What's the point of WoWDB?

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

I laugh every time when something from the front page brings me to WoWDB. I just always click the WoWhead link. Does that give you a clue of how useful it is?

[MoanaLisa]

Couple of links for those interested.

The first is to a thread that ran about a month ago about just this. It's very informative.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...WoWDB-Feedback

The second is to a post from Boubouille several months ago:

Wowdb was created to replace db.mmo-champion.com which was created because Wowhead refused to work with us years ago and we needed it to run MMO-Champion. There is absolutely no way for a company as big as Wowhead/Zam/Tencent Games to work with MMO-Champion in the first place because it would require us to have access to absolutely everything they have, which is a pretty good reason to refuse.

The first goal was to provide better content on MMO-Champion compared to what we had with db.mmo-champion.com and we achieved that goal pretty easily. It also brought some competition back to the market and improved things indirectly for everyone, including people who use Wowhead. Competition is always good.

WoWDB is mostly a "hey let's see what we can do with this" project with no real goal. It's a 100% money sink for the company and even if we added an ad slot somewhere it would still be a pretty huge money loss. The main goal is really just to support MMO-Champion's news and make our life easier on this side.

However, I'm glad that some people/other major sites adopted it because it lets me work with smart minds that provide us with a decent amount of feedback and let us improve our database platform altogether (contributing to the success of gw2db.com for example) but I'm not really on a crusade to destroy Wowhead, otherwise I wouldn't have them listed as the most obvious link on every page you click.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...9#post19318139


That should answer some of the questions raised. Anyway, go and read through the other thread. Calls to wipe out WoWDB because you find it personally annoying are quite beside the point as to why it exists.

[Boubouille]

I can answer that one!

WoWDB is used to power most of what's behind MMO-Champion's news. It replaced db.mmo-champion.com that was becoming super obsolete and wouldn't have survived MoP. It's also a way to try to improve user experience on MMO-C over db.mmo-champion.com pages we had because those were pretty bad.

It's a technological sandbox to let us improve the database platform on a company level. The improvements on wowdb are partially the reason why gw2db was more succesful than other databases for example.

The original reason why MMO-C had to create a DB was already mentioned in the thread, Wowhead got too big to be able to work with us and we were stuck with the choice of either doing our own thing, or posting really shitty news. The amount of data processing that goes into patch news requires way too much access than what we could have gotten from another company.

Some people also mentioned that competition is good, and I tend to agree with that. WoWDB was the first database to support a bunch of things such as spec variable spells or item upgrades. We also focus a lot more on newsing, so our spell parsing tends to be much cleaner to keep the unofficial notes clear: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=100780/jab / http://www.wowdb.com/spells/100780-jab

We also have random features like reagents breakdown http://www.wowdb.com/spells/93328-vial-of-the-sands

The goal isn't really to compete with Wowhead, it's more of a pet project to see if we can find new ways to improve MMO-C and make the experience more enjoyable for users with what we have.

[Deleted]

To be clear this was not a rant about destroying WowDB, it was questioning people who wrote wowDB links in their posts/blogs instead of wowhead links when they know for a fact that 99% of players will just immediately click on the Wowheadlink. Not challenging their freedom, just saying.

I have misnomed this post it should have been called "what's the point of wowDB linking when most readers will directly click on the wowhead link".

Of course on the part of mmo chamion & affiliates it makes sense to use their own DB and I appreciate the courtesy to put a wowhead link.

Thanks Boubouille for the historical context.

[Myrwyss]

still mainly using wowhead,but i have to say tooltips from wowdb load waaaaaaay faster than from wowhead,also using wowdb addon for wow,together with wowhead one,costs nothing and helps both:P

[Mosotti]

There is no point in it if you try to use it as a wowhead replacement