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Blizzard Adds Timestamps To WoW Armory
Kharny writes "In a move that could cause serious privacy problems for players of World of Warcraft, Blizzard has added timestamps and an RSS feed to the game's online armory site. This new feature will mean that anyone can follow 'real-time' developments in a World of Warcraft character, which display the exact time and date, so that others can see that person's playing habits. Many players have already complained about the fact that there is no opt-out setting, and this opens very big possibilities for online stalking."
This just makes it a little bit easier. One could easily write a LUA script that /who's the player in-game between some intervals and save the info. Or the more geeky ones could write a program that uses WoW's protocol and logins to do the same (and relogins if disconnected).
So it's not like it wouldn't already be possible to gather those playing habits.
unlike most other online communities there is no way to show your status as 'Offline' (which makes it very annoying sometimes) In fact all this data is obtainable anyway - just makes it a bit easier for mom to see that johnny got that epic sword last night at 10:30PM - THAT'S PAST YOUR BEDTIME JOHNNY!!!!
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
The only real things someone might be able to know, (especially with a class like a druid that requires up to eight [1] different sets of gear), is that someone might be PvP-ing, or running dungeons/raids when they do an armor swap. Some people who don't PvP can get away with a single set of gear if their class is a DPS only class (hunter, mage).
Knowing someone is in PvP or PvE gear, especially on a PvP server may mean something though, especially if griefing is involved. For example, if someone is in their DPS gear, they likely might be Icecrown doing dailies, and perhaps can be easy gankings if someone is so inclined.
[1]: Bear gear for tanking in PvE, tree gear for healing, cat gear for melee DPS, moonkin gear for ranged, moonkin PvP gear, bear PvP gear (for tanking bosses in AV), tree PvP gear, and cat PvP gear. At the minimum, a raiding druid will have three sets of gear, a tank or heal set (because DPS is so common on raids), a PvE DPS set, and a PvP/arena set.
Many of the bots are not simple. They are quite sophisticated, and allow not just harvesting, but questing, rep grinding etc.
There are "one click" profiles for ten or more levels at a time. Set it and go.
Auction house bots manipulate the economy. Price fixing at it's worst.
honor/mark farming, even arena point farming. Hell, there were instance profiles for solo'ing lower level instances, and follow profiles designed to let one person run a five-man instance with a couple bots backing him/her up.
Not that any of this relates much to the article, but it's worth refuting your point of the bots being simple. I used to bot three toons at once. A couple made it to 80, and a dozen or so to 60. Mmoglider getting shut down is why I quit the game.
This system baffles me every time it is mentioned though.
I work in a school in the Netherlands, I get 40 days off this year, I brought over 8 free days from 2009 that I didn't use, so that's 48 days for this year.
When I get sick, I stay at home, this isn't deducted from my free days.
When I am on vacation for 3 weeks and I am sick for 2 weeks, I only lose 1 week of free time, since being sick doesn't cost free days.
I have an absurd amount of free days though, the norm in the Netherlands for companies is about 25 days per year if I'm not mistaken.
I really feel sorry for you guys, having so little vacation/free days. Wish you had more.
This is the sig that says NI (again)