360voice
Latest
WoW-Achievements.com starts tracking achievements as best they can
You knew this was coming, but I'm impressed with how it's done over on WoW-Achievements.com. With points to track and players to compare, it was inevitable that we'd have a site show up to track achievements, and here it is. While the Armory itself doesn't show individual achievements (yet), they've apparently come up with a way to figure out a number per player, and there's a worldwide player list (or at least a list of the 53, 901 characters they surveyed somehow). You can also post a pic of your achievement info, and they'll update it on the site. There's no way to see your individual stats yet, but if and when Blizzard adds that functionality to the Armory, we'll probably see a couple of sites show up like this, that allow you to do more with achievements and tracking them than the official UI does.Of course, the Xbox 360 is the gold standard for achievements at this point -- while other MMOs and WoW have used the mechanic in their own way, Microsoft has built achievements into Xbox 360 profiles available online to anyone, so that's where most of the great web tools are right now. But the one that stands out for me, that I'd love to see replicated in World of Warcraft, is 360voice.com -- it basically creates a blog of what you've been up to on the Xbox that presents your activity in a readable, fun format. With Achievements build into the Armory, something like that could be easily used to power a timeline of your character, and let your friends see from day to day where you've been and what you've done. Lots of very cool ideas to develop here -- hopefully Blizzard will release Achievement info in an API sooner rather than later.
360voice's new Old Spice Experience Challenge
The Old Spice Experience Challenge is coming back for a second helping with extra gravy, but this time they've got a new format and a new partner.If you recall, earlier this year Old Spice and Xbox.com sponsored a challenge where they gave out prizes to participants who achieved a certain Gamerscore goal. But now, with the ushering in of this second Old Spice Experience Challenge, they've decided to kick Xbox.com to the curb and team up with 360voice. The new challenge will start on December 5th, will be hosted by the 360voice crew and will allow gamers to create challenges, climb the ranks and win thousands of prizes including gift cards, Microsoft points, hardware and more. Details are a bit vague at the moment, but you can read all about it here, here or here. And remember kids, Old Spice loves you!
Xbox 360 blogject blogs for itself
Go to 360voice.com and register your Gamertag, then add the custom RSS feed to your reader of choice to get updates on yours, and others, gaming habits. I've added Major Nelson's feed so I can check up on stalk him.On Monday he played some 360. His 360 reports, "I told Major Nelson, 'Don't make me hurt you!' and the threat worked. He showed up yesterday with a gamer score of 3392 in his back pocket. That is a gain of 20 points over last time! He played Battlefield 2: MC gaining 1 achievement, Bankshot Billiards 2, and laughed with joy and glee the whole time. I like making people happy."Then, probably due to travel, he's been unable to get his game on since Tuesday ... then Wednesday ... now Thursday. I'm guessing the 360 wouldn't fit in his carry-on.The project is housed here, where they're documenting the blogject's progress. Keep checking back for more updates. I'd like to see a web interface like the one they had running last week (pictured). The site's creator stopped by to reassure us he is working on a web render of the RSS feeds, and to point us towards the old web interface here. Major Nelson's Xbox: " I tried to play a few Xbox Live titles yesterday since Major Nelson never showed up. I got bored and cried instead."[Thanks, Richard; via Clickable Culture]
