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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]
Wowhead releases character profiler
Wowhead has been promising a profiler system for quite some time (it's been under development for over two years, according to the site), and now it's finally here. Wowhead's profiler has pretty much every feature you might want from a modern profiling site, and fits right in to the excellent Wowhead interface. Armory import, 3D character view, gear sets, gear scores, upgrade search - it's all there. You can save your characters however you want, link them to your friends, check puggies, and so forth. It's just gone public, so bugs are to be expected. Report them to Wowhead if you find them; the Wowhead team is very responsive. New features are also in development, such as embeddable 3D widgets of your characters, or automatic comparison between items in the site database and a profile of your choice.
The Daily Grind: Online character profiles?
Web-accessible online profiles for characters in MMOs have been around for a while. The first ones I remember were profiles available for EverQuest players. In the years that have passed, they've slowly popped up everywhere. Now you can generally find something about people's characters on the game's site, on commercial guild and player database sites, or even privately hosted guild sites. Some are very simple, offering a quick overview of gear and talents. Others are far more detailed, like the World of Warcraft armory, or the almost social-networking build of Lord of the Rings Online's player pages. With all that said - some people love them, and some people absolutely hate them. The reasons vary from player to player. On the negative side, some feel that others shouldn't be able to look at their gear if they're into PvP, or don't want others knowing how much money they have. As for positives, some like to be able to compare gear with others they know to see if they can find ways to improve their own, others think that listing your regular play-times so other folks looking for friends to adventure with can find you is a great idea. This morning we wanted to ask what you thought about online character profiles? Do you love them or hate them? What are some of the best - and worst - features you've seen on different MMO character profile sites? Anything you'd add to your favorite if you could?
Yet another character manager for WoW
Magelo, a Switzerland and UK based company which gained popularity with its Everquest character profiles, has launched a WoW version of the profile system. It offers a slick view of your toon's Armory information, but with some additional functionality that you can usually only get in-game. Additionally, using their Magelo Sync, you can hot-sync your information whenever you want. (No more waiting for the Armory to update.) You can also use the client in-game to find information on items, quests, and mobs.I tried it today and found it fun to play with. Even though installing everything takes a bit of jumping through hoops, after you've synced, you can view everything about your toon that you can see in the game: bank and inventory contents, or show anyone your profile with a link. Here's Slig's profile so you can see the output provided. A feature I really liked was the tab called "bonuses" which lets you see which pieces of armor contribute to each attribute (e.g., click Intellect and see each item's bonus to that stat). After the beta there will be a charge for Premium access -- a trend we're seeing more of -- which involves things like getting a certified profile, customizing your profile page with backgrounds, viewing your toon in 3D, and creating alternate profiles. I liked fiddling around with the alternates but I'm not sure I'd pay extra for it when the time comes.
