Data Loss

The machine that I had most of my work on has failed and I don't know if I have a good backup now. I'm trying to find what I can but most of the links off this blog probably won't work anymore. The work that Okoloth is doing is much more advanced than I've done so I highly suggest you check his site out for the state of the art on armory mining.

More on Armory Data Standardization: Data modelling a character

I'm continuing to work on this. One of the big challenges is doing this in the face of the impending release of WotLK, level 80 and revamping of talent trees. Ideally, not only do I need to model a character in space (all of a character's elements) but I need to model it in time as well. All the analysis I did last year will be useless because talent trees will be different. Because of this requirement, it's a lot harder than "just grab the XML and shove it in a database".

I gotta think about this some more, but I want to be able to track characters in time, kind of like the Internet Wayback Machine.

Started a WoW Blog

I started a blog just to jot down random stuff about my experiences playing WoW. It's really hard to work on data collection when it keeps you from playing the game at all. (I don't have a lot of spare time)

Big Red Pet

The Inevitable Hiatus Post.

If it wasn't obvious by now, I haven't spent a lot of time working on this lately. I'm firmly committed to discussing the finer points of builds (and point people once again to the largely empty forum I've set up for this type of discussion) so hopefully I can start up some discussion.

If you're particularly proud of your build, I highly encourage you to sign up on the forums and write up a post in your class forum about it. If we can get enough people to do this, discussion will surely follow.

New Build Shop: Priest 14/0/47

The Build Shop over at WoW Insider is experimenting with a new format, now it's interview-style. Their first target is Skosiris from the oh so awesome Wowhead. Check it out.

I'm out of state visiting relatives so this is quick. I'm currently rewriting everything for speed.

Armory to Data Miners - It's ok!

I finally got around to looking at the recent batch of armory updates, and noticed this little gem:

XML file size reduction: The XML files used by the Armory have been optimized for speed, partly by streamlining the amount of code in the files. As a result, third-party sites that mine Armory data may need to make adjustments to account for the new file configurations.

There you go, implicit permission from Blizzard to suck down data.

Report - 20070814232234

Eventually there will be 7 reports. The base report consists of all level 70s broken down by class, with the top 20 specs for each class. The remaining 6 reports are further broken down by the following metrics: battlegroup, faction, gender, race, realm, and realm type. There is also an index page as a jumping off point to all reports. Unfortunately at this time battlegroup and realm breakdowns aren't working properly. I need to design custom XSL templates for them as they don't mesh with the other reports as easily. Once those templates are created I'll link to them here. Enjoy!