profiles
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Find in-game friends on Livejournal's WoW Friending meme
The WoW Livejournal communities are really some of the best citizens in the WoW community at large -- they always have interesting discussions and insights going on over there, and if you ever need a question answered or just want an opinion on something in-game, they're always ready with some insight. That's why I think this WoW Friending meme that spirdirslayer has going on is such a good idea -- basically, if you're over on Livejournal and are looking to meet a few players on your realm, you can head over to the page, find your server, and then enter your information along with a few survey questions and check out who else is playing with you in-game.I almost wish Blizzard did more social networking stuff like this -- through the Armory, we can find out everything we need to know about each others' characters these days, but there's not much we can learn about the people behind those characters. Our own profiles here on WoW.com help with some of that as well, but it would be nice to have it all integrated in the game somehow: examine a character and find out that their player is living in the same town you are. Completely optional, of course -- not everyone wants to socialize to that extent. But for those interested, it seems like it would be a lot of fun.
The best of WoW.com: May 19-26, 2009
Just in case you haven't heard, things are hopping over at Joystiq's sister site WoW.com (formerly WoW Insider). Not only are we continuing to post the most constant and in-depth news and views about the biggest game in the world (though not the best selling -- maybe we'll have to start a Wii Sports Insider, too), but we've now got your chance to head over and start up your own WoW blog, track your characters online, and even follow your friends and their activities ingame. Read our most popular posts from the past week below, and then head on over and make your own. News Welcome to WoW.com! Yes, WoW Insider has undergone a facelift. And we've got some new junk in the trunk too, actually. Patch 3.2 details released Information from Blizzard about the game's next big content patch: a new BG, a new instance. More information on 3.2 release date, Coliseum, new battleground Filling in some of the blanks on what's in patch 3.2. Patch 3.1.2 goes live today Meanwhile, the Equipment Manager finally goes into the game, along with a few other changes. Insider Trader: Jewelcrafting nerf incoming Blizzard's taking the nerf bat to jewelcrafters and their prismatics. Features Bolfang and the future of the Horde and the AllianceBolvar, one of the Alliance's biggest lore characters, is MIA. We wonder where he might be... WoW.com HelpNeed to know how to get our new addon working or share your profile page with friends? Here you go. Phat Loot Phriday: Porcelain BellOur weekly loot spotlight column examines the most valuable gray in the game so far. Time is Money: SaroniteHow to make some big bucks with some shiny ore. Forum Post of the Day: The end of big guildsThe game seems targeted at making smaller, more flexible guilds the most successful. Could giant megaguilds be a thing of the past?
The Queue: rm -fR "World of Warcraft" && echo "Oops!"
Welcome back to The Queue, Wow.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today. Many thanks to Sacco for covering The Queue last Friday. For some odd reason he decided to start drawing this weekend, and you can see one of his drawings above. For the other image you'll have to check out our Twitter page (it wasn't done when today's edition of The Queue was written).If you're wondering about the title, we're not going to talk about the mistake Adam made over the weekend when he was setting up WoW on his fresh dual-boot linux install. It's just really not worth going over how he managed to delete his WoW directory that has lasted him since pre-BC. Not at all.Remember that The Queue is here to answer your questions, and you can either leave them in a comment in this article or contact us with them. So without further ado...Swampsquach asked... "When you do the repeatable Frenzyheart/Oracle quest in Sholazar Basin, does it have any effect on the current rep you have with either one? For example, if I get revered with the Oracle's and then do that quest but pick Oracle's again, is that just free gold? Or does it set your rep back to honored?"
Have a safe and fun Memorial Day from WoW.com
It's Memorial Day in the United States, a time when we celebrate the memories of our fallen soldiers by visiting memorials, breaking out the BBQ grill, and jumping into all of the swimming pools opening for the summer around the country.There's a lot of interesting things that have happened the past few days here at WoW.com. Our new site is in full swing, and you can read about all the changes we've done.One of the major additions to the site is the WoW.com profiles, which bring the famed social networking features right into WoW via our custom add-on. Check out what some of our users are already doing: Yamara34 just started up a brand new guild over on Proudmoore, and Mogri got lucky on the fishing daily.A few major details about patch 3.2 were released on Friday, along with some clarification points by the blues. There is no indication when patch 3.2 will hit the PTR, but we're on the lookout for it. With a new 5-man dungeon, and a new 10/25-man raid, it will be sure to make a splash.In addition to the new dungeons, patch 3.2 will nerf Jewelcrafting a bit. This is an unwelcome change for many players, and it has all the JCers up in arms.We hope that everyone has a great time celebrating Memorial Day, and make sure you do it safely. For those of you not in the US, have a great Monday anyway! Welcome to the new WoW.com! Check out WoW.com's site documentation for information on the new profiles and add-on. Be sure to let us know if you experience any problems during our beta test. And don't forget to check out all the latest World of Warcraft news!
Welcome to WoW.com!
Ladies! Gentlemen! Children of all ages! We, the writers, editors, and innocent bystanders at WoW Insider would like to welcome you all to our new home: WoW.com. Our new domain serves a broader purpose than saving your typing fingers a few characters, though. You've probably already noticed our new, more streamlined design -- all the better for providing you with more content and less clutter. But in addition to the content you all know and (hopefully) love, we'd like to introduce you to the beta launch of WoW.com Profiles. By creating a profile on WoW.com you can: show off your characters make blog posts & galleries to share with others communicate with your guild & your friends let everyone know what you're up to in the game we all love by downloading the WoW.com addon (for PC or Mac), you can also keep all of your friends up to date on what you're doing in game -- and make blog posts and upload screenshots directly from your game client. Sound interesting? Head over and sign up (you can use an existing AIM or Facebook login) and start getting involved in the WoW.com community! (Having trouble? Take a look at our getting started guide or send us an e-mail explaining the problem. We'll help you figure it out!) Please remember, WoW.com Profiles are still in beta -- while we already have lots of ideas for the future, we want to hear from you about what we're doing wrong (or right!) to help us improve it. And before you even start protesting, we're aware that Profiles currently only work with characters in the US armory. (Though, to readers not on US servers, you can certainly create an account and participate on WoW.com Profiles -- you just aren't able to add characters. We're starting small with this beta run, but hope to have the ability for everyone to join us soon!) Thank you to all of our readers for your support and unbridled enthusiasm over the years! Though the site may have changed, the WoW Insider content you're all familiar with isn't going anywhere. As WoW.com we plan on continuing to provide you with the latest news and community from the World of Warcraft.- the WoW.com team
Cryptic Studios profiles Star Trek Online producer Daniel Stahl
Cryptic Studios has been running a "Meet the Team" series of profiles of their developers, across both Champions Online and Star Trek Online. The latest from the Star Trek Online team is an interview with producer Daniel Stahl. Stahl discusses his work on STO and how his career led him to Cryptic Studios, and passes on some advice for readers who want to break into the gaming industry. "There are a lot of different avenues into the gaming industry and they all start with pursuing a hobbyist's dream. Find something that you have a passion for, and develop that passion," Stahl says. You can read the Star Trek Online profile of Daniel Stahl for more on his role at Cryptic Studios, and why you should never face him in ship to ship combat once the game launches.[Via WarCry]
Aurora Feint devs share their social code in OpenFeint
The folks behind the popular Aurora Feint series of iPhone games have decided to share their work creating a "social MMO" system on the iPhone with other developers. They've just announced a system called "OpenFeint," which other devs will be able to license and use in their own games. OpenFeint will supposedly allow a developer to put together a multiplayer community in an iPhone app, complete with profiles, news boards and chat, in under an hour. They're also providing a server for developers to use, so devs won't have to host their own server software -- they'll just have to make their client work with the existing system. Wild. It sounds like they're just making the systems they've already developed in their own games available to anyone who wants to use them. Right now, they're looking at a private beta (interested devs can sign up on their site), and eventually the service will be free for a limited number of users, with certain costs as the userbase grows. The cynical side of us wonders if there's a catch in there somewhere -- presumably, all of the users in OpenFeint will keep their information on the Aurora Feint-owned server, so we'd guess there's a chance that at some point in the future, they could use that list for less-than-honorable actions (Steve Demeter's Onyx Online plan is another service that aims to be platform-wide, which seems to have similar risks). But that's just us being paranoid -- taken at face value, this just seems like one team of indie developers opening up what they've already done to help other devs. Very cool.
eHarmony advertises in Warsong Gulch
Quinionn on Magtheridon sent us this picture -- apparently dating website eHarmony has gotten in on the in-game advertising just in time for Valentine's Day. He had just joined a Warsong Gulch when this guy showed up spamming an ad.There's a number of strange things going on here -- as far as we know, this isn't an official Blizzard move, but most of the people spamming ads in the game are shady gold-selling websites, not real corporations with bigger profiles. And the weirdest thing might be this: Eharmony on Arthas isn't a one-time character created to spam in Trade -- he's level 80 with 450 Jewelcrafting and Mining. There's actually a lot of characters with the same name around, with different levels and classes, even in different guilds (though this one is probably the funniest).Very weird. At the very least, the spammer's aiming to lose his character, and at worst, if this is an organized action, Blizzard might actually have a case against eHarmony for spamming inside the game. Have you seen any other ads like this around the game?Update: Mystery seems to be solved: it was just some guy messing around. Strange way to mess around, though. He's in our comments, and says he's getting a free name change after the GMs said what he was doing was not so cool.
Blu-ray holiday primer gets you informed
If you've been conveniently ignoring all the ins and outs of Blu-ray while the prices have been out of reach, you may have found yourself feeling a bit behind the times now that the technology is becoming more attainable. No worries, though -- Forbes has hosted up a detailed Blu-ray Holiday Primer that gives you the skinny on BD's advantages over DVD, how it stacks up against digital downloads and what all those Profiles actually mean. If you've been scouting a simple crash course in Blu-ray before plunking down $150 or so (we hope, anyway) this Black Friday, you know where to head.[Thanks, Anthony]
Netflix reverses decision, Profiles here to stay
The small but very vocal minority of Netflix customers who made use of the Profiles feature have won a battle war, and the feature will not be going away after all. In the company's blog, the red-envelope overlords explain that the plan to kill off Profiles was intended to streamline the Netflix website by removing a feature used "by a very small minority." But the resulting hew and cry was heard loud and clear, and there are no plans to discontinue Profiles. Better yet, Netflix is now taking suggestions on how to make Profiles even better. So, put away your Cafepress "I want my profiles" shirt, wrest your incendiary cancellation letter from the postal worker and get constructive. If you've already cancelled your Netflix subscription, might we suggest a polite letter explaining how it was all a terrible misunderstanding and you now want to be reinstated at your previous rate? [Via Slashdot]
Netflix to do away with Profiles
Many of you Netflix users may have never heard of Profiles. For those that have, you'll probably be quite disappointed to hear that it'll soon be vanishing. Put simply, Profiles enables users to "set up separate DVD Queues under one account," and for any couples in the house, they can attest to the usefulness of said feature. Netflix is planning to eliminate Profiles on September 1, 2008, and its only explanation is that "the change will help it to continue to improve the Netflix website for all customers." Anyone perturbed about the change? Does it not bother you at all?[Thanks, Kris]
Embed your Armory info
Ever looked at your Armory page and thought "this is nice, but I wish I could put it on another web page"? Well, now you can! MMO Guildsites has created a widget that can be embedded anywhere you like (guild rosters, maybe?), and consists of an iframe linking to a script that runs on their servers (so you don't need any server-side script support on your own site). The output is rather pretty, as you can see at right; in fact, I like it better than the actual Armory in many ways.It does have a few shortcomings -- you can't see how much +damage you have in various schools, for instance -- but I still like it as a way to put live Armory data anywhere you want it. (It can show PvP data too, by the way, but I turned mine off for the screenshot since my numbers are downright shameful.) If you're interested, click over to their site, put in your server and character name, and it'll generate a preview and HTML for you to paste wherever you want it.
Wowhead down; implementing gear profiles?
The saga of Wowhead continues: the site is currently down, as in no loading at all. My first thought was that Blizzard's maintenance and the extra traffic from the sale news brought them down, but they've never experienced uptime problems in the past, so that seems unlikely.And then Centipede (thanks!) sent us this forum thread in which someone who claims to be a Wowhead moderator says it might be down so they can implement "character profiles and gear wish lists (ala CTProfiles)" that they were supposedly hoping to put up before "the end of the month," which is of course right about now.So when the site comes back up, maybe we'll see some brand new features to play around with. We'll keep an eye on it and let you know more when we do.Update: Site's back up intermittently with no apparent changes so far. Your guess is as good as ours what's happening here.
Apple profiles iWork@work for small businesses
While iWork isn't exactly at the top of everyone's wishlist of Apple software, it still offers a fairly strong set of Apple-esque tools for creating gorgeous presentations and documents. Since the company already has a fairly thorough iWork product page aimed at the general audience, it seems only natural (if a bit long-time coming) that Apple focus on the business customer with a new set of iWork@work Profiles. Through case studies that delve into the daily duties of a photographer, a historian and an architect, Apple highlights how iWork (and iLife, of course) helps them all get the job done. Naturally, these profiles are filled with quite a bit of Apple fluff, but I think it's interesting to read some of the finer details and features that iWork offers people who are actually running businesses with it. Yes there are plenty of complaints against iWork - it's missing a spreadsheet, it doesn't do this, it messes with that - but these profiles are a nice read if you're willing to set all that stuff aside for a moment and investigate what Apple's productivity suite has to offer.
rooSwitch: multiple application profiles
One nice feature that Apple is starting to add to some of their application is multi-library support. For instance, if you launch iTunes or iPhoto with the option key held down you'll get a dialog box asking you which library you want to use. Well rooSwitch takes this idea to the next level by making it possible to have different "profiles" for nearly any OS X application. The profiles include preferences, caches, and even application data like the aforementioned iTunes libraries, all storied in a single .rooSwitch bundle. To use it you just drop the icon of the application you want to create a profile for onto the rooSwitch window and you can then create multiple profiles that you can easily switch between using the radio buttons. rooSwitch can even be used to backup application profiles and transfer them between machines or accounts. rooSwitch was originally to help developers test different scenarios, making it a good way to test (especially beta) software without losing preferences and application data.rooSwitch is $14.95 and a demo is available. In addition, there is a free lite version that is limited to six applications (Mail.app, Address Book, Safari, iTunes, iPhoto and Stickies).[via MacApper]
The Warcraft Armory
What's the Armory, you wonder? Well, it's a new part of the official Blizzard site (currently in beta testing) that offers access to character profiles (for characters above level 10), guild profiles, arena team profiles, and arena ladders via the web. The nice thing about Blizzard doing this is that it's all integrated -- no extra software to install, no profiles to keep up to date -- Blizzard already has all of the information and has just given us a new way to access it. The only problem: the Armory website doesn't seem to be online right now. No doubt the cause of millions of players simultaneously trying to hit the site and see how it works.Update: European players have their own version of the Armory, and it seems to actually function right now.[Thanks, greatslack]
