I was thinking what a wonderful idea it would be to have access to wowhead automatically while in the game, not having to alt-tab at all. For Premium members (or something like that?) shift-clicking on an achievement would perhaps start to track it and guide you towards it step by step.
Also perhaps one day we could watch AWC and MDI in the client, but that is not as big a deal.
What do you think? Since a lot of players already use wowhead for guides and to understand what to do/where to go, would this kind of integration be welcome?
I think that Google Chrome will always be better browser than Battle.net client or World of Warcraft client. So I, personally, wouldn’t use that feature often. Pressing Alt+Tab is not hard for me.
Although I’d welcome for Blizzard to create their own in-game Encyclopedia. It does not have to be any similar to wowhead, but more like Lore, so people could read about various things. Who’s Tyr, who’re Vrykuls. Unlikely to happen, though.
I doubt that would ever happen purely becuase WoWHead is a fan site and Blizzard does not own it. It would require both sides to maintain it.
Also if it was implimented i can’t see there being a premium access. Addon developers are not allowed to charge for their work (donating is ok) so i can’t see there being a premium version allowed. WoWhead makes money from adverts and I would not want adverts in my game.
Personally i wouldn’t want it. I don’t need their spoilers, data mined and often incorrect info in my game.
I don’t mind any of those things. I don’t mind people writing guides based on their play experience.
The problem I have is with datamining, specifically. Because as soon as you do that you reveal all the secrets instantly. There is no way to hide anything.
EDIT: But seriously, I think it’s important that the game hides things from you but makes itself just discoverable enough that you can find out what you need to do without WoWHead. I think vanilla strikes an awesome balance here, but SoD is too obscure and retail holds your hand.
Another example of this done insanely well is Elden Ring, which incidentally does it pretty much the exact same way WoW did.
And Morrowind’s way of doing it is just ridiculously cool.
I dislike that too but I have kind of accepted that it is here to stay. After many years I have succumbed. Really, having come back to the game now, I found myself thinking “what would I do without these outside resources”. And it does not bother me as much as it used to.
yeah you are right I think if it ever became reality that function should be baseline
I really hope they won’t integrate wowhead, have you seen who runs that place? lol
Some of the authors are desperate to cancel anything to do with original warcraft that we love. Look up one of the authors on twitter, literally blue hair and everything.
Yikes if these people get access to my account, no thank you.
I think killing them off is going too far but they certainly do need to be curbed and reined in. Perhaps just cutoff the datamining and spoilers well ahead of time and but leave the knowledgebase alone. It’s 20 years of history in there.
As for OP’s suggestion, no thanks. I am ok to to alt-tab and don’t need another buggy resource sucking tool.
That’s fair. It can be a repository of knowledge that they either also have or which is gathered from players exploring the game, like an amalgam of wowwiki and allakazam. That’s cool.
But this… ? This is not cool.
Now, I know Blizzard have started encrypting some of their stuff, like cutscenes, to mess with WoWHead a little, but the thing is we’re playing a game here and they haven’t managed to curb their scraping of every kind of gameplay content.
I skip spoilers and such but it’s nice if they point out something you could miss and regret later or make a “mistake” that could cost you some gameplay progress.
examples? remember that bfa quest where it mattered if you side with Sylvanas or not? without wowhead you could maybe make some mistake?
But there is more - re. certain treasures etc.
I don’t have “time” to go around zones finding silly treasures on my own. it’s not fun but I do want collectibles because why not - wowhead is a good way.
But I don’t play for collectibles. if I did, I’d probanbly have fun finding them on my own but rn I consider them something between nuisance and nice thing. IT’s a nuisance to unlock some annoying mini game treasure but it’s nice to get a mog or pet I will never use / level.
So ofc it’s great wowhead exists to lift some “casual” burden off my back.
They do go too far sometimes… like when they started doing these “meta builds” articles about plunderstorm lmao.
Or some garbage content like “Easiest Trading post tasks” or in the past “easiest/hardest dungeons with this week affixes”. that was cringe.
Buy on the other hand - reminders about seasonal events are good on wowhead as I managed to “not notice” starts of some event in-game because I wouldn’t look at “commoner quest givers” too hard.
So while I dislike certain stuff from wowhead, I’m content it exists because it is useful.
HOWEVER… integrating it into the game? naw, come on.
Not sure about full wowhead, but it would be really nice, if Blizzard would create and maintain in-game encyclopedia, which show every item, where it drops from, exact official chance of dropping, where mat could be used, lore bits, and etc. Don’t say it takes away feeling of adventure and discovery. People which are for these thing could easily disable it. For others actively using third party services all the time for information about the game just frustrating and just a sign of Blizzard laziness…
I prefer going to it externally, Blizzard doesn’t own wowhead and I think it would be wrong to be integrated in that way. They do have a lot of links in their support articles ofc. It’s great to send people there IMO. It’s one of the best sources of collected info. I often find answers for things in the comments section from other players. What they did to get round an issue etc.
While wowhead acts as a fan site (and does a really good job at it) the site is actually owned by a fairly large corporation (Zam Network which itself is owned by Tencent).
It’s fairly unlikely that Microsoft would be OK with the game embedding a product owned by an effective competitior into the game unless it involved some very sizable cash payments for what would be in their eyes cross promotion.