This past Monday, June 23, The WotLK Information Wiki relaunched on a new web host after having been pulled down by a Cease and Desist order from Blizzard. Darkside, one of the admins for the WotLK Information Wiki, gave an interview to Medros over at All Things Azeroth to explain what happened. The interview was conducted as part of Medros' podcast Episode 53. Some highlights from the interview include:- Most of the information that the alpha wiki provides is a result of file and image extraction from Blizzard's publically-available alpha client.
- The alpha client files contain all the information on the spells, creatures and environments to be tested and new things are added or subtracted each time the alpha is patched.
- The alpha wiki folks set up a "sandbox" where they could fly through the new locations and spawn creatures for screenshots.
- A small portion of the WotLK info -- some screenshots, for example -- has come from Blizzard employees under non-disclosure agreements the identities of whom the alpha wiki admins protect.
- Blizzard, Vivendi, and Activision IP addresses had visited the wiki frequently since it began.
- The Cease and Desist order from Blizzard arrived last Friday, June 20. Over the weekend the WotLK wiki admins tried several ways to appease the lawyers and eventually settled on moving to a new web host.
- The wiki's readership is approximately 200,000 page views per day.
[Thanks, Matticus and uber.]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-25-2008 @ 6:14PM
Chris said...
A partial transcript of the interview can be found here.
http://wotlkwiki.info/index.php/Interview_Transcript
Reply
6-25-2008 @ 6:18PM
mattyt17 said...
reeeeeeally? 200k page view per day.....????
i find that hard to believe
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6-25-2008 @ 8:01PM
PimpyMicPimp said...
Eagerly anticpiated expansion pack to a game with 10 million+ players? No, that seems about right to me.
6-25-2008 @ 6:43PM
Charlie Taylor said...
Eh, the game is in alpha. Things are going to change, guaranteed. There are things that were in the BC beta that never made it into the game.
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6-25-2008 @ 6:46PM
chaud said...
I just want to correct some of that info.
"A small portion of the WotLK info -- some screenshots, for example -- has come from Blizzard employees under non-disclosure agreements the identities of whom the alpha wiki admins protect."
This is false, any screenshots were VERY likely just from regular testers.
"The wiki's readership is approximately 200,000 page views per day."
At that time we were doing ~500-600k, now doing ~1.2mil
If you need to contact me to verify, you should know where to find me.
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6-25-2008 @ 7:00PM
Darkside said...
This is correct. We are not (to our knowledge) in contact with any Blizzard employees.
I did get the pageview statistic wrong, at the time. Chaud's corrections are indeed valid.
6-25-2008 @ 7:04PM
Natalie Mootz said...
Please note that I took the information from the interview which Medros did with Darkside. I simply transcribed what he said. I stand by my account of the interview.
6-25-2008 @ 7:07PM
mattyt17 said...
so it's not 200k/day it's more like 1.2million/day?
very hard to believe but good job if true
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6-25-2008 @ 7:16PM
Tarot said...
Why hard to believe? That's really not as many views as it sounds, as each view of each page counts, and chances are that number isn't excluding duplicate hits from the same IP. And with the massive amounts of WoW players out there eager to get a look at what's coming up in Wrath, that number seems very attainable.
6-25-2008 @ 9:13PM
chaud said...
Well, here are yesterdays stats.
130,423 Visits
1,173,476 Pageviews
91,049 Absolute Unique Visitors
39.87% New Visits
Traffic from Referring sites
2. wowinsider.com 4,202
6-25-2008 @ 7:07PM
Stoneblade said...
I believe it's ""Folsom Prison Blues," not "Folsom County Blues."
Reply
6-25-2008 @ 7:30PM
Natalie Mootz said...
Thanks, I fixed it before you posted your comment.
6-26-2008 @ 9:51AM
Khanmora said...
Didn't your own podcast play that song... a couple of weeks ago?
6-25-2008 @ 7:35PM
mattyt17 said...
i know what "page views" encompasses, and yes, they can be the same page / same IP....that high of a number still strikes me as odd...
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6-25-2008 @ 7:53PM
Chachee said...
Does anyone know the name of the artist that WotLKwiki uses for the Class page icons? I know I've seen his/her work before, but I can't remember who it is.
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6-25-2008 @ 10:25PM
Leviathon said...
Its Wyndforge.
6-26-2008 @ 6:07AM
Ikari said...
Dear people who intend to violate NDA and don't want to get in trouble:
TOR.
That is all.
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6-26-2008 @ 1:31PM
Thorn said...
Umm... what?