顧問
帖子總數: 292
註冊: 2007/1/11
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已發表: 2008/6/4 上午5:59
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Hi Kyrros !
you got it !  The client is used for both things, synchronize your characters and update the database.
How does it work ?
When you're playing the client observes items, npcs, quests, merchants, drops, etc.
These observed data are sent to the server on a regular basis, something around 5 minutes. When you synchronize a character, these data are also sent the server.
To avoid redundancy not everything is sent right to the server, the data are filtered, it saves you a lot of bandwidth compared to a systematic submission. The client also guarantees a piece of data is sent only once; for exemple, if we observe a merchant and we show his inventory again during your session, it is sent only once.
In short, the more data the database contains, the less data you will send. Our first beta testers certainly sent a lot of data  To get a clearer idea, for me, it reprensents something like 100k at the first submission, and then only a few kilobytes here and there, depending if I found a new item (new to the database) 
This amount is hard to determine as it depends of the client, Warcraft caches its data on the disk (these caches are deleted when Warcraft is patched), a casual gamer has certainly less data in his caches, so less data will be sent to the server.
The observation process is designed to be really fast, it should take less than 1 % of a single core, and we will do our possible to reduce both cpu and memory usage as much as possible.
At the time of writing, we spotted a bug that causes a 100% cpu usage, it will be corrected with our next patch
About items
As mentionned Warcraft uses caches to store data and avoid unneccessary network traffic, that's our main "data source" (I think most WoW DB on the web use these caches).
We do not observe data from the chat or the auction house. When you get an item link in the chat or a tooltip in the auction house, Warcraft grabs this data and stores it in his cache
We do not sniff the network traffic, we're only looking in the game's memory.
Our services are designed to improve gamers experience, and not alter it. We will never provide an information about the game that could give an advantage over another player and we will never alter the gameplay in any way. We are players and we are trying to offer the best experience possible to the community.
I hope I was clear enough 
Best regards
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