Communities Made of Tin

In regards to guild management, the Armory has been a Godsend. Combine that with the fact that the number of people who actually visit the forums – the only practical location they could be insulted – is so low, I don’t see the problem.

I think the ‘damage done by this thread which my guild wasn’t even large enough to qualify for:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=86645472&postId=865791505&sid=1#0

Is far outweighed by the good of being able to produce something like this:
http://wow.tachyonsix.com/armory/guildstats_out/bleeding-hollow-gunpowder-and-magic-70.html

I, for one, am very glad they aren’t planning on including an opt-out option.

Night Elf Druid With Horn! What a desktop background!

smw.Bell, their is a fraction of players who don’t like data about them being splashed everywhere. You are guaranteed to annoy them with something like this, and it WILL cost you customers. Afaik, unecessarily.

In regards to the thread you linked, the vast majority of the people in the thread are a) telling the OP to lighten up or b) completely unrelated to the original post. I only read three pages into it but I’d honestly be suprised if on page four it turned into an online petition thread and the number of replies was some reflection of the WoW community’s anger.

It’s not some thread of angry players. It’s a bunch of people laughing at the OP for getting upset.

Trite, I know, but…

April Fool’s is serious business.

WoW is a game.

One of the rules of the game is “You are allowed to examine your opponent’s playing piece.”

Where’s the problem?

It’s a game, the rules say you can look at the other guy’s playing piece, and he can look at yours.

Privacy? People have very skewed perceptions of risk.

For example, some years ago parents were up in arms over asbestos being found, sealed under layers of paint, on pipes in the boiler rooms of schools. As hazards go, that was on a par with the school being hit by a meteor. Statistically, 23% of those upset parents smoked. Second-hand smoke, fires caused by smoking, and other related issues constituted a far higher risk to their children.

I remember, some years back, when two bad plane crashes in a short period of time led to a great deal of debate about where in a plane was the safest place to sit. I wonder how many of the people who were concerned about airplane crash survivability wore their seatbelts for the most hazardous part of the trip: the drive to the airport.

Assuming they mirror the ordinary population, 75% or so of the people angry about the Armory use Internet Explorer. A fair percentage of them are using IE6. There is a known security flaw in IE6 (and possibly IE7) which is exploited by unscrupulous individuals to drop a WoW-targeted trojan. Two guildies of mine have fallen victim to this already. So, 75% of the people upset that someone might see they’ve still got level 60 green boots and they’re slacking on their staff skill are choosing to use a browser that leaves them vulnerable to someone who wants their WoW password, and also their credit card info, their bank account, and other data which could be used to harm them in very real ways.

It’s a game.

Other people can look at your playing piece.

So?

The number and type of Karazhan epics I’m wearing is no one’s business but mine and the leader of raids I sign up for, which is me anyway.

I don’t have a problem with profile sites generally as I maintained one at Allakhazam for a while, but *I* raised hell on their forums for not giving me the ability to turn off bag/bank/etc display.

As an aside – you can’t inspect enemy players beyond recognizing the visual model. You also can’t see factions or bank items.

So adding toggles in would be necessary and appropriate.

And I’m still waiting for someone with a clue to tell me why it’s absolutely necessary that you have access to the detailed stats of every character ever created.

What exactly is so important that your world will come to an end if you can’t tell if a rogue on a realm you don’t even play is combat speced or stealth speced? What is the big deal that you feel they must not be allowed to tell you it’s none of your business?

Davian,

Your argument is fallacious: the Armory exists and Blizzard believes it is a good thing to have it out there. If you’d like to persuade them to include a feature that allows you to turn it off, the onus is on you to make an argument as to why that should be implemented.

Easily enough done.

They should add a feature to allow you to turn it off because it would be an extremely minimal time investment that would make some paying customers happier.

Your turn. Why is it so important that nobody be allowed to turn it off?

If it gives them an excuse to put Sculder and Mully in the game, I’m all for it.

So, I’m screwing around in game with my new blood elf hunter, level 28, and the only quests I have are the ones in Dun Garok. I put up that I’m LFG in the tool and I say something to that effect to the general chat. I get a tell back, “You should be able to solo those.”

“Been trying to, level 30 elites are tearing me up.” I check and see he’s a level 29 priest, “Want to help me?”

There is a long pause here…

“Dude, you really should go buy some gold or something, your gear is pitiful.”

I look around, I’m standing by myself in the middle of a field.

“And your talent spec is all wrong. Have you never played a hunter before?”

For one, my gear is the gear I have found and quested… I don’t buy gold. Two, I normally play with a couple other people, my spec is designed to play nice with them, not solo.

But this guy keeps talking, advising me on gear to buy and specs to change, I eventually put him on ignore when asking him to stop didn’t work.

Normally, I’d chalk this up to one annoying guy, but similiar situations have happened more than a dozen times. I want to turn off my profile.

Hellfire said: “The number and type of Karazhan epics I’m wearing is no one’s business but mine and the leader of raids I sign up for, which is me anyway.”

Says who?

Says you?

But you’re not making the rules of this game.

Blizzard is.

Take the WoW trading card game as another example. I note that in the rules, it says “…you can look through any player’s graveyard.” (discard pile, for you non-CCG types) You are saying “The cards I discard are nobody’s business but mine.” Maybe that’s how you feel, but the rules say that other players can look at them. In WoW, the folks who make the game rules have made one that says “You can examine your opponent’s playing piece.”

You do realize, I hope, that your WoW toon is just a playing piece in a game. Really it is.

I am a very private individual online. The email address I use for blog postings is fake (though Scott is one of the few who knows my real one). My real name, my gender, my location, my profession — none of that ever turns up in Wanderer’s posts. I use bugmenot.com when websites want more from me than that, and for the real hardcore ones, the data they get is very accurate, except that it’s for my cat. I am, to a level that will at least pass cursory investigation, an enigma.

And for the love of God, I have no problems with the Armory.

The rules of the game say I can look at my opponents’ playing pieces and they can look at mine. And nobody yet has given a valid reason why this is a problem.

Have to disagree, the Tin Foil Hat was the funniest part of this year’s April Fools. And they are right-on about the people who think that the Armory somehow violates their “privacy” – the more mocking those overserious types get, the better.

“They should add a feature to allow you to turn it off because it would be an extremely minimal time investment that would make some paying customers happier.”

Blizzard’s response is “No.” It appears this rationale is not enough to make Blizzard want to implement that feature. So, ball’s back in your court, Davian.

“Again – it’s a very cool tool, but why there isn’t an optout command for those who want it baffles me.”

Well, lets look at it from a design perspective. What is the purpose of the Armory? What does it do? If its purpose is to display all the information Blizzard wants to release about every character in their game, wouldn’t allowing anyone to optout of it defeat the purpose of it?

Why would you design a tool that does what the Armory does and then cripple that tool?

“I view it similar to having an unlisted phone number. I like my unlisted number and frankly prefered the time when I had the equivilant in game. My character may be their data to post… but without me there is no character.”

This brings up something I hadn’t thought about… since the introduction of the armory, my ill equipped characters get mail and tell spam about levelling services and auction sites (gold, items, etc) but my high level better equipped characters don’t. I can only assume someone is mining the armory for targets.

I’d like to get on the WoW “No Call” list.

An opt out of the Armory or an opt out of the game? I’d submit that forcing that decision is bad business.

“Why would you design a tool that does what the Armory does and then cripple that tool?”

Uh, speaking as the person who helped Scott design the Armory… the Herald… more than five years ago? Most players WANT their stuff displayed. Having an opt-out option in no way “cripples” the tool. The group that wants to opt out isn’t big enough to “cripple” anything.

There are enough people who want to opt out, and opt out functionality is easy enough to build, to make it a no brainer.

“I don’t want to be harassed in game.” “I want to be judged by my skills, not my gear.” “It ruins my immersion to have people know what color underwear I have on.” THESE ARE VALID REASONS. “Because these reasons don’t apply to the majority” is not good enough to force everyone on display.

As a side note – I wonder if there’s a generation gap in effect. People of a certain age (or a certain political bent) strenuously object to privacy invasions, however trivial. People of a different age don’t know a world without hanging your ass out on Myspace for everyone to see.

Hmmm in CoH you can see what powers people have chosen to take by clicking on them and doing an “info”. I’ve only ever had a couple people give me anything even approaching grief over it in three years of playing. When I notice a team member really underperforming ( or more often performing really well – I want to know what works if I ever make character with their sets ) I’ll check out their powers to see what it is that’s missing. Sometimes I’ll inquire if they had ever considered as it offers such and such benefits that might make things run more smootely for the guy. In nearly every case the person didn’t know what the power did and thanked me for the info. Once or twice they were a little touchy about it and I dropped it right then.

That said could it be possible that Amber is right? That WoWs player base just has a higher percentage of dicks than some other games? I do know that other than really liking the game, I play CoH to a large degree because the players, on average, just strike me as better people to play with than other games I’ve played ( EQ, DAoC, EQ2 – don’t even get me started on DDO or EVE ). I haven’t played WoW because I don’t like the character art so – is it possible that people want to opt out of the Armory because enough of their fellows are dicks to make it a pain?

If so, Blizzard can’t completely controll who subscribes, but one would think they might want to make descisions that would enrich the population for decent folks over asshats. It seems to me that this descision of theirs will have just the opposite effect.

On the other hand Jasons descision to put the guy on ignore seems to me to be plenty good enough to deal with it. I don’t wait very long at all to put odious people on ignore.

Jason, every player gets spammed in game for gold/leveling services. There is no low level Armory conspiracy going on here. My main character is well equipped and I still get those tells 3-4 times a day.

I honestly have no problem with the Armory. I don’t care if people can see my gear and I don’t care to look up someone else’s gear. If it is that big a deal to people they can make a macro to swap out to some random grey gear every time they logoff.

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“I don’t want to be harassed in game.” “I want to be judged by my skills, not my gear.” “It ruins my immersion to have people know what color underwear I have on.” THESE ARE VALID REASONS. “Because these reasons don’t apply to the majority” is not good enough to force everyone on display.
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Those would be valid reasons if people couldn’t do this to a person in game already.

Regarding being judged by gear/talents alot of high end guilds require a ctprofile (ala Magelo) and people are already asked what spec they are in certain classes as well.

Horde can’t inspect Alliance players and vice-versa. The armory creates functionality that is strictly verboten in the game client. How much of a difference can that make in PvP?

Same-faction players are also strictly forbidden from inspecting others over distances > 10 (15?) yards. Blizzard specifically patched TIGHTER restrictions on this because there were caching mods available that allowed one to keep a live inspect window open up to the limits of your mini-map range. I didn’t see that as a problem, but Blizzard did.

In-game tells and mail for gold/PL services have increased significantly since the Armory went live. Five tells in KZ on Saturday and 2 mails waiting for me afterwards. That epidemic alone is reason enough to re-evaluate this stuff.

With any luck, however, the creative things people are doing with XML will hit on something that bothers Blizzard enough to force a change as it’s clear that paying customers voicing legitimate concerns are fit only for punch-lines.

http://wow.tachyonsix.com/armory

Lum,
For once I completely disagree with you. I don’t think an April Fools Day joke needs to be retracted when it’s game related and in the spirit of their site.

I personally love the Armory and any “opt out” feature would make it literally worthless. It’s the first MMO I’ve played that did this (on their own) and I commend them for the effort and the ultility it provides. Tons of people were doing this manually beforehand. This evens out the playing field in a big way by putting the tools up for display. If you are going to have tourneys of players against each other, there had better damn well be a way to see what you’re up against.

Scott said “The rules of the game, before the Armory was introduced, stated that you could look at the color of your opponent’s playing pieces when within close proximity.

After the Armory was introduced, you could not only look at the color of your opponent’s pieces from across the country, you could also study helpfully compiled statistics of your opponent’s playstyle and MRI scans.”

Scott, it still comes down to the fact that it’s Blizzard’s game and they decide what the game rules and mechanics are. And that’s what this IS — a computer game rule, not some conspiracy to invade your pixellated privacy. If Blizzard wants a rule that says you can look through your opponent’s hand of cards while you’re playing (sticking with the CCG analogy) that’s up to them. That’s their job as a game developer, to decide what the rules of the game should be and change them if they think they should be different.

Yes, it used to be that you couldn’t inspect players on the other faction. Now the Armory lets you do it. Blizzard changed the game mechanics a bit, just as they change them in many other ways with every game update. You used to be able to talk to the other guys with l33t, now you can’t; you didn’t use to be able to see what they were wearing, now you can.

By the way, if I recall correctly, the reason for shortening the inspection range was that that loading the profiles of hundreds of people in crowded cities was hammering the item server.

As for why allowing some people to opt out would be a problem: Something like the Armory is only fair if everyone is on a level playing field: either everyone is inspectable, or everyone isn’t. “I can look at you but you can’t look at me” isn’t fair.

By the way, I have seen no increase in RMT spam on any of my characters (and the SpamSentry mod kills it for me anyway) since the Armory came out, and the RMT spamscum have been collecting names with their /who-mining mods since WoW launched, so I doubt if this makes much of a difference. The things that WOULD make a difference, like not making outgoing mail available to level 1 characters (who aren’t normally near a mailbox until they get to something like level 5 anyway!) and throttling the number of /tells such characters can send, or the number of people they can send them to, Blizzard is very reluctant to do.

By the way, I say “by the way” too much.