

[jayhawk88]

This is such a non issue. 10 minutes of in game observation of a character actively playing probably gives you nearly all this information anyway. I mean when the mage I'm dueling pulls out a Water Elemental and silences me with a Counterspell, it's not going to be too difficult to figure out his build.

Top PVP guys shouldn't be upset

[Sciros]

Guild Wars has had "observer mode" up and running for a long time now. That lets you see not only the top guild's skill builds, but their strategy! You know how they act and react, and you learn *when* to use the skills they bring.

Yet, the top guilds remain the top guilds because they're just better at doing what they do than anyone else. So, top WoW PVP folks should probably just have more confidence in their own abilities ^_^

Not Anymore...

[Greyfox]

It looks like the onslaught of billions of Slashdot readers has effectively de-exposed the information in question. Too bad, I wanted to go check the stats and loadout on my hode-side arch-nemesis.

Re:Not Anymore...

[spyder913]

Actually, yesterday it was worse. The forum population during mid-day seems to be quite high.

Re:Not Anymore...

[Kalriath]

You'd think that OSDN has less money to maintain stable servers than Blizzard Entertainment huh. But no. Apparently Slashdot's pipe is bigger than Blizzards. Oooh kay... that sounded bad.

Re:Not Anymore...

[Old Wolf]

Did anyone else notice that the page is *extremely* resource-intensive?
When I click the Ajax link to view a player's details, it takes about 20
seconds to just render the page -- not including download time (I'm on a P2-333).
That could explain why it seems to be less reliable than OSDN which is just serving text.

Re:Not Anymore...

[Kalriath]

Runs like utter shite on my P4-3.2GHz with 1GB of RAM too. Blizzard's web designers and developers are an example of what's wrong with development these days - misusing intensive platforms because someone decided it looks pretty. When you're refreshing virtually the entire page, DON'T reload it via AJAX, just reload the damn page!

Re:Not Anymore...

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'm not sure if it's as slow as you say it is... didn't seem too horrible on my box. But the AJAX is definitely a smart move here, when loading a character page. Most of the information on that page is actually not loaded until you start to mouse over things, and it takes maybe half a second for those to pop up for me.

I hate AJAX as much as the next guy, but it's the best we've got. I'd much rather they do it this way than with, say, Flash.

Re:Not Anymore...

[C0rinthian]

I noticed how much the site chugged at work yesterday. But when I got home it was like butter on safari. Perhaps it was time of day, or the network. I don't know. Just some anecdotal observations.

Slashdotted?

[ockegheim]

Brings a new meaning to the word "instantly"...

I for one welcome our RFID medieval overlords

[WillAffleckUW]

And wonder if they installed the tracking devices in my Amazon Warrior Queen when she was killed by the Morlocs? ...

Seriously, this not only violates the Fog of War principle - I can't Inspect someone to far away from me - it is ridiculous.

Now, if it was limited to your Guild ... that might make sense ... or even if it showed your reputation ... but everything else?

RPG means Role-Playing-Game not Ridiculous-Privacy-Giveaway ...

Easier said than done. It's not much an advantage.

[jchenx]

I don't play this game, but I imagine that it would put people at a significant disadvantage in many situations. Trolls could find weaker players and go kill them easily. Personal privacy aside, I think this is a really bad idea. Imagine a war game (computer, real, whatever) where you know your enemies weaknesses, and they know yours. And it is not fair to say that everybody has access to this information and is fair game, because many will not know how to access this or even care about it. Bad move.

Easier said than done. Yeah, you may find out that player NoobSauce isn't very good, since his gear sucks and his talent trees are a mess. But how the heck are you going to find him? For all you know, he's not even logged in or playing the game anymore. It doesn't help even in the reverse situation. For example, you notice Legolaughs is guarding the flag in a Battleground. Are you really going to ALT-TAB out, launch a web browser, go look up his talent spec, ALT-TAB back, then go to town? Of course not. Just knowing his class and level, which you can already get in-game, is mostly all you need. And then depending on what spells or skills he uses, you can get a pretty good idea of his talent specialization, if you really want to know that too.

Where this DOES have an effect in PvP is with Arena teams, as several others have already suggested. Even then, I don't think it's terribly disruptive. Armory or not, just by playing the game and through normal means of communication (forums, chat, etc.), players were going to find out what class and talent combinations are used by the best teams anyway. Now that's information available to everyone, and not just those who frequent the WoW message boards.

It's just a game! GET OVER IT!

[pestie]

I don't usually post things like this, but seriously... Slashdot, WTF? "Your Rights Online?" There's a reason I have my account set up to minimize all the "Games" articles and maximize all the "Your Rights Online." And that would be because my rights actually matter, whereas video games don't. Maybe this would matter if it involved the exposure real data, but it didn't! You gamer fanboys get that it's all pretend, right? Like, it's not real and doesn't (or shouldn't, anyway) have any bearing on your real lives? OK, then. Jeez.

Re:It's just a game! GET OVER IT!

[QuantumG]

If it's just a game, why do you put up with so much that is "not fun".

Hint: it's about immersion.

Re:It's just a game! GET OVER IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if you grasp the irony of the fact that you're at least as worked up as those "gamer fanboys" you allude to.

Re:It's just a game! GET OVER IT!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "offtopic" mod would help, obviously a gamer faboy modded it so. Fanboys need to get a life.

Re:It's just a game! GET OVER IT!

[insignificant_wrangl]

But, buried under the "game" talk is a considerable legal issue--one which I'm surprised has gone silent. Can Blizzard claim to "own" all character data? Yes, yes, we sign away our lives when we "sign" user agreements; but doesn't the shift into a "web2.0" (and here I'm using this term to signify: distributed, information-based, user-oriented economy, pulling my definition from Tim O'Reilly's article) economy place a tremendous value on user information? This is the argument made by Alex Iskold in his recent article "The Attention Economy" and is the kind of argument at the heart of Lessig's work. And this is why, in my opinion (as someone who has never played WoW but played Socom rather religiously for a couple years), this is a "rights" issue. Or at least it should be.

Hacked accounts

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Probably not. Which game recently had the political expose on game designers who were giving themselves and/or their social allies unfair game advantages? "Hacked accounts" are a convenient way of disguising those advantages similar to money laundering and it works both directions. It's also a source of profit like dropped Blackberrys or scratched CDs.

Re:Hacked accounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Which game recently had the political expose on game designers who were giving themselves and/or their social allies unfair game advantages?

That would be EvE, not WoW.

Bad idea - Here's why

[apachetoolbox]

I'm not even a hardcore player and I'm not happy at all about this.

I have a level 67 priest and there is a huge misconception that unless your completely holy spec'ed you can't heal well at all. Thats complete BS and always has been. Before all you'd have to do is lie about your spec not use shadow form, now you can't do that.

It might be a little harder for some priests to get into certain guilds or PuG's now. I'd love to see an opt-out feature or something at least.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless everyone in that guild is PvE speced (including mages, rogues, hunters and warlocks - yes there are PvE specs for DPS characters), tell them to fuck off if they want you to spec PvE. If they are all PvE spec, and you're not, then its probably not the type of guild for you.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[Macgrrl]

It might be a little harder for some priests to get into certain guilds or PuG's now.

Probably not. I play a balance druid, my husband plays a discipline priest. We are well used to being asked is we are Restoration or Holy respectively. Good players will know that you can be a perfectly good healer outside of the two 'preferred' specs. Players who insist generally aren't worth the time.

I say this from being a Naxx primary healer on effectively the same L60 build as I have now as L70 (I put the 10 extra points into blance).

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[mooglez]

Actually, a Shadow Priest is the most wanted class at the moment for any instances.

There's a lot of the following going on: /w priest1: hi, are you shadow?
priest1: no, i'm holy specced /w prist1: oh ok.. nothing then..

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[shalla]

I have no idea why you would WANT to be in guilds that limit you in that way. Besides, what did you do before? Lie and say you were holy spec and then once you were in and they caught you in shadowform try to smile and charm them through the lie?

Seriously, find a guild that allows you to play the way you want to play. You'll be happier. Besides, the top instances now don't require the huge raiding guilds anymore. You don't need the specially built guilds who only allow certain narrowly constructed types in.

And, as someone who never belonged to one of those but often ran with their players, you're a lot better player if you learn how to make your way through an instance using whatever you have. I can't tell you the number of people who couldn't do freaking Strat Dead without a priest. I've done it at least 30 times with a druid healing.

So if they won't take you cuz your shadow, they aren't the guild for you. Consider yourself lucky you discovered that.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[C0rinthian]

Seriously, find a guild that allows you to play the way you want to play. You'll be happier. Besides, the top instances now don't require the huge raiding guilds anymore. You don't need the specially built guilds who only allow certain narrowly constructed types in. No, you don't need a huge guild. However, with smaller raid groups, there is more pressure on the individual player to be specced right. For example, If I'm taking 3 priests into a raid, I'm going to want 2 disc/holy and 1 shadow. I MIGHT be flexible and take 1/2 instead, but that depends on other healers and the encounter. I won't take 3/0 or 0/3. I need the capabilities of both specs. This applies to pretty much all hybrids, and some of the 'pure' classes.

If you want to be successful, you need ALL tools available to your raid. That means all specs represented.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[shalla]

*shrug* Then I think you play a pretty narrow game. We do those same instances with what we have, and we get through them. Maybe I just know better players or something.

One of the main rules of my guild is that we never make anyone respec, and we try to take everyone we can on raids and make use of them how they want to be used. (It's a friends and family guild. THE main rule is to play to have fun.) That means if we have pallies who are built to tank, they're our main tanks. For a while last year, we had one priest and he was shadow specced, so we made do with druids and pallies for healing. It might take us an extra time or two to get it down or figure out how to get around something using a less than standard character arrangement, but we do it, and we all end up happier that way.

The only disastrously unsuccessful raids we've done have been joint ones led by other guilds who insisted on only allowing certain specs and classes to do certain things. We tend to avoid those anymore unless we're doing favors for friends.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[ControversialMatt]

For Five-mans and heroics this is true, however for Kharazan and Gruul's lair they are being slowly phased out, probably quicker after the next patch.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[C0rinthian]

I'm talking about 10-25 man content. 5-mans can't be built to force specs or else you'd exclude players completely from the zone.

Our approach is pretty open minded. Instead of saying 'All priests must be disc/holy' we actually want the tools each tree brings to a raid. However, because of this, we can't accomodate as MANY people of a given spec. I have 3 priest spots. Ideally I have a disc priest, a holy priest, and a shadow priest. If I already have a holy priest in group, I don't want another one because the raid gains nothing it doesn't already have.

We don't force specs on our members, but we don't guarantee raid slots either. Spec how you like, but be aware we want our raid to consist of XYZ. If your place in XYZ is filled by someone else already, don't expect an invite.

Re:Bad idea - Here's why

[geekoid]

except there going to nerf S.P. healing.

Complaints are fair, but Blizzard has done worse

[CrazyJim1]

You only have your gear and attributes exposed in WOW. Warcraft3 replays had real complaints. People could totally steal your build order and the creep order you did. They could essentially copy your game play by watching a replay and be almost as formidable as you. This made all the effective builds known, and there was very little creativity in that RTS.

Awesome!

[seebs]

As a WoW player:

This saves me a huge amount of trouble on my guild website. :)

Hackers delight

[Anonymous Coward]

I seem to recall something like this back a few years ago for EQ. And I seem to recall that some hackers used the info to find players who had uber gear, but who did not log on every day. They used common-password attacks to get access to some of the players, transfered all their gear (where it was later ebay'd), and in a couple of cases, deleted the characters.

Hopefully WoW is well-protected from hacking, and hopefully the players don't all set their passwords to 1-2-3-4-5.

I found it useful

[ADRA]

I found that old friends I used to play with were still active. Now I can reconnect!

Privacy policy

[TubeSteak]

Blizzard claims to own all the data and the characters, but at what point does this data represent personal choices and information about their players which would be covered by their own privacy policy?

1. Blizzard does own all the data and characters
2. The privacy policy covers stuff like name, age, date of birth, gender, home address, phone number, e-mail address, survey information, etc.

I don't see how any of that was disclosed.

What if I have a question or complaint?
If you have any questions or wish to file a complaint, please feel free to e-mail us at privacy@blizzard.com, call us at (949) 955-1382, or send a letter addressed to Blizzard Entertainment Privacy Policy, Attention: Privacy Policy Administrator, at 6060 Center Drive, 5th Floor, Los Angeles, California 90045.

Re:Privacy policy

[grimJester]

Privacy laws override that privacy policy completely. That policy is just restating the way the law works in most countries. Blizzard policy on the matter is irrelevant; it's just a bit of reassurance.

That said, it's unlikely any interpretation of privacy laws would cover game statistics.

Re:Privacy policy

[geekoid]

Yes, I am sure you'll get great solution from people who represent many different game companies.

However, the real interesting question to me is: Is there a point when data become personal and you own it?

Intuitivly I would say no, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am.
hmm.

Personally, I do object

[Derekloffin]

Yes, it's perfectly within Blizzard's right to do this, that doesn't mean I have to like it. Why bother with the ?? levels in game if I can look the person up online now and get a complete load out of data on them? This is a kinda of silly contradiction in handling of the issue. Overall, I have to give Blizzard a big thumbs down on their implementation of this thus far.

Re:Personally, I do object

[BinaryOpty]

Oh no! A ?? level character? Let me look up his name right quick here... alt+tab... load up site... type in name... pick right character from search results... wait for it to load... oh, he's 15 levels above me! Well, let me alt-tab back into the game and--! Oh no I'm dead!

Re:Personally, I do object

[ControversialMatt]

If its a ?? no amount of knowledge of their character will help you kill them unless you've got a group.

Re:Personally, I do object

[Derekloffin]

Or an higher level alt/friend willing to help out. Normally I wouldn't bother, but now, I would, defeating the purpose of the ?? level block.

UI Weakness Helper?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long until someone comes up with a little UI/DLL combo that can real-time look up a targets information and recommend weaknesses and strategies for PvP? There are already things that hit web back ends for information about critters, treasures, maps, etc.

Re:UI Weakness Helper?

[C0rinthian]

They don't hit web backends. They hit small DB's that are stored in the addon and loaded ingame at launch. Info doesn't enter the game via an addon unless the game is re-launched.

The only way to get dynamic data from an external source on the fly is to constantly reload your UI via console (triggering a loading screen) or to use something that violates TOS and can get you banned.

Reminds me of playing a bbs game called crossroads

[ChaseTec]

In the crossroads of the elements bbs game on the board I used to play on a trend of instantly attacking any player that looked at you developed. look was a command to visually inspect things but the character descriptions would give away information about your levels and inventory. Oh those silly people that dared looking in the direction of a level 30 air mage.

RTS replays are bad?

[Krakhan]

Knowing a build order, and figuring what clever uses of units you get from them are one thing. Also how does one 'steal' a build order? Does knowing it yourself automatically make the person forget to? If you use a build order in a game, it's no longer secret.

However, actually managing to execute them with success (especially if it's a real weird or complicated one) is completely different. Does actual reflexes and coordination not matter? How about in-game decision making that had to be made? Blindly copying what a player did in one game could easily fail in another due to some circumstances not being present.

In any case, more of this information made available is good, since counters can be developed, and so on. The very nature of what happens during the span of any real time strategy game.

Myth and Myth 2 were (I believe) the first RTS games to have in-game replays in them. And there was no less creativity that resulted during the life span of those games (even though they were purely tactical). Same with Starcraft and other games once they implemented that feature.

So in the end, everyone benefits from the replay, since with this knowledge, everyone improves, and the game can get more interesting over time.

There is no secrecy in PvP

[jchenx]

Don't know if yours is a troll post, but oh well I'll bite.

Sure, 90% of players won't care, but what about the high end gamers who develop a secret 2v2 PvP secret sauce?

There is no "secret sauce" in PvP. All the stats of a fight are in the combat logs. You can get a pretty good idea of what the other team is doing, just by seeing what they do, as well as the stats. And if you're not looking at this data, then you're probably not the type to look at the Armory stats anyway.

There also isn't a a simple "IWIN" button in PvP, despite what some forum posters think. Even if there is a certain combination of talents, spells, and classes that excel in PvP, you still have to be skilled enough to push all the buttons at the right time, have the reaction speed, etc.

Re:There is no secrecy in PvP

[karmatic]

And for those of us without instant reflexes, here's the easy way to obliterate people in PVP.

ISXWoW. Bot your way to success in PVP!

Now, you don't even need to think up your own talent trees and armor sets, and nobody has reflexes that can compare to a computers.

Re:There is no secrecy in PvP

[obeythefist]

That's very easy to say, and I'm sure there isn't any kind of special and amazing IWIN combination. But there might be something good that's unconventional. I know if I worked something like that out, I'd like to keep it on the hush for as long as I can.

A lot of people seem to have missed the main point of my post, the problem with the whole Armory implementation is that Blizzard doesn't give you the choice to hide the information.

Saying that it's not important to have an option for privacy, even in something as trite as your in-game details in a computer game, is probably a bad idea. If Blizzard doesn't care about keeping this data private, what else don't they care about keeping private? Your name? Your phone number? Sure would be nice if you gank some guy and he looks up your name and address and comes around for a visit because it turns out he was criminally insane.

Re:There is no secrecy in PvP

[jchenx]

That's very easy to say, and I'm sure there isn't any kind of special and amazing IWIN combination. But there might be something good that's unconventional. I know if I worked something like that out, I'd like to keep it on the hush for as long as I can.

I really think you overemphasize the importance of the information you get out of Armory. There's only two things that are useful to know: gear and talents. Well gee, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that better gear will help you more in PvP. You don't need Armory to know that if your opponent has a bunch of epic items, and you only have a mish-mash of greens and blues, he/she already has an advantage. As for talents, just the specs alone aren't going to be enough. You actually need to see it in action, which is obviously something Armory alone can't help you out with. Arguably, once you do witness the "IWIN combination" in action, that is what's ultimately important, not the actual spec. So then there's nothing preventing you from spoiling that in the forums or in chat, with or without Armory.

A lot of people seem to have missed the main point of my post, the problem with the whole Armory implementation is that Blizzard doesn't give you the choice to hide the information.

Saying that it's not important to have an option for privacy, even in something as trite as your in-game details in a computer game, is probably a bad idea. If Blizzard doesn't care about keeping this data private, what else don't they care about keeping private? Your name? Your phone number? Sure would be nice if you gank some guy and he looks up your name and address and comes around for a visit because it turns out he was criminally insane.

That's just stupid slippery slope argument. There are established laws and regulations regarding privacy. The thought that showing off in-game details will ultimately lead to display personal data such as your phone number, is as absurd as saying the same thing will happen to sports stars, whose stats are on display in on numerous web sites. By your argument, you would claim that ESPN might start showing Barry Bonds' phone number at some point.

As I've pointed out in some of my other comments on this story, there are already an abundance of sites that track this type of information anyway. In some cases, they track a lot more data than the Armory (such as personal guild history over time). I would much rather Blizzard present this data in an official fashion, and make it available to everyone, rather than have the data accessible to only the few folks that just happened to know the right web sites or forums to visit.

Re:There is no secrecy in PvP

[obeythefist]

Ahh, but if I use thott or the allakhazam or any other data tracker, it's an opt in experience.

And yes it is a slippery slope argument, but slippery slopes do exist. Do you trust a major corporation to always do the right thing? When you see a corporation starting to act out of line, it shouldn't be ignored. It's not like Sony just started behaving themselves right away when people realised they were installing rootkits on every PC you dropped their DRM CD's in.

Maybe I just don't want people to see all my stuff? I don't care if it's harmless information. What stings me is that I don't get a choice. I recognise the terms of use agreeement allows Blizzard to do whatever the heck they want with any data stored in their systems. That doesn't mean I have to like it, and it doesn't mean this kind of behaviour is good customer service.

Hardly a Hackers delight

[kn0tw0rk]

It only shows characters, not account names.
Now in game spammers might make more of a go at it, ie - I noticed you have a "blah blah 2 handed sword", would you like to buy a "mega blah 2 handed sword".

Re:Hardly a Hackers delight

[analog_line]

Well, the problem with that is that the vast majority, if not all, of the really good gear is not tradable, ie "bind-on-equip". You actually have to run instances, pvp, craft them (many of the best pieces of crafted equipment cannot be traded, or require that the user have a certain level in that trade skill), turn in quests (which involve running instances for most of the good ones) or raise faction (which for the good stuff requires running instances repeatedly). There are a _few_ really unique pieces that can be traded, but they're rare enough that you can't build up a decent stock of them to actually try and do that kind of advertising in a RMT sense, or they're crafted items, which require a level of tradeskill and resource collection that makes it near impossible to develop an actual regular trade in them. Maybe a few people will use it to advertise to prospective buyers some super neat item they have, but the AH does that well enough as is.

The only real change that will come of this is that those guilds who require a certain spec or minimum gear level will be able to check that out without having to take someone's word on it and reduce the chance they'll get burned with a new applicant. People make a lot of fuss over how this is supposedly unfair, but if you're not willing to change your play style and talent build to fit the guild you want to join, why in the world are you bothering to apply?

Re:Hardly a Hackers delight

[ControversialMatt]

The only real change that will come of this is that those guilds who require a certain spec or minimum gear level will be able to check that out without having to take someone's word on it and reduce the chance they'll get burned with a new applicant. People make a lot of fuss over how this is supposedly unfair, but if you're not willing to change your play style and talent build to fit the guild you want to join, why in the world are you bothering to apply?

I gotta' agree completely. We had a druid apply to our guild a while back, he said he was in a Naxx guild pre-TBC and had been raiding since release. Well we all said, "Allright lets give this guy a tryout." On arriving to our Khara run we realized something was fairly wrong, the person was wearing mostly blues/greens +healing gear, which I suppose is better than boomkin gear. But we wondered why he wasn't using some Tier 3 or at the very least some decent AQ40 gear (some of it is still viable), after asking about this, he said it was, (paraphrased)"Because I got the Feral Tier 3 but I don't use it because I'm resto now." I tell you, that was the quickest /gremove I've EVER seen.

Re:Hardly a Hackers delight

[analog_line]

I've re-rolled on my fair share of new servers, and by now I don't believe ANYONE who tells me they've been in Naxx unless they have the gear to show me. Every guild leader has naxx experience, etc, etc.

And I've personally /gquit one guild because they falsely advertised that they didn't care what spec you were (lot of aggressive marketing for druids out there). I've done the full resto druid thing back when innervate was a talent. I've had it up to here with "hardcore" raiding. If a group wants people of a certain spec, even if that happens to be the spec I am, I just don't join. Saves headaches for them and me.

Not the first

[Dachannien]

EQ2 has had a similar service for a while now, and Vanguard went into release recently with such a service. Those services allow you to disable parts of the info that's displayed, however.

NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[Shadukar]

To put it briefly: this information is publicaly avalible - you can get this info in game without trying very hard.

Why?

Talent specs:
If you watch them for more than 10 minutes in game, killing things, you easily deduce most of their talent choices - certain builds for certain classes grant certain abilities, other choices make the player use certain spells over other spells. Even if you are on opposing factions, it doesnt matter, you can still easily tell what their spec is.

Gear:
You can walk up to any player (on your faction) and inspect them and see their gear. Even if you can't inspect them for some reason (on pvp servers you can only go one faction per server) - a lot of gear has unique graphics. Those that don't ...it really doesn't matter.

The only possible thing to complain about with knowing someone's gear is when you are in PVP and want to know what trinkets the opponent has. Ok, there is potential here: trinkets let you do certain stuff and if you are ready for that stuff, you might have a small adventage. Thing is, the data is not real time! It is possible to instantly switch trinkets (out of combat) and whatever info you just got is out of date! To make this point even less relevant/less impact, most trinkets have visual/combat log notification to everyone nearby when they are used!

Another point to consider: In the past (i am not sure if this still happens) there was a number of mods which upon the user inspecting another player, would suck that data and upload it to thottbot. I was quite surprised to find a few of my characters having character's gear profiles on that site - obviously someone insepcted me while running that mod.

So why is this such a huge issue?

People love to whine. Especially people who do nothing important/special whole day, maybe they are bored, they want to feel wronged, then they want to feel like they are doing something, then they want to feel vindicated. It doesnt matter how dumb it is, they just go for it..

Lets look at one of the coplaints from the summary: "they will have difficulty getting into pickup groups now that people can instantly find out everything about them"

This is probably the dumbest thing i have ever heard and i read the WoW general forums:( If you join a group that is super picky/elitist and your gear is crap/you are a newb, you will get booted with this information or without. If the group doesnt care you dont have the best gear or is not picky or can carry your weight or is not elitist, then this Armory thing will not matter one bit.

Quite often, yes, there are elitist groups/guilds/people playing when you approach them to group/quest/join/etc they will scrutinise you. They will ask for your spec and check your gear. With or without the Armory, if you do not meet their expectations, you will lose. I really don't see what the difference between having it or not having it makes.

If you have a non-standard talent build (you have no clue how to play) or non-standard (read:crap) gear you will get kicked out of the group as soon as it becomes apparent - and it will. If your gear is good enough and you are not a newb, this Armory will once again make no difference.

In reply to the article's closing: the question of "In a virtual society, should people be able to present a view of themselves that differs from (virtual) reality, or should all details be exposed?" is irrelevant, borderline sensationalist when their virtual details are virtually exposed to all other virtual people.

Virtually non story about virtual whiners/complainers virtually looking for virtually something to virtually do.

Go outside, get job, girlfriend/boyfriend, learn to code or paint or spear fish. Do something meaningful so that you don't jump on dumb whiner-wagon just to feel improtant/like you are acomplishing anything by puffing up your hairless chest about small stuff like this.

And no, don't talk about "slippery slopies" or "but what about government..." or "

Re:NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[Macgrrl]

You are assuming that people are familiar with the possible talent builds available to other classes (or sometimes even other talent builds for thier own class.

Last night I had another druid ask me if I was feral spec as I was PEWPEWLASERBEAMZOMG in Moonkin form with my tree pets out...

Re:NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[VGPowerlord]

I have to admit: I laughed when I saw the PEWPEWLASERBEAMZOMG text.

Anyway, yeah, it's funny how people ask that.

Speaking of which, I haven't played my Druid in a while, is Moonkin Form still a 31-point talent in Balance? I know some things got moved around when 2.0 went live...

Re:NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[Shadukar]

Yes, I was assuming a rather high level of knowledge on behalf of people using this system against other people.

The reason I did so is because with skill/knowledge level below that level will not get any benefit/adventage due to Armory existing:

1. they are probably not fast enough to alt+tab, look up their opponent/attacker/possible victum, then alt+tab
2. even if they did have the talent/gear build of their opponent, they probably wouldnt know how to counter opponent's abilities
3. Some people are so ...hrm, how to put it, out of touch with what they are doing, that seeing someone else's spec/gear will be like looking at a bunch of scattered cryons and lego blocks ...um...nice colors ?

The reason for the above was this: only players of certain skill will sucessfuly utilise the Armory and only under these parameters will this new thing have any impact - and even then, this impact will be negligible/irrelevant in most, if not all cases.

This however made me further see Armory as beneficial. Lets take a regular "noob". They get "owned" by a superior player (more time/more skill/better gear/whatever). They take down the name, look it up in the Armory. They study their ganker's gear and spec and learn a bit about what gear is good, what gear is better than theirs, maybe look up that gear and try to get it. Maybe they see a talent build that they didnt think of and decide to explore it/learn more about it.

In the end, the "noob" learns a bit maybe and becomes a better player and feels more confident/informed. He then gives more challange to people trying to kill him, is more useful in groups/raids. asks less annoying questions. really, a win for everyone playing the game! :)

Re:NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[andy9701]

Speaking of which, I haven't played my Druid in a while, is Moonkin Form still a 31-point talent in Balance? I know some things got moved around when 2.0 went live...

I haven't played my druid in a while either, but I am pretty sure that it is. I don't recall what the Balance 41-point talent is off hand, though.

Re:NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[C0rinthian]

41-pt talent allows you to summon 3 trees who fight for you. Basically a talented Barov Peasant Caller.

Re:NOT A BIG DEAL - complaints unfair

[geekoid]

Or an add-on will becreate to do those interpetations for them.

Great tool for exposing trolls

[jchenx]

I think Armory is going to be great in also exposing trolls, both on forums and in game chat channels. I'm referring to Internet-style trolls, not the actual Warcraft race.

There are always trolls that claim things like:
1) X class/talent is over-powered, I always die to them, Blizzard needs to make my class/talent a lot better
- Well, looking at Armory, your talent spec is a mess. Plus, you've made some poor item decisions. No wonder you're having so much trouble. Anyone would in your condition.

2) I'm uber because I have all these epics and have gone through all these 40-man raids. Bow down to me!
- Oh really? According to Armory, you're still outfit in greens/blues, and you barely have any rep associated with those raids (such as the Hydraxian Waterlords for Molten Core). Lying much lately?

3) I'm the uber-PvP king, so you should listen to what I say
- Uh huh, well it says here that your Arena record is piss-poor, and you only have a couple thousand lifetime honor. Yeah, right.

I'm tired of people lying or misrepresenting themselves. It's almost always gamers who want to make themselves better than what they are. Typically, the people that ARE good at the game, don't need to advertise themselves, because it's already apparent.

One real negative to this site, though, is that it well definitely increase the elitism in this game. Yeah, pointing out the fault of forum and General chat trolls is one thing. But it could get ugly if elitists start pointing out flaws with normal Joe Blow players, who aren't trying to misrepresent themselves in the first place.

Re:Great tool for exposing trolls

[GodaiYuhsaku]

You also run into this problem. 1. Person A (Lvl 70 main) states a PVP opinion. 2. Person B (Lvl 56 alt) "Come back when your not neutral with all the pvp factions. *Gives link*" Trolls will still exist. becuase Blizzard hasn't taken the one last step it needs to stop a majority of the trolling. Link characters in the forum or in armor. So I click on a link and it shows all the characters that exist on that account. (not giving the account name)

Re:Great tool for exposing trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to the /. effect wearing off and being able to inspect the talent trees of some of the better players on my server, and seeing what sort of equipment they are choosing to use. I have to admit, I look upon this as a great training tool for me, a somewhat casual player who is not willing to invest hours and hours of time trying to optimize a spec or comparing 15 different nearly identical items for which is "better" for my class/spec.

Slashdotted?

[StrahdVZ]

Or just buggy?

Privacy was gone anyway, thanks to 3rd party sites

[jchenx]

I think what Blizzard realized is that privacy was gone anyway, thanks to a number of 3rd party sites that tracked much of the same data. And some of these places tracked a lot more information, some of which can be really used in a bad way. For example, there is a site that actually tracks your guild history (which ones you've been in, how long, etc.). So, if you're applying to a new guild, their leader could look you up at this site, and wonder, "Hmm, this guy has gone through X many guilds in Y months. That's not a good sign, so thumbs down to him!", even though you might have a legitimate reason for this.

So, that said, I think the data that Blizzard has decided to make public is rather benign in comparison, especially since much of it is data that you can already access anyway (inspecting gear, reading combat logs, etc.). Rather than give a small minority of folks an advantage, who happen to know the right websites to visit or mods to install ... it's better to make it an official part of the game, and let basically everyone know where to find it.

Additionally, there's a whole lot of people that want access to this information, and don't mind sharing out their own data. This is true especially for guilds. Why do you think these 3rd party sites and mods existed in the first place? So again, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Re:Complaints are fair, but Blizzard has done wors

[psychrono]

They could essentially copy your game play by watching a replay and be almost as formidable as you. I'd like to see you move as fast as the pros (averaging 400+ actions per minute, some 700+. Some of their "builds" need to be perfect, and if the pros mess up, most people don't even stand a chance.

WoW has nothing that intensive (nor do most MMO's), but PvP along with a good sense of humor is what keeps things interesting (in my eyes, I never played WoW more than a week), not what "godly" gear you have so you can make yourself feel better about dropping thousands of hours playing plus tons of cash (monthly fees, hurray).
On a really unrelated sidenote... I used to like watching replays for WC3 because it was interesting to see what was possible in terms of strategy... yes, it is mind blowing to "research" strategies in a strategy game I know.

and... down at 6:09PM Pacific Time

[Jon47]

count it. Nice work Slashdot, that's a website designed to accomodate millions of concurrent users

Optionality

[TimeB]

Why not just make exposure on the Armoury optional? A simple tick box in the character options.

Lvl 70s!

[Taulin]

I am shocked at how many lvl 70s there already are! Then again, maybe I shouldn't be.

Re:Lvl 70s!

[danikar]

For any hardcore players it only took like 3-5 days to level 60-70. For addicts with no time it takes about 2 weeks (thats me =)) For average players id say a month. And for the slow ones, 2 month. Burning Crusade has almost been out 2 months now.

Re:Lvl 70s!

[psychokitten]

For me, with a full-time job and a ton of responsibilities at home (including a halfway decent social life,) it took about 1-2 nights per level when I logged on, only managing an hour or two every night. Of course, not counting the nights I'd log on and just hang around Shattrath, BSing with my friends and guild and such.

As a current avid WoW player...

[djones101]

Well, as avid as one can be when work is involved.

• This exposes a great deal of information that was not previously obtainable including profession choices, skill levels for all skills, and the character's complete talent specification and all faction reputation data, along with all gear currently equipped. - This is the exact same as plenty of other profile sites out there. The only difference is this isn't opt-in, so the information is available by default. The last item, currently equipped gear, is something that anyone who is in the game world can see by just running up to you an inspecting you.
• The complete roster of any guild or arena team is also available. - Complete guild rosters have already been available via warcraftrealms.com, thanks to the addon Census Plus. Arena teams aren't hard either, using the same addon with some slight modifications.
• Some players are upset about this, such as arena PvP teams who now have all their gear and talent choices exposed to the world, or players with non-standard or less-popular talent choices who fear they will have difficulty getting into pickup groups now that people can instantly find out everything about them. - Unless you're a known ninja or gold farmer, you'll still get into PUGs with no problem. Heck, even the ninjas and gold farmers get into PUGs (and even high-end raiding guilds). On the flip side, this allows guilds to properly review the information on a particular recruit, without having to rely on that recruit's honesty in posting information about themselves on sites such as ctprofiles.net.

This isn't a privacy issue, pure and simple. If Blizzard started shelling out what your alts are named, your credit card number, or other such demographic information, then you got yourself a full-fledged privacy issue. Otherwise, WoW is not a democracy, and night elves/dwarves/etc. do NOT have a set of laws that allow them to keep their privacy. Heck, we barely have any privacy in our RLs, why expect more from a game?

WoW Companion

[antdude]

WoW Companion/WoWC also does this too. :)

Re:WoW Companion

[VGPowerlord]

True, but Armory is automatically done on the server end. While it's not always up to date, it's reasonably close.

Heck, it even knows which buffs my level 66 Mage had on him when I logged out an hour ago.

flash text input field!?

[Danny Rathjens]

The input field for the search term is a flash program? (I can't type anything, probably some bug in linux flash 9 plugin). Whatever happened to using standards compliant html for web pages so the "World" part of the world wide web can use it? Are they hiring graphics people to do their cgi programming or something?

Re:flash text input field!?

[toddestan]

My guess is that they are trying to stop people from creating in game utilities that hit Blizzard's site in the background to pull character data. However, I'm going to assume that making it Flash will merely slow them down a little.

Re:flash text input field!?

[dbIII]

Are they hiring graphics people to do their cgi programming or something?

That sums up most flash on the net - and more annoying than the old blink tag becuase that didn't crash browsers.

Re:flash text input field!?

[Rakarra]

The input field is not flash, but the fancy box around it is. It looks like the input field is supposed to sit on top of the flash box, but yeah, that flash bug pretty much ensures the flash app will steal all keystrokes from that area of the screen.

If you use a flash blocker, you can use the input field and complete the form.

Re:flash text input field!?

[g-san]

From looking at a trace, they are using standard http GET requests, but there is a cookie mechanism that would have to be mimicked for this to be used for an Add-On. For example a mouse over an item in the character window:

GET /item-tooltip.xml?i=27794&r=Malorne&n=g-san&lang= HTTP/1.1

The data coming back was gzipped so I didn't get to see what it looked like, but the mime type was text/xml. If it was consistent or well formatted, it would be possible to write your own client to this data.

I think Blizzard is just getting lazy. They don't want to design, develop, and QC a whole system to let players Inspect more than just items on other players. So they make an interface the back end database, make this Armoury front end as an example of that interface, the Add-On developers will go wild and everyone wins. Brilliant. :)

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

[Baby Duck]

From Day One of my WoW playing, I was greatly dismayed by the fact I couldn't look at my own character over the web. No stats. No info. Nothing. My expectations were set so high by the more-awesome-than-awesome web-available stats for Warcraft III profiles.

Re:Easier said than done. It's not much an advanta

[toddestan]

For example, you notice Legolaughs is guarding the flag in a Battleground. Are you really going to ALT-TAB out, launch a web browser, go look up his talent spec, ALT-TAB back, then go to town? Of course not. Just knowing his class and level, which you can already get in-game, is mostly all you need. And then depending on what spells or skills he uses, you can get a pretty good idea of his talent specialization, if you really want to know that too.

How long do you suppose it would be before you could install some tool, then all you need to do is click on Legolaughs and in a couple of seconds you'll be able to see everything about that character? Actually, I would be surprised if someone hasn't coded this up yet.

Re:Easier said than done. It's not much an advanta

[Rallion]

It would be tough to make, actually, and harder to keep it working for any length of time. It would have to be a standalone piece of software, and it would have to get past Blizzard's anti-cheating software to access the character's name.

It would be far easier (and not much more difficult to use) to make a small program that you would have to type the character's name into.

Huh?

[Brandybuck]

Someone explain to me why this is filed under "Your Rights Online"?

Their house...

[Carch]

their rules.

Problems with that:

[SanityInAnarchy]

They have no way of knowing when your account was hacked; they have only your word for that.

They may not be keeping track of every single change. Sure, you could screenshot their website, but that wouldn't prove anything.

Even if they knew with absolute certainty what you had, returning your stuff would be a bad idea. This means they have to track it to whoever has it now, and undo all the transactions that were a result of your account being hacked -- but that could be a fairly large butterfly effect, and could result in a major disruption of all kinds of people who were only very loosely connected to the theft of your items.

The alternative isn't much better -- simply generate your items out of thin air, which means there are now dupe items. I believe the other poster was suggesting a simple scam -- you let your account be hacked, the hacker gives your equipment away, or sells it or trades it, leaving your char with nothing, then you whine to Blizzard and get all your stuff back -- which means you just GAVE the hacker a pile of free stuff. Rinse and repeat a few times, then you both get rich off of it and start playing the market.

Anyway, is WoW uniquely "hackable", or are "hacked" accounts still the result of some moron who gave away his password to a phishing site, or snagged by a keylogger, or set it to "LeroyJenkins123"?

Re:Problems with that:

[MeanderingMind]

Anyway, is WoW uniquely "hackable", or are "hacked" accounts still the result of some moron who gave away his password to a phishing site, or snagged by a keylogger, or set it to "LeroyJenkins123"?

I don't know how feasible it is to literally hack accounts in WoW. To the best of my knowledge most "hacked" accounts are usually the result of phishing, kelogging, ridiculously bad passwords, or from giving out passwords/account information for power-leveling services.

Re:Problems with that:

[RogueyWon]

I really, really hate the abuse of the word "hacked" in this context.

I remember back when I was doing the whole oper thing on a well-known IRC network. Every day, we'd get hundreds (sometimes thousands) of complaints from people complaining that their account with the network services had been "hacked". In every single case I ever encountered, it transpired that the individual in question had just fallen for an extremely simplistic con designed to get them to reveal their password. There's no element of "hacking" about it - it's just the exploitation of gullibility, stupidity, and the belief that it's possible to get something for nothing.

I don't play WoW very much (although I do have a semi-active account I log into occasionally, but until the end of last year (when I more or less went cold-turkey), I was a pretty hardcore Final Fantasy XI player. "Hacked" accounts were a perennial topic in FFXI and, once again, it was inevitably the account owner's incompetence that led to the account being lost or vandalised. I'd say that the cases I heard of could be broken down into three broad areas:

1) Keyloggers and malicious software - probably the closest to actual "hacking", these still relied on user greed and stupidity to steal accounts. Essentially, many of the third party programmes available for FFXI (all of which are banned under the TOS) actually contained keyloggers and the like which stole people's account passwords and reported them back to the author. Most of the malicious software in question would masquerade as cheats (eg. movement speed cheats), so frankly, people who lost their accounts this way got what they deserved.

2) Social engineering/phishing attacks - slightly less common - probably the rarest of the three categories - but by no means unknown. The old familiar tricks all applied here: masquerading on forums as admins, offering powerlevelling or gil to people who signed up on sites using their Playonline passwords, the usual rubbish. I dare say a couple of people were stung by this purely on the basis of being naive, but again, most of the people who fell for this did so out of greed.

3) Shared account passwords - in no way does this resemble "hacking". However, it was by far the most common means by which people would lose their accounts (or have them vandalised). I remember being in a linkshell once where a number of the senior members shared account passwords (although happily, I always opted out). When one of the leaders went bad, he did quite a bit of damage with the logins he had. In these cases, my sympathy was again limited - if you share your account password with somebody you just know online, you're asking for trouble. However, there were a few genuinely unfortunate cases, where people would have their accounts trashed after a real-life relationship with another player (often a girlfriend or boyfriend) went bad.

So in short, assuming the situation with WoW is anything like the one with FFXI and Blizzard don't actually have horribly insecure servers, nobody in WoW is actually getting their account "hacked".

Re:Problems with that:

[andy9701]

Even if they knew with absolute certainty what you had, returning your stuff would be a bad idea. This means they have to track it to whoever has it now, and undo all the transactions that were a result of your account being hacked -- but that could be a fairly large butterfly effect, and could result in a major disruption of all kinds of people who were only very loosely connected to the theft of your items.

In general, this isn't an issue. Most of the gear worth having is either bind on equip (you can't trade/sell the item to a player once you have worn it) or bind on pick up (you can't trade/sell the item to a player once you have looted it from the mob). For both of these, your only options are to wear the item, keep it in your bank/inventory, or sell it to an NPC vendor.

For most of the cases of hacked accounts from people I know, their gear is either sold to NPCs vendors (and then the gold sent to another toon, possibly a gold farmer), or they make the toon learn enchanting and disenchant their gear into shards (which can be used to enchant other items), which can then be sold on the auction house, or sent to another account.

Re:Problems with that:

[SanityInAnarchy]

I hear you.

I play a small MMO called Nexus TK -- 2D, nice community, and in-game bulletin boards. Every now and then I post on the boards attempting to clear this up, mostly because I feel the GMs and such who post to the board can do more harm than good with their suggestions.

Essentially, their suggestions are to be paranoid in every way imaginable. Have anti-virus software, firewalls, etc, and don't follow any links anyone gives you, or download any files, at all, the end. So, I suggest that anti-virus is a good idea, but not really necessary if you stay up-to-date, and do follow links, download files, etc, as long as you're not stupid about it (don't use Internet Explorer, don't download and run EXEs, etc)...

The message other members of the community post is "It's your fault if you get hacked." I have to correct them on that one; the game forces passwords to be 6-8 chars, and it seems to me that many passwords could be brute-forced or dictionary-attacked, and for all I know, they could be sniffed off the wire. So, I say "It's probably your fault, but then again, maybe someone hit you with a MITM attack, etc etc."

Because the funny thing is, they tell you not to download files, but you do have to download the game as one big EXE.

So, it would help if people had a good understanding of "hacking" and cracking. In fact, the game has a nice mechanism for educating people, which I do wish was updated every once in awhile -- when entering your guild hall (a place to get minor quests and spells, or choose a path), you get a window popup which tells you to take the Wisdom Test. If you do, it won't bug you for another two weeks. The Wisdom Test is sadly inaccurate and outdated, but it does help with some stupidity -- for instance, "Will buying a cable modem eliminate lag? True or false..."

Re:Problems with that:

[theghost]

They have no way of knowing when your account was hacked; they have only your word for that.

They can track the IP address you logged on from. They already do that to nail people who are sharing accounts. It's not foolproof, but it's better than nothing.

They may not be keeping track of every single change. Sure, you could screenshot their website, but that wouldn't prove anything.

If they're not tracking every single change then they should be in order to fight gold sellers. I'm betting they are and they just don't want to deal with the overhead involved in looking it all up.

Even if they knew with absolute certainty what you had, returning your stuff would be a bad idea. This means they have to track it to whoever has it now, and undo all the transactions that were a result of your account being hacked -- but that could be a fairly large butterfly effect, and could result in a major disruption of all kinds of people who were only very loosely connected to the theft of your items.

Chances are very good that everything you have on your character that would be worth selling or trading is bound to you and cannot be sold or traded to another player. The only significant thing that can come out of your character is gold, and the amounts that most would would produce is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of gold that is generated every day through quests and drops.

The alternative isn't much better -- simply generate your items out of thin air, which means there are now dupe items. I believe the other poster was suggesting a simple scam -- you let your account be hacked, the hacker gives your equipment away, or sells it or trades it, leaving your char with nothing, then you whine to Blizzard and get all your stuff back -- which means you just GAVE the hacker a pile of free stuff. Rinse and repeat a few times, then you both get rich off of it and start playing the market.

There would be no dupe items, just gold and new items. While you certainly could abuse this, they already have policies in place to prevent it. They track how many restoration requests you make. They warn you that they will only do it a limited number of times if they agree to do it at all. Additionally they usually take days if not weeks to respond to these requests, which can be very frustrated to the person who lost their stuff, but is certainly a deterrant to people who want to make some quick cash and get back to playing.

Anyway, is WoW uniquely "hackable", or are "hacked" accounts still the result of some moron who gave away his password to a phishing site, or snagged by a keylogger, or set it to "LeroyJenkins123"?

No more so than any online account. Keyloggers make up the majority, phishing a significant minority, brute force or "educated guesses" a very miniscule amount.

Re:Problems with that:

[SanityInAnarchy]

They can track the IP address you logged on from. They already do that to nail people who are sharing accounts.

That strikes me as dangerous. We played WoW at a LAN party, and I can certainly imagine people playing it when they travel.

So, very easy to fool Blizzard into restoring your account (and doubling your gold in a few days is probably still an attractive prospect), and very easy for Blizzard to find you "character sharing" because you play from cybercafes.

Re:Problems with that:

[theghost]

I haven't heard too many cases of false positives. I suspect they only have it set up to flag you if you try to log on to one account from two separate IPs at the same time, but it could be something else at work. I think the scamming angle here is a non-issue. A few people might make a little money with it, but before it got to the point that it had any impact on game play i'll bet they would just put a hold on restoration requests.

Oh, and also...according to a friend of mine who had his account hacked, you don't get any money restored. You're lucky if you get all the items you had equipped. You're almost certainly going to lose additional gear sets and crafting mats that you had laying around.

LOLZ

[nanowired]

Actually, the problem here is really that people will exclude you purposefully because they dont like your build. Thats the real issue, People are Assholes. Take the thing down.

Re:LOLZ

[ControversialMatt]

Most PUGs wont give a damn IMO, they'll take what they can get. If you're trying to join a hardcore raiding guild then be prepared to spec the way that they want to, thats the way things are done. If you want to spec Moonkin fine by me, play how you want to, but I'm damn sure that I wont send you a /ginvite. Also this helps the upper guilds as well seeing as people now CANT lie about their gear and spec on an application.

Sure it's free now...

[SupremoMan]

But soon they will sell all this data to telemarketers! Second you log into WoW you will be spammed with /tells about making your penis larger and reducing your debts! And I wouldn't even touch the mailbox!

Re:Sure it's free now...

[RogueyWon]

You say this as a joke...

I've actually had in-game spams from characters with names like "Xfxfqqfx" and the like, advertising those very things. Received two of these within the last two weeks, and I'm only a fairly irregular player.

Re:Easier said than done. It's not much an advanta

[Pc_Madness]

Or you could just have a second computer on your desk like I do. :)

It wasn't so secret to begin with...

[crazycrazy]

Alot of this information was already available.

I remember getting killed in pvp by a particularly annoying character, so I created an alt on their server and faction, added them to my friends list, did a who to find out where they were, tracked em' down and at least got to see what they were wearing and what enchants they had. Figuring out their talent build wasn't hard for the most part based on what equipment they were using and what powers they used in combat. (Often easily checked by using the combat log.)

As far as I see it, the only main difference with the website is how much work you have to do to find this info out about another player. (I mean what difference does my reputation or profession levels really make.)

For myself, I am hoping that I will learn something by checking some of the best players builds. (But I don't expect to get much that I can apply since it seems to me equipment plays a huge role in how a character plays in WOW, and equipment, especially the good stuff, isn't easily acquired.)

Up-to-date means now, not previously ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

So if Blizzard is so proud of their "comprehensive and up-to-date database" of character and item info, are they going to stop giving people who've had their accounts hacked the total BS "we can't restore gear because we have no way of knowing what you were equipped with" excuse anymore?

"Up-to-date" means what you have now, not what you had previously. There is no reason to believe old database records are preserved anywhere before they are overwritten with updated data. Nothing has changed since day 1 other than the public can read it.

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#index.xml

[slack_prad]

The Armory supports Internet Explorer (version 6.0 and up), Opera 9, and Safari. However, the Armory is best experienced with Firefox.
I'm looking forward to seeing more of these! :)

Re:http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#index.xml

[SupremoMan]

Yep Firefox is awsome for this site... excpet for the 2 exemption errors that blew up the application twice now. But it can't be perfect. If Blizzard made somethign like a Linux client, I would expect it to blow up a lot aswell.

Re:Easier said than done. It's not much an advanta

[jchenx]

How long do you suppose it would be before you could install some tool, then all you need to do is click on Legolaughs and in a couple of seconds you'll be able to see everything about that character? Actually, I would be surprised if someone hasn't coded this up yet.

I wouldn't be surprised if similar mods already existed before this site came out. As I said before, much of that information is already available in the game itself. A mod would just have to analyze the combat logs and make some educated guesses of what types of talents your opponent is. Or heck, you can just see it for yourself.

It won't be a problem after long.

[GI Primal]

You can rest assured that most people will rather this service was available than not. Developers of hugely popular games tend to get bad press on almost all changes to their games. This is not likely to change anytime soon so I personally will use this system like 99% of more casual WoW players out of curiosity more than anything. I have not looked at the site yet as I am posting from my blackberry but I would imagine this might lend itself to making nice things such as dynamic WoW forum sigs and such, which would be no shame. I think a lot more peopl would be interested in showing off their characters than hiding them. Similar to bf2s which rocks IMO.

Re:Does this mean they can now fix hacked accounts

[andy9701]

Over the last few months, a few people in my guild had their accounts hacked, and their toons had none of their gear left when they were able to log back in. They eventually did get most/all of their gear back (sometimes it took a few weeks), but they did lose all of the enchants on their gear. Still, gear without enchants is better than no gear at all.

Not that detailed

[Anonymous Coward]

you can see pretty much anything that you would by inspecting a character you happen to run across. The talent point usage might be somewhat helpfull, but the reputation stuff is useless.

And I notice it doesn't even list what pets a Hunter has. Not even the active one (assuming they have another in the Stable).

Re:Privacy was gone anyway, thanks to 3rd party si

[OglinTatas]

Indeed. _I_ want access to this information. In a _very_ small guild, people craft to keep each other in gear (drops are better though) and I was wondering if there were a third party website or utility that could do this very thing. It is a lot more convenient to be able to look at what someone's gear is offline and compile a list of possible upgrades (or not, drops are better) than to wait for each person to log on and waste in-game time discussing each piece of gear and upgrade options.

--
off topic: Blizzard needs a "flag as spam" option in the in-game mailbox.
Also off topic: I gave up WoW for Lent, and I'm jonesing bad. It's also backfiring some because I have more time to surf for porn.

Not our choice

[MISplice]

There are other sites out there that you can do this with RPGOutfitter, CTProfiles.. they are more for Raid Guilds to make sure people have the proper gear. Then again it really doesn't matter since the characters and all the gear in WoW are owned by Blizzard we just get to play with them so they can do what they want.

3rd parties were already doing it

[Anonymous Coward]

this is just another case of blizzard bringing something that was already being done by 3rd parties in house.

There were already plenty of websites in existence that cataloged this information, albeit voluntarily on the users part.

Now there won't be a need to install an addon to do it for you automatically (many of which were implemented in ways that had major security concerns) or manually do it yourself.

perhaps an "opt out" link would solve some concerns. personally i'd just like to see a better link to my profile that works in most sigs.

Re:Complaints are fair, but Blizzard has done wors

[king-manic]

You only have your gear and attributes exposed in WOW. Warcraft3 replays had real complaints. People could totally steal your build order and the creep order you did. They could essentially copy your game play by watching a replay and be almost as formidable as you. This made all the effective builds known, and there was very little creativity in that RTS.

If build order was all you had then you're a fairly poor player. It's one thing to copy a build but another to copy all of your micro-skills. Even then a build is basically rock paper scissors with more depth. Rush/Harass/tech and ground / antiair / air / magic / antimagic / balanced. There are odd builds that replays give away but there is still a lot of conditional changes that a skilled player makes to it that make it useless without skill.

It also made it easier to spot hackers.

Wrong department

[spood]

It's SETEC Astronomy, not SEATEC. This is important, because it's an anagram of "Too Many Secrets".

SETECASTRONOMY
TOOMANYSECRETS

The reference is from the movie "Sneakers".

Re:Wrong department

[Skadet]

Or "My Socrates Note," right?

One of my favorite movies of all-time.

One use: Checking names BEFORE you create your alt

[UnknownSoldier]

FINALLY, I can check which names are taken BEFORE creating my character!

Being able to look at other people's gear is just a bonus.

Boohoo, whine, pule

[Anonymous Coward]

If Blizzard decided to not make decisions people would disagree with, they might as well just fire everybody and do nothing.

You are going to not implement something because a (lunatic) fringe minority of your players are going to cry? How insanely stupid is that?

If Blizzard came out against cancer, you would have pro-cancer people whining. It's impossible to please everyone, so the smartest thing to do is simply pursue your vision, and ignore what the whiners say. WoW succeeds because they don't do anything games like DAoC did, like allowing the idiots in the forums to become the amateur game designer committee.

Re:Boohoo, whine, pule

[obeythefist]

It wouldn't be that hard to add an opt-in or opt-out button, now, would it? Nowhere in my post did I suggest that it was a bad idea. But when it comes to my privacy, even for unassuming details like the kind of shirt my in-game character wears, I like to have a choice in it.

This is a privacy issue stemming from a poor design methodology. Even if it seems like a small thing, you can't ignore privacy or just shrug privacy violations off like they mean nothing.

Easy gold farming, then?

[SanityInAnarchy]

It still gives you the "butterfly effect" problem once that money is used, if it's any significant amount. It still means they have a choice: Either artificially inflate the economy, and risk directly funding a scam (you get "hacked", sell/destroy all your stuff, then have Blizzard give it back), or cause a fairly large disruption as they shift all kinds of cash and items around, trying to undo the effect on the economy (which may well have spread throughout the entire system).

And there's still the problem of how this is usually your own fault that you got "hacked" in the first place.

Great idea

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually a fantastic idea and service. First, it doesn't show any personal information, only data you could find out ingame with a little effort. It doesn't show people's alternate characters, so they can still hide behind them when making forum posts/angry whispers.

Secondly, it's a fantastic tool for recruitment. There's been several issues in the past in which applicants to the guild I'm a memeber of have lied and/or been vague on their equipment and talent choices and have thus wasted the time and energy of all parties involved.

Thirdly, those people who are worried about not getting into pugs (pick up groups), because of an odd spec, well tough nuts to them. Many talent specs are interchangable on many of the instances and encounters and it won't really matter. If they're lying in order to get into these groups, saying they have talent spec A where they have talent spec B, thus greatly affecting their abilities (depends alot on class) good, I would have ended up kicking them from my group for lying and not living up to what they sold.

This is only a good thing.

Effects on looking for groups

[GrnArmadillo]

This may or may not have an effect on PVP situations, but I think that's ultimately going to be relatively minor. What people AREN'T commenting on is that this change also exposes your character's full repuptation page to the world.

FYI for non-WOW players, Blizzard has implemented a system where killing enemies in a dungeon awards you "reputation" with someone somewhere that doesn't like the people in that dungeon. As a result, there's a significant amount of information to be had from a character's reputation scores - a veritable scorecard of how many times you've run all of the dungeons in the game. Now that could be a good thing (information being free helps everyone make more informed choices), or a bad thing when the information presented is misleading. A highly skilled player who recently made a new character might not have the reputation scores to "prove" it, while an incompetent player who somehow survived large numbers of dungeon runs (perhaps without contributing all that much to any of them) might have high reputation scores that don't reflect their ability.

Now this information is now definitely out there, whether you wanted it to be or not, and people are going to use it to evaluate applicants to guilds or even people looking for groups. (I wonder - and doubt - whether Blizzard fully thought through that part of things.)

Re:Effects on looking for groups

[Rukie]

I used to play a game called Asheron's Call, an MMORPG that is still going by Turbine. Anyways, they offered ACStats and Treestats, a way of viewing guilds/exps and all sorts of information. However, t hese sites are no longer up because of the drastic population loss in AC. If there was a way to make it optional like Treestats/Acstats (independent plugins) then that would be great.

Re:Complaints are fair, but Blizzard has done wors

[CrazyJim1]

I'd like to see you move as fast as the pros

Heh, I was the first to 1500 wins in Warcraft3. I was at one point #1 in 1v1,2v2, AND 3v3. Our 3v3 record was 200 wins and 1 loss, went 173 wins before our first loss because my teammates were overinflated with their self esteem."Hey I'm going to tech straight to Chimeras protect me, ok I'll tech straight to Frost Wyrms, protect me." Then I'm like,"Ooook, I guess I'll pump out mass footmen and try and fight 3 armies by myself."

Oh no my secret spec!!

[zvxteflon]

I think its hilarious that people are so concerned with others finding out their spec and how this will impact their ability to find groups. If im going to group with you why shouldnt I have that information? If you feel the need to lie about your spec in order to get into groups maybe you shouldnt have such a horrible spec in the first place.

Re:Oh no my secret spec!!

[geekoid]

You missed their point.

I certianly don't want people searching my house becasue 'If you are innocent you have nothing to hide.' .

Yes I know it's just a game, but the point is the same.

That said, it is blizzards data. So I ahve no problem diong this.

It also jsut accord to me that most people change gear depending on the circumstance, and it become pretty apperent what talents you have or don't have.

Of course, what would really happen is

[geekoid]

Someone will take a look at what you currently have, and then not allow you to join a rad/guild/PUG without relizing players change gear often, especially RP'ers.

Probably use an add-on to 'scrape' this data and contain it in a database; which won't updated very often.

RP'ers nightmare

[geekoid]

Many Rp'ers may have different gear for different events. The people at one event may not need to know about the gear at another event.

Re:RP'ers nightmare

[theghost]

RP'ers should not be looking up each other on the armory - it's ooc info.

Yes there is, and I have several

[geekoid]

I WIN buttons...sadly the ones I have found so far have been broken. :)

Hybrid built Mage

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I am working on an Arc/Fire/Ice build. I have enough of everything to get clearcasting / pom, Pyroblast, etc.., and a substantial shatter.

Suck that down in pvp!

Ha HA

[geekoid]

you noob!

I'm putting you on my ignore list. Jeez, what crap armor, and your talent selections are lameerZZZ!!!

**start rant picking apart your talents.**

see the problem? when this data was a little more difficult then just giong to the armory, people like that won't bother to look it up.

Of course it all belongs to Blizzard!

[MaWeiTao]

Of course Blizzard owns all the character data. How can this even be a question? Blizzard created every last shred of content in the game. They simply allow an end user to take their content, consisting of an avatar, equpiment and stats and mix and match it. Just because a player decided to invest months worth of play time doesn't qualify it as work nor does it qualify that content as belonging to anyone other than Blizzard.

If World of Warcraft were more like, Second Life, for example, you may have an argument. Players there are capable of actually creating their own content. I suppose it's kind of like using Photoshop or Flash. Adobe has provided a tool and anything created with these tools does belong to the creator.

For any MMO where players are simply borrowing content the developer has provided I see no possible way for a player to make a successful claim that any of it belongs to them. Especially when ownership is clearly spelled out in the license agreement. If someone does manage to convince a court that game content does belong to the player I predict the quick demise of MMOs as we know them. No one will want to invest millions in a game just to lose control over it once players start claiming everything as their own.

Re:Of course it all belongs to Blizzard!

[insignificant_wrangl]

But here's the question: why isn't those hours of gaming "work"? I think you begin to take apart your own metaphor: why isn't WoW a tool in the same way that SL or Flash is? The "content" of WoW is level advancement, mix and match, months of play.

If you read Iskold's article, then I think you can make a case that this is the direction we are moving--another manifestation of a "hyperreal" or "post-production" economy. We know that Fordist models of material production are outdated, and that labor no longer translates strictly into material goods. My point was to suggest that without players investing those "trival" months of gaming, Blizzard makes NO money. Not a dime. And those players' investment of time works exponentially--here I'm thinking of Mark C. Taylor's work on complexity theory(and, of course, many others), that every node added to a network exponentially increases the power/value of that network. The more people investing time, the better the gaming universe, the better the gaming universe, the more people investing time. Rinse, repeat.

I am not suggesting that Blizzard "reward" players (although perhaps revenue sharing for top performers would be justified) . But I would suggest that in a user economy, user's should have more control over their "work/play" labor, even if it is not directly related to creating material content (game code).

The memory hole is deep, apparently

[petrus4]

Doesn't anyone remember that this used to exist for UO? It was also considered a Good Thing.

I'd been wondering when it was going to exist for WoW.

I.W.I.N. buttons.

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep mine in the bank next to "The Stoppable Force".

Firefox Recommended!

[lordofthechia]

Something to like already, from the faq (emphasis mine):

What are the recommended and supported browsers for the Armory?

  The Armory supports Internet Explorer (version 6.0 and up), Opera 9, and Safari. However, the Armory is best experienced with Firefox. In addition, certain features require Flash Player to function. Currently, the arena team icons are Flash elements, and future aspects of the Armory may be reliant on Flash as well. Nice, the more high profile sites recommending Firefox the better!

remember when Blizzard made other games ?

[tabby]

That's just super Blizz, now where is my damn Starcraft: Ghost?

Re:Does this mean they can now fix hacked accounts

[Ash-Fox]

a few people in my guild had their accounts hacked

This sounds like more important news. Shouldn't there be a announcement on Blizzard's World of Warcraft site about hacked accounts?

A Comprehensive Summary

[Talon88]

This should probably be divided into two groups: Casual players and hardcore PvPers.

A few comments overall, also: Armory takes a good deal of time to load, to maximize effectiveness you need be running either two screens or two computers, and this can't be used to track movement.

For casual players, there should be very little, if any impact on gameplay.

As noted in other comments, it's not a tool that will be useful for stalking -- Armory doesn't tell users where the person they're trying to find is, nor it is real time, so information that is displayed will be useless for anyone on the opposite faction repeatedly trying to gank a single user (not to mention, you can report them for that). Aside from that, there may be limited use in knowing that, for example, if you're a warlock, that the other guy had an Insignia of the Horde on and will dispell fear the first time, thus allowing you to get a jump on them, but this isn't something that wouldn't be obvious after meeting him in combat and fearing him anyway.

The post by jchenx covers everything on casual players and getting into good groups. 'nuff said.

For hardcore PvP players, this is slightly more complicated, but ultimately leads to about the same conclusion.

It seems likely that the top Arena players will want to utilize every weapon in their arsenal to win, so it can be pressupposed that they've gotten themselves set up to use Armory. Assuming they use it in the pre-combat Arena time, they will indeed find out the gear that their opponents are wearing and the talent trees that they've gone, giving them an (questionable) advantage. However, there are a few responses to this:

First, that the other team will be doing the exact same thing, and as such, an advantage will cancel out; they'll know that you're a Resto-druid and a Prot-pally, and you know they have a PoM Firemage and a Shadowpriest, for example.

Second, the top teams will presumably be facing each other more than once, and as such will probably (if they really are dedicated) be either frapsing or logging the results of their combats anyway, and so would gain any appreciable knowledge anyway.

Third, since it's not real-time updates, one could presumably wear, as another poster suggested, nothing until you get into the arena, at which point with Outfitter or such mod you could instantly gear up to all your necessary gear. As a matter of fact, if you're a druid for example, you should have multiple suits of gear, one for resto, one for dps, etc; as such, Armory will not be of great tactical advantage, and could even be used for deceit.

Finally, even knowing your opponents' gear does not present that much of a tactical advantage -- knowing they're going to do 140dps and have a chance on hit to stun is nice, but that tells you nothing of whether they're going to rush at you or wait for you to target to mage to charge you, and so on and so forth. The strategy that can be played in an Arena is, as CrazyJim1 suggested, much more vulnerable to watching a replay and copying than knowing their gear, although that is a factor.

As such, it seems that either way, the information presented is of limited harm, and can be of good fun. Would an opt-out be nice? Yeah, probably. Is it a gigantic deal and a game-breaker? Not so much.

Dark Age Of Camelot

[malf-uk]

With DAOC, for certain things, you have a little control over what info is displayed on line via the /webdisplay command e.g. /webdisplay trades and /webdisplay house. Perhaps Blizzard should implement something similar such as /webdisplay basic and /webdisplay detailed.

Re:Easier said than done. It's not much an advanta

[mcvos]

Easier said than done. Yeah, you may find out that player NoobSauce isn't very good, since his gear sucks and his talent trees are a mess. But how the heck are you going to find him? For all you know, he's not even logged in or playing the game anymore. It doesn't help even in the reverse situation. For example, you notice Legolaughs is guarding the flag in a Battleground. Are you really going to ALT-TAB out, launch a web browser, go look up his talent spec, ALT-TAB back, then go to town? Of course not.

Ofcourse you've got the web browser open on the right page already. Just switch to that window, type the name, and you're done. And if you run WoW at less than fullscreen (I don't know if that's possible on Windows, but it's definitely possible in Cedega on linux) or you've got a second screen for your browser, you'd even be able to read the info while continuing to play the game.

Re:Easier said than done. It's not much an advanta

[theghost]

Tougher than you think.

1) The game is prohibited from communicating with outside apps that could get you the data in real-time. You could certainly hack something up to do it, but you'd risk getting your account suspended.

2) You could pre-download all the data for the arena teams in your bracket. I've considered doing this, but in order to make work with any kind of efficiency you would have to more or less write an entire database inside of WoW's scripting language. You'd be dealing with data on potentially thousands of characters. You'd likely experience significant lag while using the mod, perhaps so much so that your PvP performance would be more hindered than it would be flying blind.

It's really not worth the trouble. Best use for the Armory is to go there AFTER you got beat and try to figure out why it happened.

Privacy in games

[jchenx]

Ahh, but if I use thott or the allakhazam or any other data tracker, it's an opt in experience.

There are actually other sites where it's not an opt in experience. Warcraft Census is one example. It has a lot of interesting aggregate statistical data (what % of alliance are human, etc.). But it also tracks things like who's a member of what guild, and an individual player's guild history. I think it does more as well. I believe it accomplishes this via a set of mods that players can download and use to collect the data.

And yes it is a slippery slope argument, but slippery slopes do exist.

You should re-read the Wikipedia article on the "slippery slope" argument. No one is saying that a slippery slope doesn't exist in some circumstances, but it alone isn't enough. To quote the article, you also need "some independent justification of the connection between their terms". Going back to your original argument, you'd have to give a pretty clear justification as to why Blizzard would knowingly break the law and start handing out people's personal contact information. Just saying, "Well, they did it with WoW data, so that means they'll eventually do it with your personal data" is not enough.

Maybe I just don't want people to see all my stuff? I don't care if it's harmless information. What stings me is that I don't get a choice. I recognise the terms of use agreeement allows Blizzard to do whatever the heck they want with any data stored in their systems. That doesn't mean I have to like it, and it doesn't mean this kind of behaviour is good customer service.

You are definitely free to feel that way. Also realize that you do have a choice: stop playing.

Anyway, I hate to play devil's advocate so much, because I do agree that it does seem weird that Blizzard isn't allowing for some opt-out mechanism. I don't see why they wouldn't, but I don't work there and I imagine there's probably a reason why. I can understand why it's not opt-in, since most people wouldn't do it (mostly because they don't know it exists, or are too lazy to do it), so the tool becomes pretty useless.

That said, I personally don't care that my data is broadcast. Rather, it's a handy feature. Everyone I've talked to in-game also loves the feature as well. No more having to ask, "What talents do you have?" and then either manually typing them out, or at best, linking to your spec at the WoW talent calculator. You can just point them to the Armory instead.

Its all good

[CircusTent]

I have been hearing a lot of PVP groups bitch and moan about Armory. Honestly I don't care if someone can match my gear and my build. Chances are they can match the way that I play. I do like the armory, mainly because I don't have to update ctprofiles anymore.