Thursday, February 19, 2009

Thanks Hejinian!

A buddy of mine sent this extensive email about wow related sites. I didn't want to lose this resource in the distant past in my email inbox, so I decided to preserve it here for posterity.
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
WoW's official website content is all indexed here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/content-index.shtml
The fan screenshot galleries are fun to browse.
Blizzard also provides discussion forums:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com
And a database of characters in the game:
http://www.wowarmory.com

WoWwiki is essentially an encyclopedia of WoW knowledge,
most notable for its information on basic game mechanics,
strategies for each dungeon and raid boss, and documentation
of the Lua API used in scripting mods:
http://www.wowwiki.com

Boss fight guides may also be found on Bosskillers:
http://www.bosskillers.com/

And MapWoW is a sort of 'Google Maps' atlas of WoW:
http://www.mapwow.com

Several sites mine the item, quest, and NPC databases in WoW
and present them on the web. Wowhead is probably best overall
thanks to its very flexible search filters (including loot ranks by
class and slot), item comparison feature, well-moderated
comments, 3d object viewer, and talent calculator:
http://www.wowhead.com
http://www.thottbot.com
http://www.allakhazam.com
http://www.wowdb.com

Several sites offer daily or near-daily news about the game.
Worldofraids and MMO-Champion overlap quite a bit, and both
provide "blue trackers," linking directly to forum posts made by
Blizzard employees. Wowinsider presents a lighter, fluffier
view of the game, but it can be nice (especially the links to
fan-created comic strips).
http://www.worldofraids.com
http://www.mmo-champion.com
http://www.wowinsider.com

A number of sites offer specialized tools and views to
assess what gear is available where, whether it's
useful for your class, and how well you have geared
your character:
http://www.wow-loot.com
http://www.maxdps.com
http://www.wow-heroes.com
http://www.warcrafter.net
But don't forget that wowhead.com will do gear
rankings by class/spec also, and your class may
have a website (below) that gives a different
analysis.

A couple of sites rank who is best in the world at
raiding, arenas, and achievements:
http://www.wowjutsu.com
http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/
http://www.sk-gaming.com/achievement/

Two sites index/host Fan-made WoW movies:
http://www.warcraftmovies.com/
http://www.warcraftcinema.com/

There are several popular repositories for interface add-ons:
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/default.aspx
http://wowui.worldofwar.net/
http://www.wowinterface.com/find.php

Two sites stand out for helpful/informative discussion, where the nuts
and bolts of the game are explained in FAQs, etc. They are
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/ - the Elitist Jerks class mechanics forums
and http://www.tankspot.com/ - TankSpot, which is for tanks,
but it does have forums for healing and DPS.

And there are many active blogs and forums other than Blizzard's
for particular classes/specs:
http://www.shadowpriest.com - Shadow priests
http://dwarfpriest.com/ - Priests (fantastic, but no recent updates)
http://www.lightnatured.com/forum/ - Healers
http://tkasomething.com/ - Hunters
http://www.bigredkitty.net/ - Hunters (mostly fluff)
http://www.shadowpanther.net/ - Rogues
http://www.roguespot.com/ - Rogues
http://wowmb.net/ - Warlocks
http://forums.subcreation.net/viewforum.php?id=21 - Mages
http://www.failsafedesign.com/maintankadin/index.php - Prot Pallies
http://thedruidsgrove.org/wow/forums/index.php - Druids
http://www.wowshaman.com/ - Shamans

Enjoy.