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World of Warcraft armory app for iPhone now in the store
Our resident WoW expert is on vacation, but he sent a quick note to let us know about the new World of Warcraft Mobile Armory application for the iPhone; the free app gives you access to character details, equipment lists, in-game calendars and more. Getting to this data previously required using the official armory website or the game client itself, according to our colleagues over at WoW.com. You can see their post and gallery over here.We know that dedicated WoW players have been waiting for this app for quite a while. The advantage of a mobile, handheld view into the ongoing activities inside the massively multiplayer world is that you can more easily keep up with matters that otherwise might have kept you trapped in front of your computer for hours.As soon as Mike S. is back in the office, we'll have a full-fledged review of the Armory app. You can download it from the App Store at will. Battle-axes at the ready!
WoW Armory for the iPhone released
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/Blizzard_releases_WoW_Armory_for_the_iPhone'; Blizzard has just released an official WoW Armory client for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The App features the ability for users to see a number of important things on their iPhone that they normally would be able to get in-game or through use of the official armory site. Some of the major features include: Character information, including gear, achievements, and specs PvP leader boards Talent calculators Official Blizzard news An integrated item browser In-game calendars You can download the app right now from the WoW Armory page and the App Store. The app is free. This is the second mobile application Blizzard has developed, the first being a mobile authenticator app.Some first impressions of the app after the break!%Gallery-68031%
Phat Loot Phriday: Constellus
Not all of us get to run around with Val'aynr. But for you mace casters out there who aren't first on your guild's Legendary list, here's another sweet mace to hunt down.Name: Constellus (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)Type: Epic Main Hand MaceDamage/Speed: 93-298 / 1.80 (108.8 DPS)Attributes: +55 Stamina, +54 Intellect Blue socket with a +5 Spell Power bonus Improves crit strike rating by 29, restores 19 mana per five seconds, and improves spell power by 587 %Gallery-33600%
WM Match Tracker on the iPhone tracks your WoW Minis matches
We've posted about the WoW TCG Lifecounter app for the iPhone before, and now the official WoW TCG site has spotlighted that one and another Upper Deck-related app for Apple's little handheld devices. WM Match Tracker is a free application on the App Store that will keep track of everything you need during WoW minis matches, including lifepoints for every character in play, the master clock of the entire game, and even each characters' clock (if you've played the game, you'll know that will tell you when each player can come back into play after using a certain ability). Sounds pretty useful, and the price is great, too: completely free. Of course, you don't need the app -- you can use pen and paper (and each board for the game usually has a clock on it), but if you've got an iPhone or iPod touch, it could come in handy.It's interesting -- Blizzard's been putting the kibosh on lots of Armory-based apps, but both of these apps are not only untouched, but they're actually being spotlighted on the official Upper Deck site. It could just be that Blizzard at large hasn't heard about them yet, or maybe they're specifically targeting apps that focus on the core game, not on the licensed products. Or, it could be that Blizzard is going after just Armory apps -- I can't think of any non-Armory apps that involve Warcraft in some way, but if Blizzard is planning an official Armory app, that would definitely be a reason to clear the App Store of unofficial apps first. Unfortunately, repeated queries to them from us about this have gone unanswered so far.But at any rate, WM Match Tracker seems like an excellent app, and if you spend any amount of time playing the award-winning WoW minis game, it seems helpful.
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.
wowTwitter is a Twitter just for your characters
I'm not sure how well this will scale, but it's an interesting idea: while it's certainly possible to just create a Twitter account for your World of Warcraft characters (so anyone interested can always see what you're up to), the folks behind a new site called wowTwitter have gone a step further, and recreated Twitter's functionality specifically for Azeroth's virtual denizens. It's very barebones right now, but basically, after you register, you can punch in any of your characters, "verify" them by changing something about them in the Armory (like unequipping the piece of gear on your wrist), and then you can send and receive messages on that character, with special channels created for the guild, your realm, and so on. I thought it used Twitter somehow, but it seems completely separate: they're running their own database and servers, so while the two work the same way (there are "@" replies and hashtags), they don't interact at all.Which means they'll also have all of the problems that Twitter has had -- when only a few people are using your database, it runs fine, but if it starts to scale up at all, then you run into lots of "Fail Whale" downtime. And I'm not sure we need a whole other system just for WoW characters (though this one does have the nice bonus of "claiming" your character so it can't get impersonated). At any rate, they're in beta right now, and actually hosting a cash money prize contest for the most characters verified and tweets posted, so a link from us will probably show them how ready their system is. If it's your thing, go forth and wowTweet!
Armory Light updated, renamed "Armory Heavy"
Armory alternative Armory Light (not to be confused with Armory Lite) has just passed its first birthday, and to celebrate, the site is relaunching with a bevy of new features. Pages for each item, with information on where it comes from, what it disenchants into, and how to link it in game. All the same info from the official Armory, basically. 3D models for some items. Not as good as Wowhead's, but nice if you're already on the site, I guess. A desktop app, built in Adobe Air (and hence cross-platform) to show 3D models of items. Not really sure what the point of this is, but somebody probably likes it. Heirloom calculator: Now this is cool. It lets you take any heirloom item and see how its stats scale at any level. Not many sites have this. A talent calculator. It's slow, jittery, and not particularly attractive, but they do have a talent calculator. A "powered by Armory Light" JavaScript to include on your own site, which gives you not only item tooltips (which a few other sites do), but also character tooltips, like the one at right (an example character, not one of mine). Seriously cool. I can definitely see myself using this feature; it's a great way to get a thumbnail sketch of a character.
The Queue: Minnie the Moocher
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.I'm not much of a Jazz person, so when I set out to counter the John Coltrane that Adam used in The Queue yesterday, I was a little worried. Fortunately, while digging through my music collection to find something useful, I remembered that I had a trump card up my sleeves. Old Betty Boop cartoons, some of the most disturbing things you will ever see in your life. All of the best ones come packed with some incredibly old school Jazz. Now, some candy for your eyes and ears: Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher in a Betty Boop cartoon.Docp asked..."What happened to the Hunter column, Scattered Shots?"I'm glad you asked! It just made its glorious comeback yesterday, with a brand new writer that some of you may recognize. Go give the latest Scattered Shots a read.
PUG Checker shows players' boss kills
Although most of us, I suspect, prefer guild runs, most of us also have to PuG it up every once in a while. LFG can be a bit of a crap shoot; you can get an Ulduar-geared player doing 3,000 DPS in your heroic, or a fresh 80 who has a thing or two to learn doing 1,000. Fortunately, we have the Armory to help us separate the good from the bad, or at least the geared from the ungeared. Sites like Be Imba and WoW Heroes have been around for a while to help us more easily check a character's gear level. Now a new site, PUG Checker, can show you at a glance what bosses a character has killed, and how many times - or rather, what bosses they've been present for a kill of. Above right you can see what it shows for raids on my priest (I don't like Malygos very much). If you click "show bosses," you can see specific raid bosses in raids; otherwise, it just counts kills of the end boss. It uses Armory data, of course, which is pretty accurate, but not always perfect. Like the site says, "don't shoot the messenger" if the numbers aren't quite right. Like Be Imba and WoW Heroes, this isn't an infallible guide to whether a player is good or not. It does probably correlate to some degree, though. In fact, if PUG Checker just added the average ilvl of the equipped gear of the person I'm checking, it would be my go-to site for checking puggies. It does load data much quicker than either of those equipment sites, which alone is enough that I will probably use it. I also really dig the clean design and the number-circles that look like subway indicators. [via My Life as a Cartoon]
Completion rates on Wrath heroics
Yeah, we all know that Oculus kinda sucks, but now we've got some numbers on it -- or, more accurately, Flyv does. One of my feral Druid colleagues has been examining Armory data on completion rates of Wrath heroics (and incidentally took a peek at how long it takes for the average person to go from dinging 80 to a full Naxx clear). The numbers aren't too surprising: heroics that correspond to the earliest Wrath "regular" dungeons -- Violet Hold, Utgarde Keep, and the Nexus -- are far and away the most-completed heroics. Oculus -- and to a lesser extent, Ahn'kahet and Halls of Stone -- languish at 40, 51, and 58% completion rates respectively. Halls of Stone surprises me somewhat, as I really didn't think it was a difficult heroic (outside of running a Druid tank on the Brann Bronzebeard event), but Ahn'kahet is universally cited amongst tanks and healers for LOS issues and nasty damage. And Oculus...well, we've talked about Oculus here before. I still think the concept of the dungeon itself is fantastic, but the moment that one or two embarrassed people in your group admit that it's their first time on the drakes, you know you're in for a long and ugly run.I hope Flyv revisits this data at some point, because I'd love to see how the numbers change over the course of Wrath. With achievements introduced only as BC was ending, we don't really have a good look at how dungeon popularity and completion rates evolved there, and I think the numbers say a lot about the content players prioritize when they get a toon (or multiple toons) to the level cap.
Public service announcement: European readers, you do exist
Since the new site went live last night, an awful lot of our comments have been from here in the EU. Hundreds of our lovely readers have been having some problems, namely they can't find their characters using the on-site search engine.There's a simple reason for this. Because so many of the shiny new features are in beta, the search function is currently only taking info out of the US Armory, not the EU one. It will happen at some point, hopefully sooner rather than later. Just hang on in there, you have not been forgotten.As Liz said in her earlier post this morning: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!)
Armory temporarily disabled to cut server load
Today being BlizzCon ticket sales day, Blizzard is anxious to keep everything running as smoothly as possible. In an attempt to lessen load on their web servers, they've temporarily disabled the Armory. In fact, this has been the case since last night, when I went to check out our main tank's armory after the raid (he had just gotten Shieldwall of the Breaker and I wanted to see what he was upgrading from). This is going to be inconvenient for those of you attempting to form PuGs, especially PuG raids. Hopefully BlizzCon tickets will sell out relatively quickly, and this madness will be over, and our beloved gear-checking, snobbery-enabling service returned to us. How will you be vetting players in the mean time?
The rise and fall of class popularity
While writing the most recent Shifting Perspectives column and browsing old records on Druid population statistics, I started to wonder about the various factors that play a role in how popular a class becomes. While Blizzard and Blizzard alone has the exact numbers on who's playing what, various fan sites have honed data collection strategies over the years and amassed a pretty impressive pile of numbers. This only got easier when the Armory launched in spring 2007, and by now I'd be surprised if players weren't at least broadly accurate about overall trends. If we can trust what we see, how we do best explain fluctuations in class popularity? Has Arena success (or the lack thereof) been as influential as we think? Is class population an accurate, albeit crude, guide to the overall "quality" of a class at any given moment -- or just a guide to the perceived "quality?" I'd be interested to hear what people think.Having played a Druid since the beginning of Burning Crusade and observed it going from the second least-played class at 60 to the third or fourth most-played class at 80, I have my own theories about what's influenced Druid population numbers particularly, but I need to do a little more digging before I can be sure. However, I don't know whether any of it really applies to other classes, and the meteoric rise of the Death Knight is a thought-provoking (and somewhat troubling) trend.
WoWHorn tweets your achievements
This is an interesting little system -- unfortunately, it's probably a little too complicated for most people to use, but the functionality is intriguing. WoWHorn is an open source application that basically monitors your achievements on the Armory, and will Twitter about it when you earn a new one. To get it up and running, you'll need the application itself of course, and you'll probably also need Ruby installed if you don't have it yet (OS X has it already, I believe, and Linux may as well). I don't think you'll need to input your actual WoW password (the program should be able to look up your info with just your character name and realm), but you will have to punch in your Twitter credentials if you want it to tweet for you. Once you've got everything working (and you'll have to ignore the errors, I got quite a few), you should see a tweet pop up in your feed whenever you get new points ingame.If you're a programmer type, you can read about the making of the app, and though, as I said, the app is probably a little too hacky for widespread use (it's not quite ready for primetime yet, and do you really want to run a separate application just to twitter about your achievements for you?), the functionality is the thing here. It would be cool for Blizzard to have the Armory interact officially with other networks on the Internet, either Twittering about your character or sending your profile out to Facebook.Not that anything like that should distract them from future content, of course. But if they want free advertising, allowing their subscribers to more easily share and disseminate information about their characters won't hurt.
Two more WoW-related iPhone apps off the App Store
Blizzard has laid the legal smackdown on two more WoW-related iPhone apps. As Double Bubble reports, both Warcraft Chest and WoW Realm Status have bit the dust, most likely after Blizzard's legal department sent them a cease-and-desist (that's what recently happened to the popular Warcraft Characters app). We don't know for sure that Blizzard went after them, but considering that Warcraft Chest was completely free, there can't be that many other reasons why it's not on the App Store any more.It's still not clear yet either why Blizzard is doing this -- originally, since they started off going after only paid applications, it was plausible that they just didn't want other people profiting off of their game (similar to the new addon policy). But they've taken down both free and paid apps here so far, and Double Bubble also has a list of both free and paid addons still up. At this point, we have to wonder what Blizzard's real intentions are here -- they're squashing valuable resources that fans have made and are giving away for free. If they were planning an Armory or realm status app of their own, that's one thing, but the only reason we can see so far is that their legal department has decided to act against the company's own loyal fans for their own interests. Not a great strategy for encouraging customer loyalty.And what about sites like Wowhead or the Firefox realm status addon? Why is Blizzard only targeting helpful applications on the iPhone? We can only guess that Blizzard will eventually go after the rest of the apps on the App Store, so if you're working on one or planning to release one soon, guess you might want to think again about how that time might be better spent.
Phat Loot Phriday: Ironsoul
As much as Martin Fury would have been appropriate here today, we'll stick to actual player items for now. Here's a nice big scary mace to hope for from Ulduar's first boss this weekend.Name: Ironsoul (Wowhead, Thottbot, Armory)Type: Two-hand Epic MaceDamage/Speed: 594 - 892 / 3.50 (212.3 DPS)Attributes: +105 Strength, +126 Stamina Improves crit strike rating by 69 and armor penetration rating by 84. %Gallery-33600%
Exporting guild calendars from the Armory
Reader Bob sent us a neat little tool a while back that will help you get your guild's calendar off of The Armory and on to another calendar program, like Google Calendar or iCal. This little script he built (which unfortunately will probably get beat up as soon as this post goes live, so give it a break if it's down) will give you a link for your guild's calendar, which you can then take over to Google Calendar (in the Other Calendars box, click Add, and then "Add by URL") or any other calendar service that accepts ICS data by URL, and put all of your guild's raids and events right into the calendar app that you actually use every day.However, there are a few hitches. Because the information you need lies on the Armory, you'll have to enter a Battle.net password into your calendar app to access that (which as Bob says, should be fine, but if you don't trust it, don't do it). Also, Blizzard is apparently not that happy with people accessing this data on the Armory either -- they've removed links to scripts like this off of the forums before. It's probably not a bannable offense (they probably just don't want tons of calendar queries into the Armory's servers), but if you try to connect this stuff together, you'll do it at your own risk.Still, it's a shame Blizzard isn't more open with this guild data -- it would be extremely useful to easily export guild information out to an .ICS file or even an RSS feed (for bank and join/quit info). We're not sure what all of their concerns are, but given that the info is already updated on the Armory, there has to be a way to more easily get it out of there and into more places where we can use it.
The Queue: Druids are cats, too
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.Dear Alex,Thanks for making nearly all the comments and questions in yesterday's Queue about cats and dogs.Yours,Adam.Geekycole asked..."Do you guys have any news on a fresh realm opening up?"
Zarkmark tries to help you rate PuG players
There have been a number of sites lately, especially with the recent rise in endgame pickup groups, designed to help you find and examine potential PuGgers quickly. But none of them have made it quite as easy as Zarkmark, a site that allows you to quickly rate anybody you come across ingame by "zarking" (rating them up) or "marking" (rating them down) them. Then, they offer a quick search, which will not only give you a one-click link to the Armory, but an easy-to-read screen of how many people have rated the player you're looking at. Theoretically, ninjas will never find a group again.Of course, theory is theory, and right now, the Zarkmark directory is pretty empty, so odds are that for any given player you look up, you won't really get much feedback. But you never know -- if players jump in and populate the site (and it wouldn't help to have a little help from them -- instead of just an Armory link, it would be nice to see a player's gear and achievements right there on the page), we might eventually get a pretty accurate picture of what someone's reputation looks like.In fact, I'm a little surprised that Blizzard hasn't ever considered a reputation system in-game. Xbox Live carries one off pretty well -- even though I've never actually used it to consider who I do and don't play against, I have rated players and I know it's very easy to see scores if I wanted to. Given the rising numbers of VoA ninjas and PuGing in general, it might be worth it for them to give each player a socially-created rating in the LFG interface.
Armory updated for dual specs
The Armory has been updated to reflect the new dual spec feature given to us by patch 3.1. It now shows both talent specs for characters that have bought dual spec, and shows equipped glyphs on the talent view. There's also been a bit of a facelift overall, with new buttons for the various sections of a character's profile, and some achievement statistics shown on the main profile page. The "Last Updated" date is a nice touch, although recently I find the Armory usually contains fairly fresh info [edit: apparently this is not a new feature]. I was having some display problems, but it turns out that disabling Adblock Plus on Armory fixed it, so if anyone else is seeing elements display in the wrong places, try that. And yes, I am enjoying playing with Shadow, thanks. Quite a bit, actually. [thanks to multiple tipsters]
