Armory Privacy and the Race for Hard Modes

By Saffrin on February 6th, 2010

In today's entry, we'll discuss the need for a privacy feature in the WoW Armory, and we'll talk about the release of the hard modes in Icecrown Citadel.

Should the WoW Armory feature a privacy option?

With the recent addition of the live feed in the WoW Armory, many people are worried that their privacy is at stake. The question is, do they have a right to be? Should Blizzard add a privacy feature to the armory live feed? Ignoring the implications of your character being solely Blizzard's property, or that it's simply a virtual character and not you, I firmly believe that a privacy option should be included. Those who care can enable it, and those who don't can leave it off for the world to appreciate their accomplishments.

Millions of people were playing WoW before this feature was implemented. Were they supposed to know that in the months to come, there would be live tracking of all of their character's accomplishments? Something as simple as killing a dungeon boss 5 hours ago to get a random daily quest done is now logged in your character's armory.

Let's look at a few problem scenarios:

1. Your coworkers know you like to play WoW. They, through whatever means, know who your main character is. You call in sick one day because you have what you decide is a very important raid and worth skipping out on work for. A coworker checks your character feed the next day and sees that you've been raiding a dungeon the entire night. Your boss gets wind of it and you get in trouble.

2. Your family knows you spend a lot of your time on the computer playing games. They want you to go out with them one night. You've been anticipating the release of the new raid dungeon for months, and the family outing coincides with the first day of its release. You don't feel like they'll understand, so you just tell them that you're really busy without mentioning what you're busy with. They later find out that you were busy playing WoW and you get in trouble.

These are just 2 examples out of many. A privacy feature should strongly be considered. The cost of making the player-base happy will far outweigh the technical cost of implementing it.

The race for hard modes begin next Tuesday... for less than 5 guilds in the world.

Only 4 guilds in the world as of this post will have access to the hard modes in Icecrown Citadel 25man.

Let's hope that Blizzard made all of the encounters sufficiently difficult so that the guilds that are currently ahead don't simply fire through the hard modes of the instance in a matter of days. A fear that many veteran raiders share (solely due to past experience) is that if the bosses are too easy, Blizzard may buff them AFTER the first guild kills them. This will only cause further separation at the very top, and make for unhappy raiders below the line. If any changes to increase the difficulty of the encounters must be done, please do them before the top guilds kill the wing bosses and unlock the Lich King.

In other news.

Over the next few days, the frequency in blogs will dip slightly as we shift our focus to the release of the Icecrown Citadel boss guides. Our goal is to become the premier site for boss guides, for both hardcore and casual raiders alike. They will be comprehensive, pleasing to the eye, up-to-date, and most importantly, will include the important tips and tricks that many guides fail to mention. The sort of tricks that tend to make or break an encounter's success. We'll let the guides speak for themselves after release, as we are quite certain that you will not be disappointed.

To get a glimpse of the style you should expect to see with our upcoming boss guides, follow this link. We'll have all of the boss links active in short order, so check back often!

9 comments so far. Add yours!

Lr February 6th, 2010 at 7:05pm

I actually never even considered armory privacy to be an issue until I read this blog post. You make a good point. It would be pretty easy for Blizzard to do this.

As far as the Arthas-killing guilds go, I think it was mainly an issue because Arthas is legitimately a hard fight and 20 attempts would be a good number were it either only on Arthas or if he were released a week after the Frostwing Halls. Sindragosa is pretty trivial relative to Arthas but without PTR experience or any videos to go off of, it’ll take ~5 attempts to defeat that encounter, affecting Arthas progression.

I’m hoping that hard modes aren’t a pushover so that the 4 guilds that have killed Arthas don’t blow everybody else away and have a huge edge. There wasn’t much excitement when Nihilum steamrolled Black Temple before everyone else because of their early Kael’thas kill followed by a severely undertuned instance. Hopefully that doesn’t repeat here.
Lank February 9th, 2010 at 9:37am

I’ve been wanting more privacy options for a while. Such as an invisible option in game, it’s annoying how anyone can stalk you through a friends list or /who. Especially times when you’ve had a long tiring day and all you want to do is mind your own business on a video game.
Taryssa February 9th, 2010 at 10:13pm

^Lank

The Armory feed almost required a privacy option. I can understand being able to find the person by being in the game, but anyone with a web browser(co-worker, significant other, boss) can find out EXACTLY to the minute where and what you were doing.

Annoying.
Auvry February 16th, 2010 at 8:56pm

Just to play Devil’s Advocate here…

The armory ensures truth in advertising. Did that paladin app who talks like he’s ten feet tall and bullet proof really kill the Lich King? The armory will tell you. Does that mage app from ServerX have any idea how to gem or spec? Again, consult the armory. The armory removes a great deal of the exaggeration, embellishment and just plain bullshit that a lot of players feed guilds when trying to get accepted. That is of undeniable value.

In EQ2, the armory feature has a privacy filter. This has rendered their armory useless, as every profile worth looking at has been marked private by the owner. People prefer not to have a light shone on what they do or when they’ve done it in that game, and it’s largely not for the reasons you listed. EQ players are secretive about what gear they use, what spec they take, when they killed this or that - they always have been. Given the chance to hide their accomplishments in favor of retaining bragging rights, they take it.

I like the fact that every attribute of our characters is right out in the open. If someone’s a silly bunny, it’s right there for all to see. You can do a lot of weeding out just by glancing at someone gear, spec, and gems. I think the openness of the WoW community is a good thing and that the armory helps it along. It would be a shame to see that go.
Zeitgeist February 17th, 2010 at 4:44am

Maybe it’s just me, but if the only reason the armory needs a privacy option is so I can lie to my employer, friends, and family because I’m unwilling to fulfull prior commitments and/or too afraid to be an adult and be honest with those closest to me, I really don’t see the point. I always understood the majority of the hardcore playerbase (who are also reasonable human beings) to treat this game as a hobby, albeit a serious hobby. When you actually begin encouraging people to give it paramount importance, it becomes something much more.

Not that there necessarily shouldn’t be a privacy option, but those are the only reasons I saw given.
Taryssa February 17th, 2010 at 7:04pm

It’s not so I am enabled to lie to people about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing, it’s the principle of the matter.

I only care about the live DOWN TO THE SECOND activity feed that tracks every time I wipe my ass. The rest of the armory is perfectly fine.
Arilyn February 17th, 2010 at 8:18pm

Privacy isn’t only for those with something to hide. It’s a fundamental human right that should be respected whenever possible.

“If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about” is the mantra of every surveillance-happy totalitarian state. Think Stalin’s Soviet Union. Present-day China. The US Patriot Act.

True friends aren’t going to care that you blew them off to play WoW. They’ll understand that you love the game. Unfortunately, true friends are rare in the real world.
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reicNeacles July 17th, 2011 at 11:38am

really?