Privacy policy

Newsletter

The newsletter isn’t open yet; this is what it will keep once it is.

What we collect: your email address, the page you signed up from, and the time you signed up. Nothing else.

How we use it: only to send The Azeroth Intel Report. We never sell or share your address. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link.

How long we keep it: until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it. After that, it’s removed within 30 days.

The fight coach (addon and companion app)

The NeedBeforeGreed companion app runs on your PC while you play. It reads World of Warcraft’s combat log and, only after you’ve agreed to it, uploads your own fights so we can tell you what to change. You can stop at any time by closing it; nothing is uploaded while it isn’t running.

What it uploads, for each fight

• What your character did: for each ability, how often you used it, its hits, critical hits, misses and dodges, the damage and healing it did (and overhealing); how long your buffs and the debuffs you applied were active; your total damage done and taken, the time you spent at full rage or energy, the time you spent casting, and how many casts failed and why (interrupted, not enough mana…).
• The fight: its name (the boss, or “Combat”), the encounter and difficulty number the game gives it, whether it was won, how long it lasted, and where: the zone, or the dungeon, raid or battleground and its difficulty.
• The mobs you fought: each kind of creature by its game ID (the creature type, not the one you hit), its name and level, how many there were, the damage you did to them and took from them, and how many died.
• Your character, from the NeedBeforeGreed addon: level, class, race, character-sheet stats and how the game turns them into attack power and crit, equipped items with their stats and effect lines (“Chance on hit: …”), talents, shapeshift form, and your pet’s damage, speed and family (not its name). It goes with each fight, and once for every level you reach (the newest at that level), so the site’s talent and gear builds start from real character sheets: base stats differ between games and levels, so we measure them rather than guess. On public pages these appear only as averages across players.
• Your game version (version, build and interface number), and the companion’s and addon’s versions.
• What your items could sell for (WoW: Forever): your gold, and for each item in your bags, bank, account bank and worn gear (and the guild bank, while you have it open, shown apart and never counted as yours): the item, how many, whether it’s bound, and its value at a quick sale, typical and patient price. The companion works these out on your PC. To do that it asks the site for your realm’s auction prices, sending only the realm’s name, your faction and the item numbers: no ID or code that could link the question to you. What it uploads afterwards has no realm in it. No guild name is ever recorded. We keep one record per character per day, so your history page can show how your worth changes.
• Whether tracking works: which fights you chose to track (/nbg track), how many fights are waiting on your PC to be uploaded, how many today weren’t uploaded (too short, or not tracked), and when the combat log last grew. Your history page shows this as its tracking check.
• Two identifiers that aren’t linked to you: a random ID made when you first run the companion, and a code for each character, made on your PC with a secret that never leaves it. We can’t turn either back into a name.

What it never uploads

• Other players’ data. It’s dropped on your PC before anything is sent.
• Names: not your character’s, your realm’s or your pet’s. The site also removes them if a modified app sends them anyway.
• Your Battle.net account, the game’s IDs for your character, or the combat log file itself.

How we use it

To work out advice for you: we simulate your character in the same fight and compare. We also use fights, without anything that identifies you, to check our simulator against what really happens in the game. We never sell or share uploads, and we don’t use them for advertising.

Your fight history page

The companion shows you a private link to a page with your uploaded fights, the comparison with the simulation, and your advice. There’s no account: the link holds a random key made on your PC, and we store only a scrambled form of it (a hash), so our database alone can’t open anyone’s page. The page shows no names, but anyone you give the link to can see it, so keep it to yourself. It isn’t listed in search engines, and it can’t be used to upload or delete anything.

How long we keep it, and deleting it

Uploaded fights and their analysis are deleted automatically after 12 months. To delete everything uploaded from your PC sooner, run the companion with --forget: it deletes your fights from our servers straight away and closes your history page, then makes a new random ID, secret and link, so anything you upload later can’t be linked to what was deleted.

Quests and loot (WoW: Forever and Retail)

In WoW: Forever and Retail, the NeedBeforeGreed addon also records the quests you’re offered and what you loot, so the site can show every quest and where items drop, and how often. The companion asks about this separately, and uploads it only if you agree. It’s game data, not data about you:

• Quests: the quest’s title, text and objectives (with your character’s name taken out), its rewards, the creature or object that gives it and takes it back, and where you were on the map.
• Loot: the items and how many, the creature or object they came from, the zone, the dungeon and its difficulty, and when.
• Vendors: what a vendor sells, at what price and in what stack, and the vendor (by its game ID and name) and zone. Prices are as offered to you, so a reputation discount shows.
• Recipes: when you open a profession, what each of its recipes takes (every reagent slot, whether it’s required, how many) and what it makes. Not which recipes you know.
• Creatures: creatures you target, point at or see a name plate of: by their game ID and name, their type (Beast, Humanoid…), family (Wolf, Bat…), rank (elite, rare…), the levels they were seen at and the zones. Never players or pets.
• Your game version and the companion’s random ID (the same one as for fights), so it can all be deleted when you ask.

It never includes your character’s, realm’s or account’s name, other players’ names, or the game’s IDs for players or creatures. Creatures and objects are recorded with the names the game gives them. We combine it with everyone else’s to show quests and drop rates; nothing on the site shows who it came from. We keep it, because drop rates get more accurate the more loot they’re counted from; running the companion with --forget still deletes everything uploaded from your PC, quests and loot included.

Auction house prices (WoW: Forever)

WoW: Forever has no auction data from Blizzard, so the NeedBeforeGreed addon can record what the auction house has for sale when you open it (at most every two hours per auction house, or when you type /nbg scan). The companion uploads these scans only if you tick “Share auction house prices” (it asks once, and its tray menu changes it). For each scan it sends:

• The auction house: your realm’s name, your faction, the zone you opened it in (to tell the neutral ones apart) and when. Prices only mean something per realm, so this is the one place the realm’s name is sent, and it’s never stored with your fights.
• Each item for sale: its game ID, how many listings and how many in all, and each buyout price per unit with how many are listed at it (or the lowest bid, when there’s no buyout).

It never includes who is selling or bidding: the addon doesn’t read their names. We keep the scans, so the site can show how each auction house’s prices change over the years; running the companion with --forget still deletes yours straight away.

The contact form

What we collect: the email address you give, the topic you pick, your message, and when you sent it. Nothing else.

How we use it: only to read your message and reply. It’s passed to us by email through Fullarc, which handles the form’s notifications.

How long we keep it: 12 months, then it’s deleted. Ask through the form to have it deleted sooner.

Who processes data for us

The site is hosted by Vercel, uploads and contact messages are stored in a Neon database, the analysis runs on Railway, Fullarc emails us contact form messages, and the companion app and addon are downloaded from Cloudflare. Like any web host, they see the IP address a request comes from; we don’t store it with your uploads or messages.

Updates: the companion app checks Cloudflare for a newer version every few hours while WoW isn’t running, and downloads it if there is one. That’s an ordinary download: it sends nothing about you or your game.

We don’t currently use advertising, analytics or tracking cookies. If that changes, this page will say so before it happens.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete your data at any time through the contact form (choose “My data”).