BossBlueprint: Then and Now
As I write this my colleague and I are putting the final touches of the brand new version of BossBlueprint which has been re-worked from the ground up.
We initially created the tool in a little under 20 working hours and never intended for it to get as large as it has; we did not design it to be scalable, or even optimal in any respect, we just just wanted to see if we could make it work.
Well, it worked.
Unfortunately BossBlueprint worked so well that someone thought they should submit it to WoW Insider for the world to see. A day later we appeared on the front page of the major Aol-powered World of Warcraft blog and got close to 30,000 visitors over the following two days with a steady stream of traffic since from repeat users of the tool. We’ve been consistently optimizing the site and incorporating the resources that our sponsor, Guild Launch, has provided us with, but we’ve needed to do an overhaul for some time now.
Even in its very basic state, we’re thrilled that so many users have been utilizing the tool and if anything, our delay in creating something more suitable for the public has allowed us to gather plenty of data about what we can do to make the tool better and bring it to a broader audience.
There are some key goals we wanted to accomplish with the new infrastructure and design:
- Create a backend flexible enough for us to support other games
- Create a site structure that segregates the different games and the tools associated
- Design the overall site to allow for an account system and our planned features associated
- Optimize the whole damn thing
If there is one thing we’ve had an overwhelming request for over the past few months it is to support more games. Our World of Warcraft audience loves the tool and uses it very frequently, but WoW is not the only game they play that the tool would be useful for. Counter-Strike is the next game that we will fully support and we believe because of how Counter-Strike is played that this is a no-brainer. With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on the horizon, players will be chomping at the bit to team up and tackle the new ranking system — we aim to help with that. We’re obviously exploring other options, but CS:GO will be our first expansion of the tool.
We also have realized that our top-down positioning tool may not be the only thing we create in the foreseeable future. With that, we wanted to create unique landing pages for each game that explains what the tool does, its benefits, and to demonstrate examples of other people that have used it effectively. BossBlueprint in its current state is fairly simple, but lowering the barrier to using the tool is something we believed necessary to expose it to a wider audience.
Regarding the account system, I am not going to dive into what we have planned, but we have some very neat features that will compliment the current tools very well and add more value to the site as a whole. With an account system in mind, we wanted to design something that was flexible so that when we did implement the mentioned mystery features, we would not have to re-design everything.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly we wanted to optimize our code, how we delivered it, and make sure we had proper development and production environments in place. A lot has changed since we initially started just pushing stuff to github.
The above all being said, I will be sure to make a formal announcement when we launch the new version very soon. My colleague and I definitely look forward to your feedback.