The Warcraft Webosphere

I’m a relative newcomer to World of Warcraft, but I’ve already dug my arms in up to the elbows in the gritty MMO web community.

When it comes to raw WoW item/quest/NPC info, I go no further than tried and true Thottbot.com. There is even a cool plugin you can install to add Thottbot as a search engine on Firefox’s search bar.

Another great repository of World of Warcraft knowledge is the WoW Wiki. Not a hardcore WoW database, as much a brain dump of WoW lore. It is a wiki, so the searching and interface is somewhat ponderous compared to Thottbot’s search engine-like simplicity. If you’re looking for the spawn location of those 10 rat ears you need to collect, WoW WIki is not for you. However, if you were wondering what class would be best for healing and dps, then WoW Wiki has tons of information. Think of Thottbot as raw data. Think of WoW WIki as a collaborative attempt to correlate and digest that data. As a WoW n00b, I’ve been referring to WoW Wiki quite often, as the information is much more in depth than Blizzard’s dumbed down Newbie Guide.

There are a handful of other WoW info sites, such as wow.ogaming.com (which has some GREAT WoW backstory writeups), WoW.WarcraftStrategy.com, and of course wow.Allakhazam.com (but then, who wants to bother typing that crap into their address bar.)

I’ve also been delving into the message boards. I’ve dabbled in the Official Blizzard WoW Forums, but I always coe out of there feeling dumber. Although, there is no substitute for the Weekly Warcraft Update from the devs. The best online community for World of Warcraft that I’ve run into so far, is the World of Warcraft section of the Penny Arcade forums.

As far as ye olde blogosphere goes, I’ve been adding MMO blogs to my Bloglines subscriptions left and right. I’ve been a LONG time reader of Gamer, and Foton (the master of Gamer) is one of the main reasons I gave WoW a try.

So, there’s a lot of useful information and commentary out there for the WoW aficianado (i.e. not me). I’m sure others could provide even more information, as I know I’ve only scratch the surface.