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Armories arrive in DC Universe Online
So you're max level in DC Universe Online, and you have a lot of different options available to you. You have a setup you like to use for dealing damage, a setup for healing teammates, even a setup for when you absolutely need to get across an entire zone in less than three minutes. Swapping between those is a bit more taxing, though. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just instantly swap between a full loadout and appearance with just one click? Yes, that's exactly what Armories do: they allowing players to save an alternate build that can be accessed out of combat instantly. A free armory slot is given to every character following a quest, with additional slots (for additional builds) available in the marketplace for $6 (or less if bought in bulk). Each player base can hold four slots for a grand total of 16 Armory slots, giving you plenty of space to store all the alternate builds you could ever want.
Official WoW website housecleaning coming our way
Friday afternoon Community Manager Zarhym took to the official WoW forums to let us all know that Blizzard will be removing some of the lesser-used features they track on the official website. The reasoning behind the decision is that these particular features are laborious to maintain, their pages are not well-trafficked, and you can either look up the same information in-game, or there exist fansites that track the same things just as well as the official site. The following pages have been put on the chopping block: Pets & Mounts Gallery Factions Professions Guild Perks and Rewards sections Character Pets & Mounts Character Hunter Pets Character Professions Character Reputation The full blue post is after the break.
Hyperspace Beacon: SWTOR's tools of the raid
I've mentioned that I don't like the idea of judging other players by arbitrary numbers. It annoys me when a person is included or excluded from an event or guild simply based on something like gearscore or pure DPS numbers. However, the importance of these numbers shouldn't be undervalued in a game like Star Wars: The Old Republic. A couple of weeks back, I wrote an article about how the gear grind is "unfun." I don't like the grind, but I do like building good gear. I hate to admit it, but there is a little bit of min-maxer in me (just a little!). With SWTOR turning nine months old, many news and guide sites have settled into a routine. Surprisingly, the sites that I visited pre-launch are not the sites that I visit now. Now I am interested in the more granular sites that help me with very specific tasks of the game. Granted, I still visit Darth Hater and TORWars when I'm looking for news, but I have a completely different set of sites and tools for character building. These are the three sites I use almost daily.
Gamescom 2012: End of Nations trailer spotlights customization
Whether they're sporting traditional or tie-dye or polka-dots, players meeting on the battlefield in End of Nations won't have to worry about blending in with the crowd thanks to the variety of customization options available in the Armory. Trion Worlds released a trailer at Gamescom 2012 showcasing some of these available customizations in the upcoming free-to-play MMORTS. The customization in the Armory, however, goes beyond just a colorful outer shell; players also use this feature to set load outs, design and create companies, and modify units. Want different armaments? The Armory is where you get them. Check out the variety of options as well as some in-game footage in the trailer after the break. And players interested in experiencing the feature for themselves can sign up for the beta on the official site.
Stalk your friends with Diablo III's new character profiles
If you're familiar with World of Warcraft's elaborate online armory database, then you probably already suspected Diablo III was next in line for a character brag-board. Fortunately, your wait is over today because a new character profile system for Blizzard's hack-and-slash title is now live on Battle.net. The new profiles allow you to poke around your characters' gear and stats, view your progression through the game's difficulty modes, and see just how much you love your Witch Doctor compared to the other classes. And when you tire of reminding yourself how awesome you are, you can paw through your friends' profiles too. Your flatmate could really use an amulet upgrade, and you should take any opportunity to tell him so. Says Blizzard, "We like profiles so much that we plan to add even more functionality to them as Diablo III evolves, including detailed statistics and tabs for achievements and artisans." Check out the new toys on Battle.net.
Funcom unveils armory-like Chronicle for The Secret World
Imagine that -- keeping an upcoming feature of The Secret World a secret! Yet Funcom pulled it off, announcing today via a letter from creative director and senior producer Ragnar Tornquist the aptly named new player record that will actually chronicle a player's journey through TSW. Starting now, players active within the last four days can log into Chronicle and check out their stats on their profile page and compare themselves with players across the world using the PvP and PvE leaderboards. But that's only the beginning. Tornquist goes on to say, "We have a lot of great features planned, and we will be integrating the service more with the game and also, hopefully, with mobile devices and social networks in the future. We are going to add more stats, more features, more leaderboards, and more user control. We might also look at giving rewards tied to your status and standing on Chronicle." The beta is public so the team can gather as much community feedback as possible, so jump in, check it out, and give your feedback to help shape Chronicle's future. [Source: Funcom press release]
Addon Spotlight: Alt Management Addons
At this time in an expansion, the pre-panda lull, many of us are leveling alts. Some people have bucket lists where they have set ambitious targets of a certain number of 85s or a certain level achieved. My bucket list is going pretty well. Remember folks, the secret is to set fairly unambitious targets! So with these alts coming up, here at Addon Spotlight, we thought we'd fill you in on some little secrets: addons that will help you to manage your alts. Manage them? But how? Well, of course they won't level them or their professions. For starters, that would be completely against the terms of service, and here at WoW Insider, we don't like people to get banned after reading our columns. No, these addons help you to track down which of your leather-wearing alts has those heirloom shoulders, where your pesky staff is this week, whether there's any Strange Dust in any of your guild banks, and whether any of your other alts picked up that Citrine your would-be blacksmith needs. And we're just getting started here; these addons can bring you so much more functionality than what we've just talked through!
Mists of Pandaria Beta: Scarlet Monastery revamp
While the level 90 heroic versions aren't available on the beta servers yet, MMO-Champion and Wowhead both took a look into the lower level version of Scarlet Monastery to see all the revamps. The current four wings of Scarlet Monastery have been slimmed down into two wings, the Scarlet Cathedral and the Scarlet Halls, removing most of the unnecessary trash while keeping what made the monastery a great set of dungeons to begin with. Scarlet Cathedral now starts with the graveyard. Interrogator Vishas is no longer there; it's just Bloodmage Thalnos, now outside the mausoleum. Before Thalnos among the mobs are Scarlet Flamethrowers, who drop explosive cannisters that players can use to damage other mobs.
Massively Exclusive: Trion previews End of Nations' armory
Trion's super-secret End of Nations is moving right along in its alpha cycle, and today Massively has an exclusive piece of news for you regarding the upcoming MMORTS. The game differs from traditional real-time strategy titles because it doesn't have base-building, but what it does have is something called an armory. Trion tells us that players will "set their loadouts, create companies, modify units, customize skins, and more" inside the armory. The dev team has just revamped the armory mechanics, and you can get a good look at the armory window in the image after the cut (click on it to zoom in!).
WoW Rookie: How to look up your character online
New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones. If you're anything like me, you like to take a moment here and there to check out your character online without actually logging into the game. Maybe you're on a break at work, just doing background research into gear, or otherwise just goofing off on a computer. Essentially, you'd like to look at your character without getting in the middle of the game. The Armory was a common way to share information about your character with other people. All of your official forum posts link automatically to your Armory profile, and it's easy to post to a link to your Armory on unofficial forums and emails. Over its existence, the Armory has continued to become more powerful. It can help you find potential upgrades, find out where gear dropped, and more. Along the way, of course, the Armory also became more complicated. While Blizzard is transitioning away from the classic Armory, most of the functionality still exists just fine on the Battle.net WoW site. Here's a walk-through of some basic things you can use the Battle.net Armory to do.
WoW Armory now displaying mounts and pets
The World of Warcraft Armory/community site has been updated with a useful new feature showing players the mounts and companion pets they have collected so far. You'll be able to see where each pet or mount comes from or who drops them, a picture of each, and even a listing of not-yet-collected pets and mounts, making it easier to be an achievement hunter or collector. The armory has changed drastically from its original interpretation and implementation, adding features over time that give players a more cohesive out-of-game experience. What is most interesting are the potential tie-ins later on with the previously announced WoW APIs coming down the pipe in the near future; we are still unsure of the amount of data that developers will be able to access from the WoW armory. I would not be surprised to see collected pet and mount data also being part of that package. We've got a pretty full-featured armory at this point. What other types of data do you think the armory could or should provide? Perhaps next we'll see a tabard and title tab, showing players' collected tabards and a scroll list of titles earned. The sky is the limit, apparently.
Blizzard improves the WoW community site (again)
Blizzard debuted the new World of Warcraft community site a while back, and it's definitely a huge improvement over the old one, which was really outdated and rarely helpful. The new site has a built-in Armory, better forums, a fairly robust Game Guide, and even regular dev blogs to give some insight on the development process. Apparently the improvements don't stop there, though, as Blizzard recently announced a laundry list of updates for the site, including: Rotatable 3-D models for gear in the item database Boss info pages, loot tables, and ability information Improved, easier-to-read search results And more! Check out the full list of changes and updates after the break.
How far have you progressed in Cataclysm?
The other day, I logged on to an old realm of mine to chat for a bit with a few friends and old guildmates. (I do this periodically, since I'm not a big fan of using Real ID for anyone other than very close friends.) Whenever I'm there, I casually poke around on a character that was once my prized raiding toon in early Wrath of the Lich King. "Poking around" consists of organizing my bank and doing about three to five quests. I figure it would be nice to have another 85 that I could play casually, but I lose interest in it too quickly. Anyway, at some point in the middle of a conversation with a mage friend, I said, "At a rate of three quests per night that I actually log in, I should be 85 in two years." "It really gives you some perspective on how much you have to play this game, doesn't it?" he responded. I hadn't been serious about the statement I made, but it made me think about the hours I had to play to get to 85 on my main. It occurred to me that if you only play WoW for an hour or so every few days, it would probably take a couple months to get to level 85 from 80, and that's only if you're completely focused each time you log in. This got me wondering how far into Cataclysm everyone else is. %Poll-60657%
World of Warcraft community site preview now live
A preview of the new World of Warcraft community site is now live. It has several tabs that lead you to a blog, the forums (complete with the latest blue posts), services, and a preview of what the armory will look like when fully implemented, among other things. This is the testing phase and also the prelude to a shutdown of the current forums in favor of the ones on the new community site. The full transfer of forum functionality is scheduled to occur sometime this month. This seems to be a step in the right direction for Blizzard. I really like what I've seen so far. Try putting your character's name in the search field to bring up the armory preview. The search results are in a new format that is easier to search through, in my opinion, as well as a better way to critique yourself at a glance. And the community managers seem to be having a good time with it as well. Note: The Off Topic forums have not been transferred to the community site and there are no plans to do so. Update: Forum bans are also not being transferred to the updated forums. The full text of Blizzard's announcement is after the break.
WoW Mobile Armory gets 3-D model viewer, activity feeds and more
The newest version of the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory has been released on iTunes, featuring a 3-D model viewer for all characters, activity feeds similar to the ones on the web version of the armory, and optimizations for Apple's iOS 4.0. Included in the update is a cool feature called screenshot mode, allowing you to take cool pictures of your characters in front of lots of backdrops, including the racial capital cities. The screenshot mode will even remove all of the interface elements from the phone, giving you a clean shot. This update could be laying the groundwork for the newly revealed mobile guild chat service available through the armory app, potentially unlocked in the near future for subscribers to Blizzard's Remote Auction House service. Hopefully, more light will be shed on this functionality in the near future. Until then, get updating, because these new features are pretty neat. Previously, I would have had to bookmark the armory's RSS feed for my characters and open them in Safari on the iPhone, but with the new activity feeds built right into the armory app, things have gotten a lot less clunky. %Gallery-103031%
Remote Auction House beta testing ends
The Remote Auction House's beta testing has come to a close this evening and is now officially a live, paid-only service. For $2.99 every 30 days, you can buy, sell and trade from anywhere in the world via browser or iPhone. Well, anywhere that you have an internet connection. While non-paying users can still view the auction house, only subscribers can actually do business via the Remote Auction House. Check the official Remote Auction House page for a breakdown of the differences between free and paid users. Do note that this subscription fee is only for the Remote Auction House. Every player can still use the auction house in-game as a part of their usual $15/month. If you're interested in ponying up the $2.99/month but didn't get a chance to try out the app during the testing phase, you can check out our galleries below for a little preview of the service. %Gallery-93251% %Gallery-93255%
Gold Capped: Using the new armory auction house
Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil Berntsen takes a short break from trying to build a raiding guild on US Drenden-A to write up a guide that will help you achieve the goal of acquiring 214,748 gold, 36 silver and 48 copper. Well, technically that's just a symbolic milestone. The goal is making gold, no matter how much you have or how much you want. Got feedback, questions or hate mail? Email Basil! This game is constantly changing. Every new patch, Blizzard delivers new content, new rules and new interfaces. We've seen some major quality of life improvements in the auction house of late, and these are continuing. The latest one (which is still in beta) is that the mobile armory now lets you trade on the AH from anywhere using either an app on an iPhone/iPod touch or your browser. Right now, for testing purposes, we're limited to 25 actions a day (purchases, bids, auctions), but we can clear out our mail! To be honest, that's the killer feature for me. I spend an inordinate amount of time clearing out my mail. The majority of my profits in, say, vellums will come from sales of singles. I list stacks of all sizes, but the singles are what sell best. On my mid-range population server, I can easily sell 200 of these a day, and that adds up to a lot of time watching my mailbox empty.
Pimp My Profile: Lissaris, arcane mage
Welcome to Pimp My Profile, the column in which the WoW.com staff turns zeroes into heroes. Don't think you're performing where you should be? Not sure how your class/spec is supposed to be gearing up? E-mail us with your Armory link, and you might be next to receive our help! I've traditionally used a modified frostfire build, which has always worked well for me. I recently dual spec'd and tried an arcane build, but I wasn't able to put out as much DPS. Any suggestions on how I can improve to deliver maximum DPS? - Lissaris I wasn't quite sure how to classify you in the title of the post, seeing as you've only recently respecced into arcane. The good news is that most of the tweaks I'll be suggesting today will work for both specs. Lets hear it for stat homogenization!
Breakfast Topic: Presenting the ever-accessible auction house!
So a few days ago, word was released that Blizzard is working on a new feature for the ever-changing armory...they're going to add auction house access without being in-game! Now, I don't know about you, but I find that all kinds of awesome. I love playing the auction house (it's oddly satisfying...don't ask), and have many times in the past simply logged on to check my auctions to see how they were doing. Personally, I find this to be an amazingly convenient ability for the armory. Unfortunately, the dreaded 'p-word' has reared its ugly head: Premium. Most of us know that 'premium features' will usually equal 'if you want it, let's see some green.' I have to say that I wasn't super impressed with the idea of paying for yet another feature, but in today's world of micro-transactions and the like, would you pay extra money for that kind of convenience? Take the iPhone app, for example. Say the 'freemium' version is, well, free, and the premium armory--complete with auction house tracking--is...an extra five dollars. As far as micro-transactions go, that's not too shabby. Honestly? I'd pay it. So what do you guys think? Are you excited about the auction house tracking in the WoW Armory? Do you think it's the worst idea ever? If you like it, would you pay for it? Yes/no/banana? Discuss!
Lich King's loot table revealed
This is surprising: the entire loot table for the Arthas fight, on both 10 and 25-man (normal and hard, judging by the item levels) has just been posted to the Armory. Edit: the loot is also on Wowhead now, complete with 3D models. As tipster Micah noted, if this is really the whole loot table, it consists entirely of armor tokens, weapons, and Invincible's Reins (which is listed as a guaranteed drop on 25-man heroic). The focus on weapons isn't exactly new for raid end bosses, but it's interesting nonetheless. I haven't had a chance to go through the whole list yet, but as far as I can tell, there aren't any of the nifty proc-based items we've been seeing elsewhere in Icecrown. It's pure stats on Arthas drops (though Alex points out that they all the 25-man heroic items have flavor text). Still, I wouldn't say no to a nice Tainted Twig of Nordrassil for my druid. Which one's your favorite?
