As the title suggest, Blizzard has now granted stalkers all around the World (of Warcraft) to continue eating their cheetos and drinking their red bulls while frothing at the mouths over the new Character Feed section of the Armory.
Stalking – now over twenty times easier thanks to the great minds at Blizzard!
At least now I know where my class imbalance and botched content is coming from now with resources flowing into useless – and (generally) unwanted projects like this. At least give us the option to turn it off, we know the four of you at the office can’t help but to touch eachother over the limitless amount of data on players you have, keep that to yourselves!
To which I ask, who was the genius that thought : “I think it would be a great idea to create a system that is also publicly available that lets other players see exactly what you’ve done, looted, and received over the past 50 and over events, link it to RSS so it can be on any website at any time, and give no benefit to the user’s own personal page other than seeing their character in 3D as if they never log into the game and do that regardless.”
Edit : As I suspected, some people are taking me a tad serious when I put this in the same pool as game balance. It would be silly of me to think that the same people designing classes implemented this tool! Not only is it quite useless, but I’d find it interesting if someone out there could bring a positive benefit that this brings to the table.
This might not be Paladin news, but it is certainly WoW news, and we have to cover that too!
- Megaphone
January 14th, 2010 - 12:21 am
Usually I agree with much you say, but I don’t see what the problem here is. You do realize that pouring more resources into the game development doesnt automatically make the game better. The team developing the armory is probably a whole different team than the wow dev team and probably with an own budget. Furthermore I think its pretty nice that you can have a feed like that. It gives potential to other webdevelopers to do
useful and fun stuff with it.
January 14th, 2010 - 12:30 am
The website team is different from the WoW dev team. They would only share money, not time.
I do agree with Megaphone that this seems to limit privacy that some people enjoy. I mostly care that the armory now takes twice as long to load pages that already took too long to load.
January 14th, 2010 - 1:50 am
I really don’t see why you guys are being so critical against megaphone.
We spend money every month.
They spend it on shitty features that no one needs.
Whats the fucking difference.
I would rather spend 20% of what we pay them on making our class ACTUALLY VIABLE in high end arenas.
NO IM NOT ASKING THE WEBSITE TEAM TO BALANCE THE GAME FFs.
Blizzard’s development team in WoW has been complacent for a long time now. Name one beneficial change for our PvP class that wasn’t a nerf in the last 10 months, or a long overdue bug fix.
And NO, ADDING EXORCISM TO THE ART OF WAR PROC WAS NOT A BUFF.
I’m getting kind of sick of all of you noobs who like to defend blizzard at a moments notice. It seems to be all the “greenies” who haven’t played wow for more than a year or two. DOES ANYONE REMEMBER WHEN CS WAS ON A TEN SECOND CD? OR WHEN WE SPECCED INTO PRECISION TO GET THE HIT CAP FOR SPELL AND MELEE MORE EASILY? WHAT ABOUT WHEN SANCTITY AURA WAS ACTUALLY A CHOICE? IF YOU DON’T REMEMBER ANY OF THESE THINGS, THEN YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DISCOURSE ABOUT THE CLASS OR BLIZZARDS CHOICES OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS. YOU JUST AREN’T.
Some things need to be type in cruise control for cool. This is just one of them.
There’s a difference between “being a pally” and playing anywhere from 1-3 paladins in the span of 3-4 years or longer. Some of you just don’t have the knowledge, and still like to act like you do.
When our “PVP” Spec is in the condition where it is worse than a PvE spec for Arena, then something is seriously wrong. When there is no outcry, and even more “paladins” supporting blizzard, you can easily realize why blizzard does nothing. Stop hurting our class and start speaking out AGAINST BLIZZARD. We pay them, its not the other way around, so we need to stop acting like sniveling servants and start acting like the loyal customers we are if we truely want ANYTHING to CHANGE.
Support your fellow pallies, who stick up for you, like Megaphone, Thorvalde, and until recently Slayton, and stop doing a disservice to our class. Anyone who defends blizzard at this point is being a traitor to every other person who enjoys this class. Stop it and stand up to make our class viable. Seriously.
January 14th, 2010 - 2:03 am
And For Mega’s point.
Wow. I totally want people stalking me now.
I don’t know about you, but my server is filled with assholes and trolls, there are at least two nearly full guilds of them.
I don’t need some assholes following my account because they have nothing better to do, because 90% of the time you will run into some elitist who is a douchebag unless you have full heroic whatever the last dungeon gear was, and pop into armory to critique your gear as if they have it as a real job or something.
God knows we dont need more stalkers in wow. All we are going to hear is… OH IT TOOK YOU SO AND SO LONG TO GET THIS RING? OR THIS TRINKET? YOU FAIL AHAHAAHHAHAHAHA. Because PvE is all about skill now compared to BC, so the noobs say.
Blizzard needs to take away the “Cyber Stalker” Feature, “Its new and improved!” (and completely useless for anyone with good intentions).
/Tangent off.
January 14th, 2010 - 2:09 am
who cares? it´s only a game? wtf?
so what if somebody sees that i have just killed the last boss of deadmines?! Do you care if somebody else knows? sorry, not understandable…
I would care if it were a live-stream… but well, in the end it is only a game and therefore I don´t really care if somebody can check up on what i have been doing the last week… as long as it´s not IRL, I personally don´t really care…
January 14th, 2010 - 3:08 am
This is just useless, people will abuse this information, new addons will be installed wich can give you this information. new players or alts will get a hardtime finding groups.
January 14th, 2010 - 6:01 am
I gotta agree with Avesta on this. Why the major negativity about this? Are you suggesting this information will make it easier for targetted attacks by scammers? I really doubt that. If it showed how much gold you have on hand maybe, but everything else was pretty much already on the armory. This just gives new ways of viewing it.
January 14th, 2010 - 7:37 am
This is horrible for the players that use WoW as an escape from their public lives. Suddenly your girlfriend can check to see if you did a 5-man 10 minute ago instead of cooking dinner. Or your guildmates who were asking you to tank 5-mans can see that instead you did a couple of battlegrounds.
I certainly don’t want people to know how much I play. I know that means I play too much, but it’s my right to do so without everyone knowing about it.
If I want someone to know what I do in my own time, I’ll go to a confessional. I don’t need the armory to broadcast it for me.
January 14th, 2010 - 9:32 am
Agree with Lukland. More information in the hands of a-holes who are already itching to deny people a spot in the group/presence/uber aura. Makes it harder to gear up an alt just wanting to find a group for a simple nax or OS run.
January 14th, 2010 - 10:06 am
ZOMG!!! It’s the end of the paladin world! Oh, wait, no …. it’s …. uhhh nothing to see here.
@Qthulu
Your guildies already know you’re ditching them for a BG. It’s called the Guild Panel, and it shows where you are at a glance, somewhat more conveniently than windowing out of the game and hitting an RSS feed of the Armory.
@voices of reason
Yep. Completely separate dev team. This has absolutely no impact on how paladins work in the game. Pretty much all of this was already available to anyone who cared to look.
@Meg
I think it’s time for me to say thanks for the useful information I’ve picked up here in the past and trim my RSS feeds. I came here to try to step up my game as a retnoob, after four years as a healadin, but it seems like the community here has devolved more into an echo chamber of bitching about how bad we have it, and we already have the Blizzard forums for that. Good luck with the website. I wish I had something to contribute to steer it in the direction that I’d like to see it move, but I’m afraid I don’t.
January 14th, 2010 - 10:25 am
I’d have liked to see a comment box added on the Armory for each character’s profile. Not only would hilarity/trash talking ensue, but it may also be a good informational resource. “Why did you choose that glyph?” etc.
January 14th, 2010 - 10:51 am
Perhaps you’re missing the point, Algorython. Also, it seems as if you don’t know how the system actually works.
Qthulu’s point wasn’t about Battlegrounds – it was just an example.
Obviously, this has nothing to do with how Paladins worked. No, not everything was already available, like seeing exactly what boss you’ve done without earning any achievement and every piece of loot your character received (even through trade). This is more in defense for the people who thoroughly care about their privacy – I just don’t see the point as to why ANY resources was put into this.
Useful information is always on our forums – tons of Paladins, including myself put in an asinine amount of effort to tackle down problems for veterans and noobs alike. If anybody is stooping down to a WoW public forum level, it’s you. While people are voicing legitimate concerns to a community of people who aren’t twelve year olds, you just seem to want to attack blindly without even seeing the point or completely hearing people out. Frankly, if you want to act like that, perhaps it’s best that you aren’t a part of this community either.
January 14th, 2010 - 11:00 am
I agree its creepy and stupid. Lets work on the website rather than work on classes and balancing.
January 14th, 2010 - 11:05 am
Careful there Jd – people might think you’re not attacking Blizzard but rather the game developer team which no sane person could possibly deduce as to being behind this!
It’s not like changes to the game and company in virtually all aspects have to go through the group of people in the end.
January 14th, 2010 - 2:42 pm
Wow, overreacting much guys?
Calm down. It’s not the end of the world.
January 14th, 2010 - 9:32 pm
At least now I know where my class imbalance and botched content is coming from now with resources flowing into useless – and (generally) unwanted projects like this.
Because the raid content dev team and the class balance team are totally the same people as the web dev team and the Battle.NET network team. Totally.
Also, all of this information was pretty much already available if you knew XML.
January 14th, 2010 - 9:51 pm
Perhaps you should read into sarcasm a bit more and skim through the comments here, Rilgon..
January 14th, 2010 - 11:31 pm
/facepalm
Sarcasm people, wtf. It’s called, sarcasm. Jeeze, I know its harder to tell online, but seriously, he laid it on SO THICKLY! My blind dead grandfather could read into it.
On the plus note, I like how you can set the 3d image to load up to a default pose. People can change what they see, but whenever they load up the page it goes back to default. I have mine sat to the rude thing for humans. FU people. FU. MWUAHAHAA!!!
I’m going to bed.
PS: Sarcasm. That is all.
January 14th, 2010 - 11:51 pm
^ What he said.
January 15th, 2010 - 2:00 am
This doesn’t bother me.
Overreacting is hard to distinguish from sarcasm, which makes people overreact. A vicious circle…
January 15th, 2010 - 5:13 pm
Deleted a few posts – apparently somebody likes not reading, spreading false information, and furthering their own statement by commenting again on a different name! Oh, the world we’re in today.
January 15th, 2010 - 10:11 pm
Obviously, 3D Models and Achievements, and whatever goddamn item you got on your last run of heroics, raids, etc. is a precedent for an upcoming cataclysm.
Just look what happened at Haiti.
GODDAMMIT BLIZZARD LOOK YOU’VE GONE AND MADE A MESS ZOMG
January 16th, 2010 - 10:09 am
sarcasm mr. megaphone, sarcasm.
January 16th, 2010 - 3:03 pm
Sarcasm.
January 16th, 2010 - 4:26 pm
indeed, sarcasm. in hindsight it wasnt as HIRARIOUS as i had initially anticipated so its probably for the best that they were deleted.
January 19th, 2010 - 9:55 am
i would suppose that the new armory feed lets people figure out what kind of experience other players they may or may not be grouping with have, rather than have to rely on external sources to research whether or not your pug is full of scrubs or something. because i guess some people are extra serious about that sort of thing or whatever.
January 19th, 2010 - 11:02 am
Having no Arena experience, I can’t comment on much being said here. I have to say, though, that the tone of the website has changed drastically over the last several months. Like others who have commented above, I also gained a lot from this website in terms of learning about what retribution was about. It wasn’t until after BC that I finally began to understand (with the significant assistance of Retpaladin.com) what I needed to focus on to maximize damage, which gear I should get, which enchants and gems, etc. With the advent of Arena, WoW has introduced such instability into the game that it seems hopelessly broken. There is no way to balance it, in my opinion. PvP and PvE are like two different games, but tweaking one side affects the other side inevitably. I stopped playing my ret pally a while ago for several reasons, but the most important one is that the class kept changing so often that it felt I was playing on quicksand. I need more stability than that to enjoy playing. It was pissing me off that just as I was getting used to playing my ret pally a certain way, Blizzard would change the rules for me again. I tried to keep up for a while, and I appreciate all the information this website provided during that time, but now Retpaldin.com feels like one of those pissed off morning radio talk shows that for the life of me I can never figure out why anyone would like to listen to. Great way to start the day, listening to people making me angry. I think we need to lighten things up a bit here and be more positive, concentrate on solutions and not problems. Easy to say, hard to do, I know, but I think you guys will have a hard time maintaining any kind of meaningful community if this continues. If you really don’t see or feel the negativity here, head over to paladinschmaladin (http://ferarro.blogspot.com/) and see the difference.
January 19th, 2010 - 7:16 pm
“At least now I know where my class imbalance and botched content is coming from now with resources flowing into useless – and (generally) unwanted projects like this.”
Now I know why Hoff stopped posting. The atmosphere at this site has degenerated into WoW bashing. Sure there are some interesting posts on the PvP forums, but I’m getting tired of reading depressing things like this.
Instead, I encourage each of you (the OP included) to change your focus back to Ret. Few care about class imbalance this far into WotLK – that ship has sailed. Try discussing the unique perspective of the ret.
I learned so much from this site and its wise contributors (though I never posted energetically myself). I guess I just want other newer folks to have the same experience. At this point, that experience is better had elsewhere.
January 20th, 2010 - 5:35 am
MEGAPHONE ITS FINALLRY HAPPENING! FERARRO IS AFTER YOU NOW! HEAD FOR THE HILLS! BUBBLE HEARTH! ESCAPE! RUUUUUUUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 20th, 2010 - 9:15 am
Aw, come on! I was already checking out this site when all that crap happened. I don’t know and don’t care about what that might have been about. Seriously, I have never read a bad word about this site on ferarro’s blog. The only thing I am pointing out is the difference in tone. At Paladin Schmaladin, the tone is lighthearted, encouraging and educational. Here -lately- feels like a pissed off morning radio talk show. It wasn’t always this way. The comment is meant as constructive criticism and not meant to put Megaphone or anyone down. And certainly I do not mean to create discord between the two sites or authors. My apologies, Megaphone, if I came across that way. We are all paladins after all.
January 27th, 2010 - 11:52 am
I agree with the OP.
I have personaly whitnessed stalking in the game and this new armory feature will make it worse. Please, Blizzard, Make it so we can turn that part off, all we need is a choise, a choise to have it or not, this choise will make all this argueing moot.