Gearscore, the addon that became the ubiquitous way to measure the quality of a player’s gear, is soon going to move into a completely new version with many enhancements. The previous versions of the addon simply gave players a number representing the quality of their gear, and the addon would display the calculation for other players by simply mousing-over them or by querying other players running the addon. It received widespread criticism for assisting the cultural shift of measuring a player’s ability based on their gear alone.

Now, the addon is much more robust and displays all sorts of information about a player. It is lightweight at approximately 135kb of memory usage and does not take up as much space as shown in the video. The default “summary” page displays a weighted calculation of a player’s gear, as well as new scores showing the extent of their quest and achievement completion, raid experience based on boss kill statistics, and PvP experience. It also shows their spec, guild, guild ranking, and other player’s ratings of that character.

From there, it shows how well-equipped they are to participate in different raids and their overall progression status. Finally, it lists any red flags, such as wrong enchants, and all of the equipment the character is wearing.

Click through for more, and my own opinion on how to use this addon.The equipment screen shows the score assigned to each piece of gear a player is wearing, as well as an easy to read index of enchants, gems, and reforging applied to the player’s gear. The raid experience screen shows how many times a player has defeated major raid bosses and details their overall progression. The PvP screen hasn’t been shown yet, and the author of the addon claims there are more features yet to be revealed.

There is nothing wrong with the compiling and sharing of information; I never understood the disdain for Gearscore. It is the player’s decision on how to interpret the data. With loads of new information available through this addon, I think we could see some fun new uses. For example, a character with great gear but a terrible talent spec might have bought their character or have been carried through content.

The biggest thing that interests me is the player rating system. The addon cannot query an external database, so all of the ratings have to be done by some sort of peer-to-peer sharing system. I wonder if the ratings are shared publicly throughout the server or just within trusted groups, like across guilds and friend’s lists? Either way, I’m sure this will be a point of contention with players but still a valuable for group leaders.

Will you be giving the new Gearscore a download on December 7th?