Thottbot
A pioneering World of Warcraft database and plug-in.
Thottbot was a website launched in 2001 as a news aggregator for online role-playing games. In 2004 it was rewritten into a searchable database exclusively for World of Warcraft, with a companion plug-in that gathered in-game data. The site was discontinued in 2010 and its URL now redirects to Wowhead.
Quick Facts
- Language
- English
- Registration
- Free
- Owner
- Fanbyte
- Author
- Bill "Aftathott" Dyess
- Launched
- 31 March 2001
- Current status
- Redirects to Wowhead (Classic version)
Facts from the source article.
History
Bill "Aftathott" Dyess, founder of the EverQuest guild "Afterlife", created Thottbot as a news aggregator in March 2001. It initially combed websites for information on several MMORPGs, focusing on EverQuest, and later expanded to PlanetSide, Meridian 59, Dark Age of Camelot, and World of Warcraft. In August 2004, three months before World of Warcraft's retail release, Thottbot was rewritten into a searchable database dedicated solely to that game. It became affiliated with Cosmos, a popular collection of user-interface modifications. The associated plug-in, written in Lua, collected information while a person played the game; users could then upload that data to the website. The database contained descriptions of items, weapons, and armor that web users could browse and search. Users could also create profiles viewable by others, but only those running the plug-in were represented. In June 2007, Thottbot's parent company ZAM Network acquired Wowhead for $1 million. Thottbot ran alongside Wowhead until November 30, 2010, when it was discontinued and its URL redirected to Wowhead. With the launch of World of Warcraft Classic in 2019, Thottbot.com redirected to Wowhead's Classic version with an optional Thottbot visual theme, which was removed as of 2025.
Popularity and reputation
Thottbot was called a "major item listing site" by Simon Carless of Gamasutra. By March 9, 2008, Alexa ranked Thottbot.com as the 250th most visited website globally. At the 2006 Austin Game Conference, World of Warcraft lead designer Rob Pardo noted that casual players, who need more guidance, are the ones who do not use ThottBot. A January 2007 article in the Detroit Free Press pointed to the site as a useful resource for jewelcrafting designs found during the beta test of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.
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