WoWInsider Zarkmark tries to help you rate PuG players by Mike Schramm There have been a number of sites lately, especially with the recent rise in endgame pickup groups, designed to help you find and examine potential PuGgers quickly. But none of them have made it quite as easy as Zarkmark, a site that allows you to quickly rate anybody you come across ingame by "zarking" (rating them up) or "marking" (rating them down) them. Then, they offer a quick search, which will not only give you a one-click link to the Armory, but an easy-to-read screen of how many people have rated the player you're looking at. Theoretically, ninjas will never find a group again. Of course, theory is theory, and right now, the Zarkmark directory is pretty empty, so odds are that for any given player you look up, you won't really get much feedback. But you never know -- if players jump in and populate the site (and it wouldn't help to have a little help from them -- instead of just an Armory link, it would be nice to see a player's gear and achievements right there on the page), we might eventually get a pretty accurate picture of what someone's reputation looks like. In fact, I'm a little surprised that Blizzard hasn't ever considered a reputation system in-game. Xbox Live carries one off pretty well -- even though I've never actually used it to consider who I do and don't play against, I have rated players and I know it's very easy to see scores if I wanted to. Given the rising numbers of VoA ninjas and PuGing in general, it might be worth it for them to give each player a socially-created rating in the LFG interface.

Rainbow Gnome

Zarkmark: Where You Rate Your Fellow Players

So I found THIS link through WoW Insider. It's a very neat concept. The goal of the site is to provide first-hand experiences of other players in the game. Did someone join your PUG and ninja some loot? Mark them! Did you snag a totally random but awesome priest for Naxx? Zark them for the positive experience! The site has a potential to be a big hit, but I can also see some potential for abuse, too. Read on for my further thoughts. First Things First You'll want to register first, which was extremely easy. Next part? In order to do anything on the site, you need to claim and verify a character first. In order to do so, Zarkmark has come up with a cleaver way of confirming you are who you say you are:

1. You select an Old-World city. (I chose Darnassus.)
2. The site automatically picks two random items for you to buy and equip from local vendors.
3. Log-Out of the game. At a maximum, it could take a couple of hours for the Armory to be updated. So, I just did this at the end of the night.
4. Once the Armory has been updated to reflect the items, go back to the site and hit the 'Verify' button. You're done and all set!

With your character(s) all verified, you can now start rating/commenting on your fellow players.

Side Note! I have to admit, this is a very cleaver way for people to claim their characters without submitting any information or using any mods.

It's Got Real Potential To Be Awesome
I could see this site being a real useful resource if it takes off. You could almost call it a 'Yelp' for players in WoW. If I need to PUG a tank and someone shows up, I can check to see if they're rated. Even if they're not rated and I take him/her anyways, I could make sure I leave some good feedback later. Everyone likes to complain about ninjas and just bad players in general, and this site gives a great way to do that so the entire world can know who's great and who's bad. There are a few things I'd like to see though..

Guild ratings would just be awesome, too. Again, it would be very handy indeed for guildless folks to be able to search a server for guilds, and see which ones stand out in the crowd.

Something else I'd like to see, and maybe I'm just missing it, is a way for a player to respond to comments. I'll get to why in a minute.

I'd lastly like to see some specifics to the ratings. Additional options like how you experienced the player would be great. For example, let's say we PUG'd a heroic Gul'Drak run with a tank. I could say what instance we did, the date/time, and what I thought of his performance. Additional information like that could be very useful. A simple comment of " ..he didn't really know the fights when we went-in, but was quickly able to adapt.." would be awesome. (Something along the lines of a more-detailed feedback form is what I'm talking about there.)

Potential For Abuse
Like all crowd-sourcing, there's a potential for abuse here. It's easy enough for a large group of players to come in and 'ruin' someone reputation wrongfully by writing false reviews. (The site's FAQ page says that comments are moderated, but I think that's just to make sure comments don't go too far.) Never-the-less, people who are used to crowd-sourcing and this kind of reviewing system can often recognize when people are just being malicious. If players had a way to respond to comments, it could 'balance' things out. Yes, you could in theory see a potential for lots of flame wars, but I think it's going to be important for people to defend themselves if necessary. Getting two sides of the story is much better than one, especially in this environment!

Final Say
Zarkmark really has the potential to take-off and really be a great resource. Time will tell if players flock to the site to start putting-out reviews of others. I gotta say though that I expect they will. So long as Zarkmark can make a few minor improvements, I'll go ahead and call it perfect!