Thottbot

Thottbot was a website created by Bill "Aftathott" Dyess and originally launched in 2001 as a news aggregator for various online role-playing games. In August 2004, the site was re-written into a searchable database exclusively for the MMORPG World of Warcraft, as well as a plug-in that could be used in the game itself to gather additional data.[2] The website was discontinued on November 30, 2010 when its parent company, ZAM Network (now Fanbyte), merged it with its similar database website Wowhead.

Thottbot
Thottbot homepage from 2004–2010
Type of site
Searchable database
Available inEnglish
OwnerFanbyte
Created byBill "Aftathott" Dyess
URLwww.thottbot.com
CommercialNo
RegistrationFree
LaunchedMarch 31, 2001 (2001-03-31)[1]
Current statusRedirects to Wowhead (Classic version)

Since the launch of World of Warcraft Classic, Thottbot is now redirected to the Classic version of Wowhead, with a "Thottbot theme" available.[3]

History

The original Thottbot was a news aggregator created by Bill "Aftathott" Dyess, founder of the EverQuest guild "Afterlife", in March 2001. Its purpose was to comb various video game websites for news and information on a number of MMORPGs with a focus on EverQuest, and later grew to include other games such as PlanetSide, Meridian 59, Dark Age of Camelot, and World of Warcraft.[4] In August 2004, Thottbot was re-written to become a searchable database that focused exclusively on World of Warcraft three months prior to the game's retail release. Thottbot would also become affiliated with Cosmos, a popular collection of user-interface modifications.

The associated World of Warcraft plug-in, which is programmed in the Lua programming language,[5] collected information while a person is playing the game. Users could then upload the information to the website's database. The information on the website only came from players using the plug-in and who took the time to upload the data. Information contained on Thottbot included descriptions of items, weapons and armor pieces which web users could browse and search. Users could also create a profile, so others could search and view different players. This required the user to run the plug-in, and since not every player had the plug-in, not every player was represented on the database.

Thottbot owner ZAM Network acquired the World of Warcraft database Wowhead in June 2007 for $1 million.[6][7][8][9] The website was discontinued on November 30, 2010. The website's URL now simply redirects the reader to Wowhead.[10] For a time, some pages of Thottbot were still able to be accessed through Wowhead, but on November 16, 2016, the Thottbot site was completely discontinued, and all Thottbot URLs began to forward to their equivalent pages on Wowhead.

Popularity and reputation

Simon Carless of Gamasutra described Thottbot as a "major item listing site".[11] As of March 9, 2008, web traffic company Alexa reported that Thottbot.com was the 250th most visited site on the internet.[12]

During the 2006 Austin Game Conference, World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo spoke of the hardcore market and casual market for World of Warcraft, saying "The people that don't go to ThottBot are the casual players, and they're the ones you need to hold the hand of."[13] A January 2007 article in the Detroit Free Press named the site as a good place to find jewelcrafting designs discovered during the beta test of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.[14]

References
  1. Hyperstat. "Thottbot.com traffic statistics, rank, page speed". Retrieved August 14, 2017.
  2. Parker Howell (May 30, 2007). "Gamers will take pause: Firm tests easier way to kill orcs and answer e-mail at the same time". The Spokesman-Review.
  3. "Wowhead Classic". Fanbyte. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  4. Thott. "Thottbot". Archived from the original on June 12, 2004. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
  5. Thott. "Thottbot World of Warcraft: About This Site". Thottbot.com. Archived from the original on September 13, 2008. Retrieved August 14, 2017.
  6. Kris Graft (June 25, 2007). "Thottbot Owner Acquires Wowhead". Edge. Archived from the original on August 20, 2012. Retrieved March 9, 2008.
  7. Nick Farrell (June 25, 2007). "WOW fansite sold to ad outfit". The Inquirer. Archived from the original on June 21, 2007. Retrieved March 9, 2008.
  8. N. Evan Van Zelfden (June 7, 2007). "Q&A: Affinity's Maffei Talks IGE Sale, MMO Media Future". Gamasutra. Retrieved March 10, 2008.
  9. Jeff (July 3, 2007). "Gold Selling and the Art of Disinformation". Archived from the original on March 8, 2012. Retrieved April 20, 2011.
  10. TheOnyx (November 30, 2010). "Thottbot Merged with Wowhead Framework". Wowhead News. Archived from the original on December 4, 2010. Retrieved May 26, 2012.
  11. Simon Carless (August 25, 2006). "IGE: Inside The MMO Trading Machine". Gamasutra. p. 4. Retrieved March 9, 2008.
  12. "thottbot.com – Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa. Retrieved March 9, 2008.
  13. N. Evan Van Zelfden (September 6, 2006). "Austin: Secrets of WoW Design". Next Generation. Archived from the original on January 28, 2008. Retrieved March 9, 2008.
  14. Newman, Heather (January 15, 2007). "A guide to jewelcrafting". Detroit Free Press.
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