Thottbot

Thottbot was both an unofficial World of Warcraft plug-in and also an unofficial World of Warcraft database website.[1]

The website was discontinued on November 30, 2010. The website's URL now simply redirects the reader to Wowhead, which is another unofficial World of Warcraft database website.[2] For a time, some pages of Thottbot were still able to be accessed through Wowhead, but on November 16, 2016, the Thottbot site was completely discontinued, and all Thottbot URLs began to forward to their equivalent pages on Wowhead.

The associated plug-in, which is programmed in the Lua programming language,[3] collected information while a person is playing the game. Users could then upload the information to the website's database. The information on the website only came from players using the plug-in and who took the time to upload the data.

Information contained on Thottbot included descriptions of items, weapons and armor pieces which web users could browse and search. Users could also create a profile, so others could search and view different players. This required the user to run the plug-in, and since not every player had the plug-in, not every player was represented on the database.

The original Thottbot was a news aggregator created by Bill "Aftathott" Dyess, founder of the EverQuest guild "Afterlife". Its purpose was to comb various video game websites for news and information on a number of MMORPGs with a focus on EverQuest. Thottbot was also affiliated with Cosmos, a popular collection of user-interface modifications.

Thottbot owner ZAM Network acquired the World of Warcraft database Wowhead in June 2007 for $1 million.[4][5][6][7]

Popularity and reputation

Simon Carless of Gamasutra described Thottbot as a "major item listing site".[8] As of March 9, 2008, web traffic company Alexa reported that Thottbot.com was the 250th most visited site on the internet.[9]

During the 2006 Austin Game Conference, World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo spoke of the hardcore market and casual market for World of Warcraft, saying "The people that don't go to ThottBot are the casual players, and they're the ones you need to hold the hand of."[10] A January 2007 article in the Detroit Free Press named the site as a good place to find jewelcrafting designs discovered during the beta test of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.[11]

References

  1. ↑ Parker Howell (2007-05-30). "Gamers will take pause: Firm tests easier way to kill orcs and answer e-mail at the same time.". The Spokesman-Review.
  2. ↑ TheOnyx (Nov 30, 2010). "Thottbot Merged with Wowhead Framework". Wowhead News. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  3. ↑ "Thottbot World of Warcraft: About This Site". thottbot.com. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  4. ↑ Kris Graft (2007-06-25). "Thottbot Owner Acquires Wowhead". Next Generation. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  5. ↑ Nick Farrell (2007-06-25). "WOW fansite sold to ad outfit". The Inquirer. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  6. ↑ N. Evan Van Zelfden (2007-06-07). "Q&A: Affinity's Maffei Talks IGE Sale, MMO Media Future". Gamasutra. Retrieved 2008-03-10.
  7. ↑ Jeff (2007-07-03). "Gold Selling and the Art of Disinformation". Retrieved 2011-04-20.
  8. ↑ Simon Carless (2006-08-25). "IGE: Inside The MMO Trading Machine". Gamasutra. p. 4. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  9. ↑ "thottbot.com – Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  10. ↑ N. Evan Van Zelfden (2006-09-06). "Austin: Secrets of WoW Design". Next Generation. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
  11. ↑ Newman, Heather (2007-01-15). "A guide to jewelcrafting". Detroit Free Press.
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