Thottbot, the popular World of Warcraft database and spoiler site, has been made over! The front page is still rather Google-like in its simplicity (one of its charms, in my opinion — don’t mess with that, mystery site makeover person! — but with a fancy graphic and more prominent advertisements. As of today, Thottbot’s biggest lure was left untouched … Free. (Furl Archive of how fancy Thottbot looked for that one day.)
I know someone will recognize this within seconds of publish because they leveled from 5 to 28 in this out-of-the-way little quest grove, but as God is my witness, I had never been here until last week when I was putzing prancing around on my fancy pants Blood Elf hunter.
While stalking one of our rival guild’s websites, I ran across a link for a series of blog posts that I hadn’t seen anywhere else. Admittedly, I’m not the best blogger out there at keeping his/her/its finger on the pulse of Game Blogger Nation, but I’m surprised I didn’t run across it before. Anyways, it’s a brief series from guest authors about World of Warcraft and the costs/benefits of hardcore raiding on the players. The View from the Top, written by a former guildleader of a raiding guild who walked away from it all and tells his tale. There’s a followup, The View from the Top: Redux, which clarifies authorship of the first article and highlights some of the comments it generated. The final in the series, Warcraft: Another Point of View, is written by another guest author who is still a hardcore raider and disputes any implied responsibility of the game itself. Other than some jackholes going wild in the comments, the short series is a balanced, civilized discussion of MMO raiding and its toll — the blog owners should be proud, it’s fine work. Listen to the bell, raider, it tolls for thee.