Wowhead.com is an indispensable tool that all serious World of Warcraft players have loaded while playing, conveniently minimized to alt-tab to whenever they encounter something befuddling. Sites like thottbot.com and Allakhazam (to a lesser degree) were held in this sort of high regard in the past, until they sold out to the real money trade. That's how some players see it, anyway. And now, Wowhead.com has joined their ranks.
As revealed on Saturday by a blog called Techsoapbox (which is evidently run by a retired RMT veteran), Wowhead was sold to a company called Affinity Media for over $1 million USD. On top of Allakhazam and thottbot (which the company operates under the ZAM Network umbrella), Affinity Media also owns IGE, the undisputed biggest name in the RMT business. To players who are hardcore against gold selling--an extremely vocal minority, at the very least--this is the kiss of death.
Wowhead made its own announcement soon thereafter. In the self-conducted Q&A the site posted, it claimed that IGE was "sold this spring" by Affinity Media, while playing up the ZAM Network affiliation. Ahmed at Techsoapbox, however, begs to differ:
It's indeed understandable that Wowhead would want to distance itself from IGE, but if Ahmed is right, then this could come back to bite the site in the ass. If the site's directors truly believe that Wowhead will improve as a result of its acquisition by Affinity Media, then does it really matter what other businesses the company is involved in, provided (as they promised) that the unsavory stuff won't bleed into its service? It seems to me that the forthright approach should prevail here; all this smoke and mirrors business is just going to make Wowhead's users that much more suspicious.
Hot off the Presses: Wowhead sold for over $1 million [Techsoapbox]
