Cataclysm to Destroy More Than Old Azeroth

Blizzard is going to blow away more than Old Azeroth when they release Cataclysm. What we used to call “spoiler” sites will have to deal with the change in data and completely restart their data collection efforts. Is this an opportunity or a pain for them?

This morning while going through my daily morning activities I started to think about WoW herb and metal farming to support tradeskilling.  For those of you who don’t know me;  I usually get into the crafting or trades at least a little bit, sometimes deeply.  To support these tradeskills, many of us take advantage of the many help (or as we used to call them, “spoiler”) sites out there.  It used to be Allakazam’s, although in the WoW world it’s mostly Thottbot or Wowhead.  As those of you who have played a lot know there are literally thousands of sites out there to support gameplay in WoW.  There are build sites like Talent Chic, crafting sites, and the massive database sites mentioned above.

These sites have built their databases over time, literally farming data from the game and adding to it in real time over 5 years, not including the time spent in beta.  There is definitely going to be an impact while these sites normalize their data for the expansion.  There will definitely be a lot of “hand work” involved as opposed to the usual automated systems they used for data collection.

What’s going to be interesting is seeing how this will impact these web sites.  Will some of the less-read sites take advantage of the “reset button” to promote and raise their constituency?  Will the larger existing sites use this as an opportunity to get in early with the beta and assert their dominance?  There will likely be plays on both sides.

So a question for you;

Will you run an add-on data collector for any of these sites during beta or after release?  Have you ever done it before?  We’d like to hear what you think.

And OK, I may have lied a little.  I had 2 questions.

- Genda