Guild Wars 2

As of right now their is little information available to site designers/developers from in game. We have GW2Spidey for sure, but market place prices is of little use to designers trying to help maintain communities of players (I.E Guilds).

Other popular titles allow character information to be accessed by web applications outside of their respective games (EVE Online, WoW, etc).

In designing an API for this information I believe their is a certain minimum level of information that should be made available. These items, in my opinion, include;

Guild API:
-Names
-Ranks
-Character Class (most recent)
-Character Level (most recent)
-Last Seen Date
-Influence Earned
-GMotD

Player API:
-Character Names (all)
-Character Levels (all)
-Character Classes (all)
-Character Achievements (most recent limit of 5, total achievement score, or a breakdown of status of all achievements avail)
-Character Tradeskill Type & Levels(currently active)
-Current Skills, Trait and Talent selection.
-Potentially even allow gear/itemization to be visible (though for some reason inspect isn’t allowed in-game and not sure if that was a design choice or just something that you didn’t have time for).

Server API:
-WvW Current Score
-Servers in current Matchup
-Current Point Total
-Time to Next Tick
-Objectives Held (towers/keeps/etc)
-Orbs controlled

I think with this information made available, we’d see some pretty cool apps. Server alliances could parse information about current WvW activities…. creating scripts that notify players when keeps are taken, or orbs stolen. We’d see a tighter knit community in general with this information leaving the confines of the game (or requiring screenshots for the transmission of this information).

From a guild standpoint, I could research whose playing what, how they are specced and potentially geared. I could discover who ISN’T playing, and potentially recruit them back to the fold. I could also find out whose contributed the most to the guild in terms of influence and/or playtime.

From a player standpoint, I could compare my achievement scores to others. Compare my builds versus those of others….without needing to rely on talent calculator links (useful but not always). I could also parse this information out to my friends so they could see what i’ve been up to (achievement wise).

I’m sure their are elements of the API that the developers do not wish the general public to see due to design choices. I think the information above is relatively harmless for the most part. I think by opening up the games information outside of the game itself, you’ll find developers will create some very interesting and potentially player-drawing applications.

While maintaining an API is no easy job, in fact it would probably require a dedicated developer (or team)…. I believe its crucial to maintaining and even growing a community over time.

Thanks for reading.

First of all, a level of security should exist in order to access Guild information.
Essentially, the Guild Master would create a password, and for a site to access information regarding a Guild through the API, that password would need to be inputed.

The information available through the API should be restricted to what you can know within the Guild, or information regarding the Server.
Player-specific information should be completely off-limits.

The reasons I’m against sharing the information about players is pretty obvious, but you can find them in any thread requesting Recount, Armory, Gearscore or Character/Player Inspection.

No matter how pure the intentions may be, it will eventually be used for the wrong reasons, and corrupt the community with obnoxious elitism.

Simple information found within a Guild window, such as Character Names, Classes, Tradeskills, Influence Earned and Achievement Points is acceptable.

Abusable information like Character levels, Skill/Trait allocation, and most importantly, Gear, is unacceptable.