WoWDB Feedback

[Somarlane]

I would love to have a WoWDB search plug-in for my internet browser.

[Obliver]

yes, probable that would do it.

[mauserr]

It almost never works - that's my first and major issue with this site. An item or a skill is posted? It will load forever, whereas for sites where Wowhead is used it loads instantaneously.

[chaud]

I would love to have a WoWDB search plug-in for my internet browser.

If you have Firefox, there is a way to add it on http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/634-Blizzcon-2013

[Alayea]

It almost never works - that's my first and major issue with this site. An item or a skill is posted? It will load forever, whereas for sites where Wowhead is used it loads instantaneously.

It's the other way around for me. WoWDB does fairly well, but for Wowhead I see "Loading" quite often.

[Fearodh]

I generally do like WowDB. But your female Belf Modelviewer should see the surgeon.

[Somarlane]

[Resolved.]

For the love of goodness, please fix the wowdb profile button in the top corner of the website. It's been broken for like a year.

[Deleted]

We've been using WoWDB for our links and tooltips on WoWAnalyzer.com for a few months now because:

- it's more accurate. When analyzing we need exact numbers and WoWDB's accuracy has been more reliable than Wowhead's. Even if the data is only inaccurate 1 in 10 times of the time, I can't trust it and that's how I feel about Wowhead's numbers, while WoWDB's numbers have been impeccable. (the update speed during new builds also seems better)
- it's more secure. Wowhead still doesn't run SSL in 2018 (it's a premium feature lol), and it has some really weird tracking stuff going on. Wowdb also runs shady ad code, but it seems slightly more trustworthy.

But there are a few issues that have us reconsidering regularly:

- tooltips load considerably slower. Average load time for an uncached spell seems to be about 350-400ms. Compare this to Wowhead's 20-30ms and you have a huge difference in how quick they feel.
- tooltips break when loading multiple at once. Probably due to race conditions, if you hover over multiple different tooltips in a row (which happens easily in our interface), it will show whichever was slowest to load rather than what you're hovering at that time.
- tooltip hooks don't work with dynamic content. Running a React app pretty much our entire DOM is dynamic, so we have to manually call `watchElements` whenever something re-renders. This is unnecessarily inefficient.
- tooltips aren't localizable. We're currently in the process of making the entire site localizable. Once we have good coverage, tooltips must match the language of the rest of the site. This will probably be the deal-breaker for us soon.

The most important things for us are accuracy, user privacy and user experience. WoWDB wins in 2 out of 3 here, but it's close. The localization issue is probably going to be the deciding factor for us to switch back to Wowhead tooltips.

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I also have some suggestions for the site based on extensive usage the past few months:

- improve search performance. The search bar takes so long to finish loading its auto-complete that I might as well use Google. Searching itself takes pretty long too.
- add an Azerite traits section.
- resource pages. We have to link to Wowhead for those now. Example: https://www.wowhead.com/mana
- Improve spec tooltips. Afaik these are the only tooltips where Wowhead is better.
- increase line-height, padding or font-size of links and texts close to each other. The Quick Info links in particular are very close to each other, making it easier to click the wrong thing.
- improve load times of pages with ads. This has a big impact on the feeling of responsiveness of the site. It's probably hard to measure the impact on user retention of this, but in my experience it's a major factor and another reason to head to a competitor.
- Talent calculator icons are broken. https://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#J

I don't really care much for fancy features, or comments or screenshots. On top of the base required functionality, I want accuracy, speed, privacy and security. The site that does this right is what I'll be using

[Spotnick]

As much as I like wowanalyzer.. 2 years old necro?

[chaud]

But there are a few issues that have us reconsidering regularly:

- tooltips load considerably slower. Average load time for an uncached spell seems to be about 350-400ms. Compare this to Wowhead's 20-30ms and you have a huge difference in how quick they feel.
- tooltips break when loading multiple at once. Probably due to race conditions, if you hover over multiple different tooltips in a row (which happens easily in our interface), it will show whichever was slowest to load rather than what you're hovering at that time.
- tooltip hooks don't work with dynamic content. Running a React app pretty much our entire DOM is dynamic, so we have to manually call `watchElements` whenever something re-renders. This is unnecessarily inefficient.
- tooltips aren't localizable. We're currently in the process of making the entire site localizable. Once we have good coverage, tooltips must match the language of the rest of the site. This will probably be the deal-breaker for us soon.

The most important things for us are accuracy, user privacy and user experience. WoWDB wins in 2 out of 3 here, but it's close. The localization issue is probably going to be the deciding factor for us to switch back to Wowhead tooltips.

------

• Tooltips should be much much faster to load now.
• Hopefully being faster to load reduces that problem, but we're away of the issue.
• Our tooltip JS needs improvement in several areas, it's on the to-do list.
• Localization is unlikely to ever be a feature, we just don't have the resources for it.

I also have some suggestions for the site based on extensive usage the past few months:

- improve search performance. The search bar takes so long to finish loading its auto-complete that I might as well use Google. Searching itself takes pretty long too.
- add an Azerite traits section.
- resource pages. We have to link to Wowhead for those now. Example: https://www.wowhead.com/mana
- Improve spec tooltips. Afaik these are the only tooltips where Wowhead is better.
- increase line-height, padding or font-size of links and texts close to each other. The Quick Info links in particular are very close to each other, making it easier to click the wrong thing.
- improve load times of pages with ads. This has a big impact on the feeling of responsiveness of the site. It's probably hard to measure the impact on user retention of this, but in my experience it's a major factor and another reason to head to a competitor.
- Talent calculator icons are broken. https://beta.wowdb.com/talent-calculator#J

I don't really care much for fancy features, or comments or screenshots. On top of the base required functionality, I want accuracy, speed, privacy and security. The site that does this right is what I'll be using

• Auto complete is a little faster now.
• I'll see what we can do about Azerite Powers
• Resource pages probably won't ever be a priority, they aren't super useful for us or most of our users
• Spec tooltips - Could use an example of what we can improve
• Design stuff we can probably take a look at eventually, not much we can do about ad load time.
• Talent calculator icons are on the to-do list and hopefully will be fixed soon.

[Deleted]

Glad to see feedback is used! After reading this post I wasn't expecting it would be a priority.

• Tooltips should be much much faster to load now.
• Hopefully being faster to load reduces that problem, but we're away of the issue.
• Our tooltip JS needs improvement in several areas, it's on the to-do list.
• Localization is unlikely to ever be a feature, we just don't have the resources for it.

• Seems to need to fill a cache first; first call takes 700ms-1100ms per spell, after refreshing it's down to a perfect 20ms. If this is tied to patch releases I don't think it will be a big issue, if it's a short-lived cache then it is.
• So long as the cache is filled This would probably be fixed with the next point.
• Fair enough. We could probably alternate based on language or user preference.

• Auto complete is a little faster now.
• I'll see what we can do about Azerite Powers
• Resource pages probably won't ever be a priority, they aren't super useful for us or most of our users
• Spec tooltips - Could use an example of what we can improve
• Design stuff we can probably take a look at eventually, not much we can do about ad load time.
• Talent calculator icons are on the to-do list and hopefully will be fixed soon.

• Hard to notice
• Fair enough.
• Just did a comparison, they seem better than Wowhead's today. Less duplication, doesn't list spells for other specs, better wording, better sorting. I'll ask who pointed it out to me so will update when I know more. For Holy Paladins comparing to Wowhead I noticed WoWDB doesn't list the Avenging Wrath buffs, not all AW effects are listed and it links to the old AW spell (it should be 31884). There are other things not in the tooltip that could be interesting, e.g. pushback time decrease, #404: attack power modifier.
• I don't know if anything was changed but today it feels slightly quicker to load the main content. The loading of the ads after the ready-event does seem to take a lot of cpu which makes scrolling/mouse movement jumpy, but probably not something that can be fixed easily.