Chops,

I am sure you have heard Blizzard has started a new beta service called "Armory". It is basically a guild / character / Arena Team data mine that allows you to see look up pretty detailed information about these entities. It also has stats about the players PvP progress.

I know this is very early to ask, but are you looking at ways to possibly integrate this data into your service?

Areas I think this might be good would be as follows.

1. Applications. People who want to apply to the guild have to link their character profile to the application.

2. Guild Roster / Account Managment. Instead of having to import you guild list, have the DKPSYSTEM repopulate guild character lists automatically. Or give options manage how to hangle guild members who leave or who join. One thing I think would be cool is the ability to auto create user accounts based on rank.

So lets say Conan joins the guild and he is given the rank of Freshmeat, the player also plays a priest named healbot as a alt and given the rank of alt. The site goes out and queries the Armory data base, imports Conan = Freshmeat, Healbot = Alt, Creates a Login ID called Conan since he is a main character, but just processes Healbot as a guild alt. Conan then just goes to the website and logs in as Conan, we could assign a inital password and require he fill out other data before he can contine to do other things like post messages, etc.

3. Another interesting thing to track would be linking the google map data to these characters at a higher level. Meaning, if a guild on this site has members link their Zipcode data to characters cached on this site, expose a way to search through this site to find them. Lets say I want to look for all the wow players in Columba, Maryland who have accounts on DKP system.com even though they aren't in my guild, on even on my server.

4. Finally, why not expand the scope of this site to support individual players beyond the guild or arena team. Like a blogging service / myspace.

My concern though is that in its current form, the armory data is way to slow to be of any use on a larger scale. I am not sure if Blizzard plans to offer any public interfaces other than what is exposed. When I did a search on Envy, I was amazed how many Envy Guilds were listed. I always had the impression that we were unique Finally, my last concern and this is more for Chops future, is how far is Blizzard going to go? Meaning, is their next step to offer Guild / Player portals and message boards? What about a grading system, Meaning people could post comments about you... Plays like a clown, is a drama queen. Considering they are the owners of all this data, it isn't that out of the question.

Any more thoughts.

While enabling support for it would be nice. In it's current implementation is would only replace a few things that Chops is doing. The question is how blizzard will handle third parties sites mining information from them. Personally they lack the detail of knowing the underlying skill in each profession. You would think that Blizzard would be able to track what keys and attunements you have but yet not even their tool has it.

In my opinion its pretty but it doesn't provide the detail and depth of information that Chops has setup with Guild Bank.

This is something that totally got my by surprise from WoW. And like Saud says, it's pretty, but it's still easier to see a list of items rather than having to hover over stuff.

In any case, I'll see what kind of Armory support I can add.

A direct query might be nice. Then even for those that never load the bank mode (which we now are starting to require) you have a link that will auto search them in the armory.

I definitely think what Chops has done is above what Blizzard is offering. However, I think if there were a way to data mine the data, it would make it easier to get all the guilds characters information. As it stands right now, we have to get people to do this on their own. It would be nice if we could pull all that info from the Armory.

Also I think it is a little easier to look at the gear on the Armory site. I find it counter-intuitive to just have a list. But thats just me.

Yeah thats a 50/50 debate I think. The both deliver the same thing right. If you look at ImageA or LinkA you have to hover over them to see what they are. Blizzard however reuses every single icon graphic that shows up on the character portrait. Thus the icon for Sword A and Z might be identical. The Names never will be. If you have looked at an item enough to know what it is then the name will probably mean a lot more to you than the picture. A warrior for example is trying to become an off tank in the guild. He definately wants to know what gear the main tank has so he looks him up. If he know the stats of the prime 10 tanking weapons and shield when looking at them in a list by name he may not need to hover over each one to see what it it because he knows the name and the stats that they have. But if he is using Blizzards Armory of other sites that paint the inventory in a portrait manner you always have to mouse over them to see what they are.

The biggest difference is Aesthetic Appearance. You know your looking at a weapon because it is in the weapon slot. You could still use the names versus the portraits and just add some up front description and ordering to what Chops does and achieve a similar style. Each paperdoll slot has a number that correlates to what can be equipped there. if Chops labeled your equipped inventory by equipment slot would that make any difference to anyone?

On the other hand, when you talk about guild banks, a lot of the items that matter do have their own icon, (mats basically), and icons are much easier visually to assimilate. A bunch of links is a lot harder to read (especially blue/purple on black). I think both work, but having used guildtools to upload the bank for a year, I think I rather have the icons in general, even if all the recipes/plans/formulas look the same. I also think the text really starts to fail when you have to scroll items into view. Although the sorting capability helps.

This is definitely something I'm planning on doing.

FYI:

Someone has built an armory sig generator so some kind of data grab is definitely possible.

http://jebus.geek.nz/WoW/armory/