Add "first appeared" date field to advanced search

monkeynigger · Post by **monkeynigger** » Sat Apr 25, 2009 5:44 pm

Please add a "first appeared on database" date threshold to advanced search.

This would be a very useful field for finding guildbank ninjas who have transferred and changed name, as you can filter by date, class, race and level to find your man.

Dromic · Post by **Dromic** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 11:39 am

Question is how useful would that be. Since there can be over 100+ characters with the same name. And the addon can not detect a users name changes. Is addon is a helper tool but not meant to be a data miner.

Blizzard had oked census+ as it works now. But to see player name changes would require datamining there website. And there is no way blizzard will approve of that. You must remember people pay to change names in part to get away from people harassing them.
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Post by **Rollie** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 1:11 pm

Yeah, I could potentially do that, although you would be surprised at the numbers you would see. I've done some searches like this on my own and was surprising to see how many characters would fit the bill.

monkeynigger · Post by **monkeynigger** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 9:32 pm

I'm not suggesting datamining any further than what has already been done. It'd be too easy if you could follow name changes without effort.

It's part of the challenge really. WR is one of the tools I use to build up an understanding of someone's online behaviour and has been very useful.

You're right that it's highly likely that in any given day hundred or thousands of a particular level. race and class could transfer, but people are creatures of habit and often transfer with their friends or choose names along a theme, narrowing down your results even further.

So is Blizzard genuinely concerned for people's privacy in this regard?

Bobson · Post by **Bobson** » Fri May 01, 2009 6:46 am

I'd love to see this for an entirely different reason. I've been a player on my main for a long time, and last night I decided to try and find out how many other players on my server who are still active have been around longer. But there's no way to see that data other than clicking each individual character, and there's no way to get a list of all characters on a realm. The ability to search all characters seen before before september '05, even if last seen is not added as a search field (which would be nice too) would greatly narrow my search