New database site: WoWDigger
by Eliah Hecht 
Jun 25th 2007 at 6:19PM
For those of you who are still a little uncomfortable about Wowhead, here's a new alternative. By IncGamers, the people behind the venerable WorldofWar.net, WoWDigger aims to fulfill your databse needs and then some:WoWDigger is not only a World of Warcraft game database, but also a place where your character matters. Upload your character and see your recipes, quest log, bank, talents and more!. Choose what information you share with your friends, the WoW community or your guild!
IncGamers has always been staunchly anti-RMT (real money transfer), so you don't have to worry about that when using their sites; they promise that "There will be at no point gold selling adverts or any affilition to gold selling on WoWDigger." And with "choose what information you share..." in their description, they seem to be taking a bit of a jab at the Armory, with its privacy concerns. Furthermore, they are trying to keep the site banner-free:
As you may have noticed the site contains no banners. We intend to keep the site this way as best we can with the backing of the community. If you like the site and use it you can help the dev team by pressing the donate button on the right, this will go to cover server hosting costs. We know such a site like this is resource hungry but are going to do our best to keep the site ad free.
Overall it looks like a decent site; a little bare-bones in terms of content at the moment, of course, because it just started, but once it gets off the ground it might provide a nice alternative to the Affinity triad. Personally, I plan to still use Wowhead (due to design, speed, and content), but more options never hurt.
[via Into the Web]
Filed under: Fan stuff, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mask Jun 25th 2007 6:50PM
Looks pretty nice!
CVJ Jun 25th 2007 7:10PM
Sites only get better the longer they are maintained and supported by the end user. If people keep moving around to different sites I really just see it taking as long as wowhead to develop.
G Jun 25th 2007 7:25PM
And lets hope IncGamers keeps maintaining it. Their WoW profession and class pages still haven't been updated for BC. The rest of the site is chock full of bad links, missing graphics and inconsistent design. That's exactly why I like Wowhead. Whatever else is going on over there, they know what they are doing and code well.
Anon Jun 25th 2007 7:38PM
Looks nice, but I can't see what they could do better than wowhead currently does. Wowhead all the way :)
Matthew Jun 25th 2007 7:52PM
I see it loads about as quickly as the average incgamers.com page, too...which is to say, not very quickly. Think I'll stick to wowhead and wowwiki. If I can't find something on one of those two, then it ain't to be found.
Pastykins Jun 25th 2007 8:02PM
I'm actually not having any problems with WoWDigger, its not running slow, and so far I haven't found any bad links, and everything seems updated for BC. I don't really see much of a point for using it over Wowhead though, because Wowhead is already a much more established site, in terms of userbase, and comments and such.
K Whitt Jun 25th 2007 8:14PM
Well, seeing as how it loads slowly, it either is under far too much strain for their connection, their hardware, or they need to hire a real DBA and a good platform programmer to optimize their databases and site.
However, I'll give it a shot and contribute to them, just as I have to THott, and then WoWhead, and a few other startup attempts that were made (I believe the makers of Auctioneer/Enchantrix made one but it hasn't gotten very far to my knowledge).
Tumples Jun 25th 2007 8:28PM
I'm not going to stop using Wowhead just because they have been bought out, it is a great site.
If the site changes, *then* I'll look around for a new site.
G Jun 25th 2007 9:12PM
My original post wasn't clear, sorry. The broken links and general abandonment (aside from news) isn't on WoWDigger, but on worldofwar.net. Is that what WoWDigger will become in a year? Who knows.
ILYAS Jun 26th 2007 12:06AM
ui.worldofwar.net has a bad history of having keyloggers
Tony Jun 26th 2007 1:08AM
I'm not a pro WoW player or anything, so maybe another site does this and I'm not aware of it, but I honestly really like the character upload aspects. People can easily see what I can make, my stats, what quests I'm on and I can easily find more information about them.
I thought it was kind of cool.
CB Jun 26th 2007 3:40AM
Can anyone else get to Wowhead.com at the moment? We (australia) seem to have lost connection to it.
I've tried from two different ISPs
yotix Jun 26th 2007 3:57AM
Just to point out: WoW-Insider is chock-full of TOS-violating Gold Seller ads.
So please stop pointing fingers at other people who, just like YOU, make money by advertising for criminal cheaters.
FaaR Jun 26th 2007 4:49AM
#13:
Welcome to like...two years ago? It's well-known since a very long time that goldsell ads appear on this site.
WoW Insider uses Google ads, which means >Google< serves the ads, based on keywords found on the site. If a post mentions the word "gold", then an ad that is keyworded as "WoW" and "gold" is very likely to be served.
You may see ads about pet food/care/advice etc when posts about hunter pets or non-combat mini pets are discussed too. It's just an amusing/unfortunate side-effect of the keyword system.
There's not much that can be done about this; WoW Insider needs ad income to survive because YOU'RE NOT PAYING FOR IT. Besides, Google never agreed to the WoW TOS, and it doesn't actually apply to 3rd party websites in the first place either so even bringing that up is just plain irrelevant...
Just because Google unfortunately serves gold ads to the site doesn't mean the editors can't be against goldselling. They don't have full control over the ads being shown; Google does.
p3ngu11 Jun 26th 2007 7:18AM
The site won't contain banners until they can't afford to keep up with the costs of running a website. Wowhead was ad free for quite some time itself.
Honestly, I think they are just making the website so they can sell it off later...
Mad Cow Jun 26th 2007 8:42AM
I like wowhead, but I like that wowdigger combined wowhead+rpgoutfitter in one, that alone is worth the slow load time.
I've yet to play with the features of wowdigger, but I'm definitely going to give it a whirl tonight.
Sorrows Jun 26th 2007 9:16AM
Is the site down? I went to www.wowdigger.com and even clicked on the link and no joy.
Ekimus Jun 26th 2007 10:05AM
They could have been a bit more original when designing the site. Practically the same grid/layout as WoWHead. Weak sauce WoWDigger, weak sauce...
Lexanya Jun 26th 2007 10:08AM
@12 Nope. Since last night I haven't been able to get wowhead to load. At least today I can get the main page up, after that it stalls then I get the page cannot load or whatever. :(
Erica Olson Jun 26th 2007 11:06AM
Tried it, not impressed. The "NEW Quests" aren't new at all. Little to no information. Not much help in faction grinding info. Granted, it's a new site and a work-in-progress, but I'll not be visiting there as I'm perfectly happy with what I already use and speed is of the essence at times.
Good luck to them.