The Armory

Ceto · Post by **Ceto** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 3:34 pm

http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/

Blue post here. Trying to check it out now, but it's loading slowly...

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:19 pm

Wow. I never thought I would see the day that Blizz would actually do this. Interesting that some people give this site a thumbs down for capturing them without their knowledge. Well, here is Blizzard gathering a lot of data about characters without your knowledge so to speak.

Unfortunately the site is not working right for me. I can see my character's name, but it won't load my profile, so I am not sure what type of info it shows. If it includes what my character has in the bank, then this is a bit invasive. However, if it just gives you what gear I have on my character, stats, and my rep I have no problem with it. And it better not show how much gold you have because I will be rather annoyed. My guild already begs for gold and this will just make it worse.=/

Now to be honest, I think this is going in the right direction. It raises the bar for little sites, which I think is a good thing. If they can take out Thottbot and allakhazam then I say, YES! *Shakes a mean fist* Those sites are run by gold farmers anyway.

This site, however, gives you specific info on census and it doesn't appear to me that the armory has anything like this. I don't see warcraftrealms being affected by this like CTProfiles.

Alanthus · Post by **Alanthus** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:39 pm

Will be hard on ctprofiles and such sites that's for sure if they actually manage to tune it so it's useful, a site with interesting info is only interesting if you can actually load it

What I'm curious about is if sites will store and mine the data displayed there for guilds etc. to be able to display statistical data over time and such, the sites that did this for DAOC contained a *LOT* of different information and display sets.

NiennaMiriel · Post by **NiennaMiriel** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 4:50 pm

I like that we can't inspect someone of the other faction to see what they have equipped, but we can Alt+Tab out and look them up in the Armory and have all the info we need. SMRT! At least with other character profile sites, the players have decided to share their information, and with some other character profile sites, the players have decided who sees what.

Skyfire · Post by **Skyfire** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:05 pm

oiseaux wrote:If they can take out Thottbot and allakhazam then I say, YES! *Shakes a mean fist* Those sites are run by gold farmers anyway.

How biast is that, oiseaux? Let me point you to http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3150282 (Source: <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Thottbot#Thottbo ... iki.com</a>.)

In any case, I do have to say that atm, wcr outstrips anything Blizz has put together there atm, but I doubt it will be long Rollie...

.

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:16 pm

Skyfire wrote:
oiseaux wrote:If they can take out Thottbot and allakhazam then I say, YES! *Shakes a mean fist* Those sites are run by gold farmers anyway.
How biast is that, oiseaux? Let me point you to http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3150282 (Source: <a href="http://www.wowwiki.com/Thottbot#Thottbo ... iki.com</a>.)

In any case, I do have to say that atm, wcr outstrips anything Blizz has put together there atm, but I doubt it will be long Rollie... .

I'd rather see little guys like Rollie have these database and census sites. Rather than these multi-million dollar companies with them. If you think they don't censor or control what they put on their site, then you are quite mistaken.

Skyfire · Post by **Skyfire** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 6:18 pm

And did I say they didn't censor/control what exactly goes on those sites?

No.

I was making a remark on the fact that they weren't being run by gold farmers; only the company which owns the gold farmers. Big difference there, tbh.

Mandregorn · Post by **Mandregorn** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:02 pm

I've been using WCR for a couple months now, but I've never stopped by the forums before. I saw the news about the Armory and wondered if there would be a topic here.

My first reaction is that Blizzard's site is slow (for now at least) and it will take a lot of work and manpower to offer more than WCR does. I think Blizzard's site will be really strong in some areas, such as the possibility for near-real time processing of character information updates. However, it will have to become a lot faster (I expect it to) and I also don't like the idea of putting everyone's profile up without their consent. Although I'm sure that Blizzard will add a line into their TOS about this just so that no one has any room to complain.

I'm not about to stop using WCR any time soon because I like how it collects census info, server activity rate, and tracks character progression. Until Blizzard can offer all that and more, there's not a good reason to replace this site with the Armory. Although I can't imagine Blizzard starting this without the intent of supplying as much data as possible...

xpolockx · Post by **xpolockx** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:06 pm

I'll keep using WCR as my way of sticking it to the man... haha.

For now the armory site keeps throwing errors and being really slow, but I expect they'll eventually fix that. I guess we'll see how useful it ends up being.

jacen.at · Post by **jacen.at** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 7:51 pm

oiseaux wrote:so I am not sure what type of info it shows.

I'll post screenshots of the german arsenal version, because my char is located on a german server (for obvious reasons)

direct link: http://armory.wow-europe.com/character- ... dar&n=Jony

the main character page.
should be obvious even if you can't read the descriptions.
if you hover above the items, there is a popup similar to the ones ingame ... you have seen them on the talent trees on the offical wow sites before

at the top banner, you can see the level, pvp rank, character name, guild, class, server and battlegroup (from left to right and from up to down)

to the right, you see other results of your character name. the results are ordered by "popularity" which might combine level, playtime, backlinks and/or other things.

the faction page.
ask if you have specific questions.
to the right, now you can see the guild-list of this character, sorted alphabethically.

the skills page.
nothing fancy.

the talents page.
this also determines how your character is labeled in lists. the tree where you have spendt the most points earns you a title (demonologist, holy specialization ... you know the drill). if you have 2 or 3 trees with the same ammount of talent points, youll be labelled "hybrid".

the guild main list.
member count, side, realm, battlegroup (from left to right and up to down).
at the far right of the list, you can see guild-ranks. currently not with the ingame specified title, but only with a numbered rank.

the guild statistics page.
race percentage, class percentage, level percentage ... and a summary below.

imho its a nice system. pretty slow now, but maybe that gets better once they are out of beta. currently, they provide all of the detail information warcraftrealms provides.
BUT STILL warcraftrealms has better overall server stats, server load and fraction balance. so i doubt it will become obsolete (actually the fraction balance is why many of the guys i know come here ... to look for high/low populated servers/fractions).

p.s.:
if the images are too big, please some admin change them to links, thanks.

xpolockx · Post by **xpolockx** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:05 pm

Thanks a lot man, I haven't been able to load my character information there without the site getting bogged down and throwing an error. That is more information than I thought...

jacen.at · Post by **jacen.at** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:15 pm

xpolockx wrote:Thanks a lot man, I haven't been able to load my character information there without the site getting bogged down and throwing an error. That is more information than I thought...

you don't need to upload your information there. as soon as you logout, your statistics are saved for the armory. but it usually takes some time (i guess around 24 hours) for your data to appear. you don't need any addon or any other user interaction for your data to appear there.

i hit level 58 somewhen 2 days ago and today turned 59 a few hours ago ... go figure.

oiseaux · Post by **oiseaux** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 8:37 pm

All of that information I have no problems with. If they start adding your bank and bags that is when I will protest.

Thank you for the pictures!

Post by **Rollie** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 10:17 pm

Yeah, I'm not too concerned about this. It doesn't offer what WCR mainly does. And that is character history as well as census stats. I don't forsee Blizz offering up this information.

I think it will however be a huge hit to sites like CTProfile.

DM. · Post by **DM.** » Wed Feb 28, 2007 11:44 pm

Yup CTProfiles will be hit hard with this. While it does contain a more in depth information about your guild than what we have here on WCR. It doesn't have the historical statistics, we'll see how this plays out tho.

I guess we can now say that the profile information in Census Plus will no longer be of any use since the Armory has all that and more.

Also I was reading the posts Nethaera made on this and she says that there isn't an option to hide this data but that may come in the future since its just beta. Because there is a ton of information about your character there that you may not want others to know about.

jacen.at · Post by **jacen.at** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 1:26 am

oiseaux wrote:All of that information I have no problems with. If they start adding your bank and bags that is when I will protest.

Thank you for the pictures!

i can't see how the armory should be of any value if users can decide if and what part of their profile they want to publish there. I think the mandatory status makes it highly reliable for looking for a variety data.

ofc, iventory, bank account, quest progress, location (esp. on pvp servers!) and other things should not be published without the consent of the player. but i doubt the armory will ever implement any of these datasets, because they not only are sensitive and very dynamic (all these values can change dramatically within 24 hrs ... not so much with the currently listed data) but most of all they are useless.
there are no "good" reasons i can think of wanting to know these things without the character just asking ingame.

WyriHaximus · Post by **WyriHaximus** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:16 am

Wow that looks great, EU one is faster tho: http://armory.wow-europe.com/#index.xml

I allways love the things the blizzard webdesign team comes up with! (Just the looks that is

.)

Babs · Post by **Babs** » Thu Mar 01, 2007 5:21 am

The first one to find Hedgewigge in this list gets a cookie!
http://armory.wow-europe.com/?#guild-in ... scream&p=1