What the game keeps about your character, and what it doesn’t

What the game keeps

Played time, as one number. /played tells you how long the character has existed and how long it has been at this level, and nothing about when any of it happened.

The statistics pane. It counts kills, deaths, quests completed, gold looted and a great deal more, with no dates and no places. Forever’s pane has about two hundred counters, and Retail’s over two thousand.

Achievements, on Retail, each with the day it was earned.

The armory, and any site built on Blizzard’s API, shows the character as it is now: its level, its gear, its guild. That is a picture, replaced by the next one. It is never a history, and Blizzard’s terms don’t let anyone keep the old pictures.

What nothing keeps

Where you were on a given evening, and the road you took. Who you grouped with, and for how long. Each death, and what killed you. Your gold over time. How long a quest took from accepting it to handing it in. Which zone you spent most of a level in. The game has every one of these facts while it happens and keeps none of them.

How to keep the rest

An addon can write these things down as they happen, and only from the day it is installed. Widsith, our own addon, does that if you want it to. It records your character while you play, the game saves the record as a file on your PC, and the site replays it on the map, keeps the history and ranks your runs beside everyone else’s. The file is yours, and nothing leaves your computer unless you send it.

Get the addon, or read where the recording is kept.