I think Blizzard should ban data mining.

[yetgdhfgh]

I miss when Blizz used to troll the data miners

Frostmourne anyone?

[Heeresman]

@Marlamin:

Anything to add to this discussion?

Throw some perspective on this from a legend like yourself maybe.

[meowfurion]

"I don't like a thing that others enjoy, therefore I want it taken away for EVERYBODY!"

My GOD people like you are what's wrong with the world.

[Xjev]

You cannot ban these things. Once data is there, someone, somewhere will find a way to figure it out and publish it.

[Frolk]

I agree.

I also think they should ban certain addons that more or less play the game for you, like Deadly Boss Mods and WeakAuras.

Spoken like a true LFR player with no clue

[Whatever Dude]

Spoken like a true LFR player with no clue

Wanting to make raiding harder means I'm an LFR player? Flawless logic.

[Charge me Doctor]

It undermines the game and never keeps the new content fresh since most people what is already in the new content. The content also barely changes from ptr. If you want to see the new content they should make everyone download the ptr instead of relying on sites like wowhead perculia would be out a job which makes me more happy. I mean back in vanillia data mining didn’t exist and we were fine.

i would love MMO champion to put datamined stuff into spoiler or datamining tag so i can skip it if i want

[Jastall]

I agree.

I also think they should ban certain addons that more or less play the game for you, like Deadly Boss Mods and WeakAuras.

You haven't stepped foot in an actually hard raid if you think DBM plays the game for you.

[kichigaijin]

Thottbot says Hi. We had that back then, and it was just wowhead in another form.

Ahhhh, good ole Thottbot. Where almost everyone went to find Mankrik's wife.

[Baroclinic]

I always thought there was a NDA when beta testing expansions, or maybe there used to be. Not that it's near impossible to enforce something on this scale with such open betas.

[Destinas]

Most solid information we get isn't actually from datamining itself, it's from people finding things in test realms like the PTR, alpha, and beta. Datamined information is stuff like quest text, voice lines, pets, mounts, etc. Models are datamined as well, but more often than not, you can see it in the test realms at the same time it's datamined. The vast majority of stuff we see is simply condensed information that people can also show from playing those test realms. Anyone can go onto a PTR realm and take screenshots or videos - that's not actually datamining itself.

I guess I have to question why people go to the main pages of fansites like MMO-C or Wowhead if they don't want to know new information in the first place. These sites have always been about finding new information and posting it as soon as possible.

Considering the OP took time to say that they wanted Perculia to just be out of a job, it's fairly clear to me that most of their other opinions on datamining are fueled by that thought anyway.

[MrHappy]

what OP is trying to say is he has no impulse control and thus wants there to be no datamining because he can't help himself.

[ls-]

I always thought there was a NDA when beta testing expansions, or maybe there used to be. Not that it's near impossible to enforce something on this scale with such open betas.

There's an NDA for internal tests, there's sometimes an NDA for small-scale closed tests w/ invites, e.g., F&F (friends & family) tests or even small-scale closed alpha/beta tests, but trying to control people w/ NDAs when it comes to large-scale testing is impossible.

I mean, even employees can't keep their mouths shut at times and leak stuff either publicly and accidentally or anonymously and on purpose. And they have much more to lose than some Bob w/ throwaway account who got invited into testing.

[Deleted]

I agree. GW2 doesn't have a PTR. Everytime content launches in the game it's a surprise. No spoilers, no one having the advantage of experiencing dungeons or raid bosses before anyone else or spoiling things for others.

The downside? More bugs.

Worth if you ask me. That and the banning of all addons except damage meters. It would make the game and the work of the devs more exciting and rewarding. But, this community is too used to have everything, so in general they will never want to let go of it.

The only pro is indeed that it means countless youtube videos promoting the game content.

[Marlamin]

@Marlamin: Anything to add to this discussion?

Sure.

Can Blizzard ban datamining?

Sure, many stuff that is referred to as "datamining" these days is already against the ToS. It is not exactly enforced though, which is why it has become a huge grey area. The current "line" seems to be at using sandboxes for area previews. Blizzard punishes fansites that do that, and sometimes even takes down videos of area previews on YouTube. Fansites know not to do that anymore unless they want their fansite-status stripped and being chased by a bunch of lawyers throwing cease and desists at your face. They can move that line to also ban other things like mount previews and such (for which a sandbox is likely also used, see mount previews like this). Keep in mind that banning something doesn't mean it simply goes away, though. It'll just move underground.

However, let's rephrase that question a bit to a question that is less harsh, but will have the same (or even more) effect in the end (less spoiling).

Can Blizzard make datamining harder?

Yes, they already are. There's files currently in the game that we simply can not access (see here and check the next 15 pages, everything with a red lock is currently not readable). That includes stuff like what are likely Collectors Edition awards for BfA (Seabraid Stallion, Armored Raptor and Tottle the baby Tortollan), Magni VO for the Artifact in-game cinematic, a dog mount, textures that likely show BfA pre-order rewards/box art, actual epilogue cinematics for the end of Legion and much more stuff that we don't even know about. Since late WoD/early Legion they've also been changing more and more things to no longer use filenames, which impacts datamining more than some people would think. They also recently added support for encrypted maps to the game, so they can now encrypt complete areas as well.

There are still so many ways they can make it harder though (and I'm probably not giving them ideas as I hope they've already thought of this):

• Removing more filename references from the files, they are doing this for more and more things every major patch. We are currently already at 5000+ unknown files and that number will skyrocket once 8.0 arrives. Overwatch already does this and only refers to files by types and IDs.
• Removing filename lookups for files that the game no longer uses filenames for (a majority), so we can't even guess/bruteforce filenames for those files anymore.
• Encrypting everything new (per feature) and only releasing the keys when content is supposed to be released/tested. Overwatch already does this.
• Moving more data to the server and only sending it to clients when needed. They already do this for encryption keys for cinematics, but can expand it to include any other type of game data. Stuff like BroadcastText (NPC dialogue) is already partially serverside and requires servers to be up to datamine.
• Don't ship stuff when it is not yet required. They've gotten better at this in the last few years and are still improving.
• Changing file formats that the game uses more often, they recently overhauled the database storage (again) which caused a significant delay in 7.3.5 datamining for all fansites. Everyone needed to update their tools. Some formats are definitely in for an update and I wouldn't be surprised if we see some of that during 8.0, we already had a bunch of character model related stuff change in 7.3.x.

Doing all of the above makes datamining harder and quite frankly less fun. If it were not for all the money that is involved in getting views by posting datamined content, it would have died long ago. There's also a handful of hobbyists like myself that aren't in it for the money, but even that group seems to be shrinking.

As for OP's "back in my day" comment, we had a model viewer and a map viewer before the game even hit 1.0. Many already pointed out Thottbot as well.

[Farrarie]

"I don't like a thing that others enjoy, therefore I want it taken away for EVERYBODY!"

My GOD people like you are what's wrong with the world.

Totally agree with you.
If you don't like data mining, just don't check it.

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i would love MMO champion to put datamined stuff into spoiler or datamining tag so i can skip it if i want

well said,
I had the same Idea but you won the race

- - - Updated - - -

As for OP's "back in my day" comment, we had a model viewer and a map viewer before the game even hit 1.0. Many already pointed out Thottbot as well.

True, and I like this Parrot

[ls-]

True, and I like this Parrot

Everyone loves it

[Soulwind]

Info

Do these forms of encryption affect not-really-datamining tools such as WoWModelViewer?

Do we know if Blizzard wants such programs to be affected by this? Are they, in your opinion, avoiding certain forms of encryption that would break these?

Because a lot of fanart relies on tools that extract models, textures and sounds from the game, but since they work more or less the same for the live version and the PTR/beta versions, they could also be seen as datamining tools.

As you say, if they really wanted to destroy datamining, they could, and I'm sure a lot of devs in their team would sleep better if they did so. But it's likely they can't do so without affecting areas of the community that they do want to support.

I guess one very good way of doing both would be releasing official tools with controlled access to the game files. Blizzard's own Source Film Maker. If they did that, they probably wouldn't have an issue blocking third party tools completely.

Although they may not want to take datamining away from fansites either, as they play a role in advertisement...

[rda]

Blizzard can certainly make datamining infeasible, but this wouldn't make content much fresher, because of (a) beta tests, which spoil it from the beginning, and (b) sites that aggregate data from live runs like wowhead which spoil it for everyone who dares to look after the content has been live for a week or so.

OP, you are barking up a wrong tree. There is NO way not to spoil content. You can only try not to spoil it for yourself personally by not participating in discussions and not looking at web sites.

[Marlamin]

Do these forms of encryption affect not-really-datamining tools such as WoWModelViewer?

Do we know if Blizzard wants such programs to be affected by this? Are they, in your opinion, avoiding certain forms of encryption that would break these?

Because a lot of fanart relies on tools that extract models, textures and sounds from the game, but since they work more or less the same for the live version and the PTR/beta versions, they could also be seen as datamining tools.

As you say, if they really wanted to destroy datamining, they could, and I'm sure a lot of devs in their team would sleep better if they did so. But it's likely they can't do so without affecting areas of the community that they do want to support.

I guess one very good way of doing both would be releasing official tools with controlled access to the game files. Blizzard's own Source Film Maker. If they did that, they probably wouldn't have an issue blocking third party tools completely.

Although they may not want to take datamining away from fansites either, as they play a role in advertisement...

All the changes I mentioned affect all tools out there, including WoWModelViewer and my own application. Filename removal is probably the worst for such applications because they won't be able to make a pretty list of files to select from. This is why WMV regularly has to update their listfile (list of filenames) with this listfile which is community-updated. If that were to go away, new models won't show up in WMV anymore. The fanart community relying on tools like this is my only hope for Blizzard not getting rid of filename lookups and such.

And Blizzard releasing some of their own tools would be great, but I don't see it happening.