Honest to god question i dont know what it is. like im aware of the site but is it blizzard owned? ran?
It started as a talent calculator if you can believe that
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it is a fan site that works in conjunction with blizzard and utilizes their database tables to identify everything in the game
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is that what they mean by " datamined " ?
thats bananas.
essentially, yes. Because they have access to the database the other thing their system does is look for new items to add to the site. However, a lot of new items that are only placeholders turn up and don’t even sometimes have a name. So they open up the file and look at it only to find out what is being added to the game. Essentially data mining without specifically data mining. 
data rummaging more like
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You are not wrong
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Oh wait wait I got a better one. Its data old archaeology. Ya’ll ever see those old dinosaur skeletons I think from the UK where they were just slapping all sorts of bones together regardless if they were from the same skeletons or not?
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A parasite for spoilers
First and foremost, it’s a database for WoW-related things.
While it’s not ran by Blizzard, it is officially endorsed by them nowadays, as they’ve proven themselves to be a reliable resource for players.
IIRC they were made in an effort to be a better version of another WoW fansite, Thottbot.
Thottbot was… not as good of a database as Wowhead. A lot of misinformation, spam, and other problems. I didn’t hear about WoWhead until I saw an actual honest to god article in a magazine my sister owned. I’ll see if she still has it, but I think it was around in some capacity as early as 2005.
I didn’t start using it until around Wrath, but it’s always been a cool and handy site. I can’t remember when they started posting more WoW related news and guides, but there’s always been tons of features on it that set it apart from other fan sites for the game. It was always a tool first and fansite second, or at least that’s how it felt to me.
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Hate to be that guy but it shocks me that there are people out there who don’t know what Wowhead is; some don’t even read patch notes!
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So who gets the money from all the adds?
Thotbot was acquired by Wowhead who was acquired by ZAM group of gaming sites under Brock Pierce, an associate of Bannon and into the game currency selling black market…who now owns Bluesky social media. A big cryto guy these days. Then Tencent, the big Chinese gaming and media conglomerate bought ZAM. ZAM operates as Fanbyte now under Tencent. So, basically, it is ultimately controlled by a foreign company. One that owns a whole lot of game studios like Riot and GGG (PoE).
Internet Gaming Entertainment
In 2001, Pierce founded Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), a company that pioneered the MMORPG currency-selling services industry.[13] Between 2004 and 2005, IGE spent more than $25 million buying out seven smaller competitors, including four auction platforms and a number of fan and content sites.[14] In 2005, Pierce estimated that IGE accounted for about 50% of this online market in the U.S., which has about $500 million in annual volume.[14][15]
Pierce brought in Steve Bannon, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Breitbart News, to seek venture capital and a deal was made in February 2006 yielding $60 million of which Pierce took away $20 million for a minority stake. The next year the company faced a class-action lawsuit. With no assets, the company failed, and Pierce was forced out.[16]
Pierce founded ZAM, a network of websites oriented around massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG), such as World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rift, EverQuest, etc., in 2003.[17] The ZAM.com network included gaming websites such as ZAM.com, Wowhead, Thottbot, Torhead, and D3DB. In March 2012, Chinese internet and tech giant, Tencent, acquired ZAM.[18]
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That was depressing to read.
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Yeah, I had the same reaction. Sort of a very large Ooooffff and a “well then”. I knew Bannon was involved in the early days of WoW black market gold selling. I knew Wowhead had been bought by “some big company, then another”. I did not know the details until recently.
I got curious who owned Bluesky, then there was the usual rabbit hole that sucks up an hour or so of time.
My conclusion is that all the social media apps are there to collect personal data and profit off it. Trust nothing. That the crypto bros started with game currency then moved to the current block chain and are basically using fake pixels to try to create a new world economy or something.
I feel like just moving to a little cottage in the woods off grid and staying there. heh. Except, well, interwebs and games still matter to me.
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You can kind of go half in half out.
Lots of society structures are going to fall in the next 20-30 years anyway. It’s likely health, shelter, food, and energy will look different.
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I am not sure I want to go back to the middle ages of superstition, garlic under armpits, lack of understanding of basic germ theory and hygiene, etc. Dying from easily treatable or preventable things like measles or an infected cut would be horrible.
Then again, human society has had plumbing, advanced engineering, medicine of sorts, astronomy, infrastructure like good roads and bridges, etc. Then it all collapsed and we had the mud pit that was Europe until the industrial revolution and the invention of modern medicine like antibiotics, vaccines, etc.
I really don’t want to see society going back to being serfs again with only the ruling class having access to the learning and resources to survive well.
Blah. I really should just go live in a little cottage by the sea off grid. With my microscope, science books, and all the things that would get me labeled a witch for not following superstition/religion. 
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i only look at these sites for class stuff. a lot of it is kinda messy for me to get into.
its too many clicking one page to click another, to click another… never forget
the ptsd i got for trying to find out how to start the velf quest lol.
I don’t mean that, like an apocalypse. I mean Institutions will die slowly, and new one’s will take it’s place. It’s likely things will be better, but with more responsibility on our part to keep it that way.
I get the same sort of urge too, to go off grid, but I think Ideally, you can do that smart and still enjoy some of the benefits of being on the grid.
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Yeah, Wowhead is many things, and I think the complication comes from the fact that the base of it is 20 years old and the game is massive. The comments on quests, items, and info on quest chains is critical though.
It is about the only way I know of to figure out where you are stuck on a quest chain - because phasing or low level quest display has you mixed up. They have some useful tools to assist players in figuring out how to get back on track.
BRB, making bread from scratch. Not actually kidding. It is a no-knead crusty rustic bread baked in a cast iron dutch oven. I added some rosemary to it for extra flavor. Super easy. Very good.
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