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WoW Minis in stores on November 11th
Upper Deck has announced an official release date for the WoW Miniatures game, and surprise, it's in early November, too (it's going to be a busy couple of months for WoW fans). You'll be able to buy a four-figure starter set or a three-figure booster pack in stores on November 11th -- we're not sure about the prices yet, but if the MSRP we saw a while back hasn't changed, they'll end up at around $20-25 for starter packs, and $10-15 for boosters. Each starter will also contain a sampler of the WoW TCG cards, and while we haven't heard anything about ingame loot items for the minis game, those samplers may have some Loot cards in them if you're lucky.Upper Deck also was kind enough to provide us with a preview of a few figures from the set, including some concept and reference art for some of the characters and figures. You can see it all in the gallery below -- there's a nice sampling of characters from the MMO game, a few from the TCG, and even some new character types from Northrend in there. Looks like fun. %Gallery-33212%
Widget shows character name statistics
If you've ever been fascinated by the MMORPG statistics provided at sites like the Daedalus Project, here's something right up your alley; the WoW Armory Character Distribution widget, programmed to comb both the U.S. and E.U. Armories and capture data on the popularity of character names across race, class, faction, and sex. The project is still in the testing stage, and it's a bit finicky about how you enter character names. Make sure you're always hitting the submit button and not using your enter key, as otherwise the widget will keep searching for the last name you looked for instead of your new query. Its creator, Emilis, also wrote to warn that it uses live information from both armories and will occasionally be slow as a result. I imagine it might also be inaccurate if either Armory is having problems.The widget is tremendously fun to play with and has yielded some rather interesting results even with the completely random names I keep trying. "John" and "Mary," as you might expect, are overwhelmingly Human toons, whereas the greater share of people playing a "Sergei" and "Yekaterina" are Draenei. 3 people with a "Brutus" are actually playing female characters, and 1 person with a "Laura" is playing a male character (Emilis notes that gender-bending names are surprisingly common, although from what I can tell so far this seems to be a lot more true of male names for female toons than the other way around). Most people with a "Killer" are playing a Hunter, Rogue, or Warrior. Characters named "Bank" are mostly Human Warriors, but "Banktoon(s)" are mostly Orcs. And, yes, most of the people playing a toon named Legolas are Night Elf Hunters. Are you really that surprised?Thanks to Emilis for writing in!
Beta patch possible today with changes to XP, Storm Peaks, and premade characters
According to Tigole, Blizzard will "try to patch" the Wrath of the Lich King beta today. Storm Peaks will open back up and should not crash the sever. No word yet if Naxx will be introduced in this patch. The servers should be up between 4:30 p.m. PDT and 6:30 p.m. PDT.The XP required to level will also be reduced by 10% this beta patch. Things should go faster for all you playing around with leveling.Finally, there will be a new beta realm opening up named Murmur. Tigole mentioned that the premade characters should not have been made available on the existing realms. He tells us that "they are being removed." There is no indication as to whether or not current premade characters will be moved to the new realm or just outright deleted.
Favorite iPhone apps: Schramm's take
As you might imagine, my iPhone is more littered with games than useful stuff like Steve's or Victor's. Sure, I've got Twitterific and NetNewsWire, but my most-used apps are of the video game variety.The game that's most grabbed me so far is Aurora Feint. When it was first released, I didn't get much out of it, but since it's been updated a few times, Aurora Feint has turned into a pretty deep puzzle/RPG. There have been some security scares, unfortunately, and the game's "MMO" promises haven't yet come to fruition. But for sheer matching puzzle gameplay (it's similar to the great Poker Smash on Xbox Live), it's probably the most addictive game on the App Store.My second favorite is Characters (I originally wrote about it on WoW Insider). If you play World of Warcraft and have an iPhone, this is the closest thing you'll find to an official Blizzard app. It lets you see every bit of information on the Armory in a very nice-looking iPhone app format. We're still waiting on Blizzard to provide us with an iPhone version of the in-game Auction House or mailbox, but until then, this is a great way to look up the WoW characters of folks you meet.And finally, I've been really impressed with Midomi (and also the similar Shazam), a music recognition app. Hit the app, let it listen to a song you're hearing (or even you singing the song or saying the lyrics), and it'll tell you exactly what that song is. And once you've find it, you can listen to it, find it in iTunes or on Youtube, or see band pictures and reviews. Midomi is the kind of app I've never had on any other devices I've owned, and yet I've put it to great use a few times.Honorable mentions go to Freeverse's (renamed) Moto Chaser, which is consistently the game that most impresses people playing with my iPhone; Trism, which turned out to be an excellent game, and Frotz and Sketches, both of which I've written about here before.And I'm still waiting for two things: some great persistent pet gameplay (Wil Shipley, what happened to all of those ideas?), and some great location-based MMO gameplay as well. There's good stuff out there, but we're still just getting started in the App Store.
Characters for iPhone updated to 2.0
The Warcraft Characters app for iPhone that we reported on a while ago has been updated to version 2.0, and with it come a host of terrific improvements. As we were told last time, gear has been added in, so your iPhone can not only show you information about your (or anyone else's) characters, but it can now also show you all of their gear, and even reputation status. And there's good news for non-US users, too: the app now supports characters from any and all realms, not just US and EU, but Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese realms as well. The only thing that's still missing is seeing individual talents -- otherwise, it's as featured an app as you can get. Sure, guild search and stats might be nice, and there's always extra features like be.imba integration, or character comparisons, but as a portable Armory, it works great as is. We're not sure if this is all Rudi's work or a result of a teamup with Omen of Clarity (who's been working on an iPhone web app for a while), but either way, great job.And there's a shiny new icon, too (and I like it a lot better). Characters is now available on the iPhone's App Store for the low, low price of free.
Warcraft Characters for the iPhone
Finally, we've got a WoW app for the iPhone, but it's not quite what we'd expected. Apparently tired of waiting for Blizzard to release an official app, Rudi has taken things into his own hands and released Characters for the iPhone, a slim little app that lets you pull up your characters (or anyone elses), and browse through their Armory stats.I installed the app (it's free), and took a look at it -- unfortunately it's not very robust, as there's no way to see gear (unlike Omen of Clarity's iArmory web app), but it does run great and look shiny. Upon running the app, you can just punch in your character's info (or anyone else's -- all you need is a name and realm), and it'll get added to your list. Choosing one sends you to screens where you can see information about professions and talents, ability stats, or combat stats.And that's pretty much it -- more is planned, including reputation, talents, and items panes. EU and China support should be up in a few days (right now, it only works on US characters, and of course it depends on the Armory being up to update). Very nice for a first try, but we still can't wait until we see something a little more in-depth, or, dare we ask whoever's working in Blizzard's mobile division, even official.Note: This writeup is current as of version 1.0. Later versions of the app will likely include added functionality.%Gallery-28793%Update: Good news from OOC: he and Rudi are planning to work together on the Characters app, which means it should soon have all the functionality of the iArmory web application, and then some. Saved characters? Character compare? Guild progression and be.imba integration? Yes please!
Deleting toons to make room for Wrath
I deleted four toons today. I know that Wrath of the Lich King is quite a ways off, but I wanted to be prepared. First of all, I wanted to ensure I had a character slot free for my Death Knight. Although I'm not sure I'll be leveling it all the way to 80, considering the jump start at Level 55, it's a much better leveling grind than the alts I deleted, the highest of which was a Level 40 Shaman. I sold all my Soulbound items, mailed all not-so-junk items to my wife's toons, and promptly hit the 'delete' button.Deleting my toons wasn't as hard as I imagined it to be, the hardest part was getting rid of all the items I'd accumulated. I did this primarily as a way of cleaning house... after all, I hadn't been playing with my alts all that much and one or two were mere bank toons. I haven't deleted my Level 42 Tauren Hunter and Level 28 Blood Elf Rogue because I'm still considering leveling them (unlikely). Of course, what I'm really hoping for is for Blizzard to finally allow PvE to PvP transfers just so I can finally bring my Level 60 Hunter and Rogue over to my server. With two toons leveled to 70 on a PvP server, I think I've paid my dues. Whether or not that happens, I'll probably end up deleting those two toons anyway.So there, I'm making space for my Death Knight. I needed more character space because I'm reserving some character names. When Wrath is finally released, there'll be a mad rush for cool Death Knight names and I don't want to be stuck with a lame one. In a way, I'm streamlining my character inventory the way Blizzard's cleaning up the game in the expansion. I guess conditioning my mind for a Death Knight has allowed me to remorselessly excise my alts. Are you doing anything drastic to prepare for Wrath?
Italian company plans RPG for the iPhone
So the first generation of games and apps is in the iPhone's App Store, and as predicted, we've got more than our share of accelerometer races and the usual gaming standbys -- Tetris, poker, and even some nice tech demos like Andy Qua's Cube Runner. But now it's time to iterate and see if we can't start filling some of the promises a great would-be gaming platform like the iPhone offers. How about an in-depth RPG that uses the clock or camera, or a full-length platformer, or a social game that takes advantage of things like location awareness?Italian company KikiTechonlogy dropped us a note to say they're doing their part -- they're working on a full-length, console-style RPG for the iPhone called PanfobiA. Unfortunately, we hope the game's translation is better than their blog post -- they're working towards "performing not less than 100 hours in single player," and "Online Gameing Modality," which is supposed to be some type of online gameplay after the singleplayer experience. The pictures provide a little more hope -- they show a nice sense of art direction and some old-school style RPG characters.But even if PanfobiA is nothing but vaporware, they've got the right idea. For years, PDAs and mobile phones have had games, but they've all boiled down to poker, puzzles, and putrid junk. Now that the App Store is up and running, we can't wait for a developer to step up and provide a really deep and satisfying gaming experience on the platform.
Breakfast Topic: Themed names
Emy on WoW Ladies LJ is asking about +hit gear, but I'm actually more interested in the second question posted: How many among you have named all your characters the same way? I'm not a theme-namer -- most of my characters are named after whatever popped in to my head when I created them, creative or otherwise. But some players like to give all their characters the same suffix or prefix on their names, or name them all after something in common (Emy names her characters after stones, so "Garnett", "Ameythyst," and so on.I've always thought that we should have some way of tracking which player owns which character, either within the guild interface, or within the game at large -- though people probably have privacy concerns about that, it's interesting to me to see people playing different alts and how they act differently. But theme names are one way of showing that characters are all part of a larger group, without actually revealing those ties to anyone not in the know. It's a cool idea -- almost makes me wish I'd put a little more thought into my characters when starting out.So: do you have a theme behind the names of your characters? Did you plan it out or did it just happen? And is it clear (they all have the same root) or is the theme known only to you? What, if any, are the ties between the names of your different characters?
I Play WoW on Facebook
A little while back, we checked out a Facebook app to show your WoW characters in your profiles, and just this week, reader Orangelick asked for an update to the other app we linked to, called I Play WoW. Previously, I couldn't get it working, but I gave it another try, and as you can see above, it works just fine. In fact, it's pretty customizable, even moreso than what I implemented above -- you can upload a picture for your character, and even give status and description updates for every character on the roster.If you're looking for some WoW representation on Facebook, it'll do you right. The only real complaint I have is that it doesn't by default show off any armor or stats that you have (the other app, WoW Armory, does, and here's another app that's even flashier if you want to go that way), but then again, how many of your Facebook friends really want to follow your characters that closely? And there's a quick link to the Armory page for those who do. All in all, nice app, and the perfect way to show a little WoW pride on Facebook.
Improvements to Tabula Rasa's performance on the way
The most recent iteration of Tabula Rasa's Feedback Friday brought the announcement of a change to how the client will work in future deployments of the game. "The Bubble," as they call it, is an optimization that the developers hope to roll out in a future build of Tabula Rasa's Deployment 9. Until now, all static map objects such as rocks and trees loaded up front, but at the cost of decreased system performance. The Bubble will limit the client to loading only those static objects within a certain distance from the camera. The end result promises to be a client that uses less memory and delivers increased performance. They would, however, like help from the players with testing the bubble feature once it's viable. As always, Feedback Friday also addressed player questions and concerns, namely that logout countdowns in PvP will stop being exploitable in Deployment 10. As it stands, players can evade combat during clan-wars by simply logging off. Another issue in the game that's being resolved is the common complaint about how difficult it is to keep track of friends. Presently each time a player creates a new character, they must reinvite all of their friends, ad nauseam. So beginning with Deployment 9, both the friends and ignore list are now user-based instead of character-based. This change alone will eliminate a number of headaches for TR players, but check out the Feedback Friday page for more details on how the game is evolving.
The Gaming Iconoclast: Old (Un?)-Faithful
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.-- Oscar WildeThe notion of having one main character or avatar that claims the bulk of one's play time and attention is fairly straightforward. It simplifies raid life for your officers, for one thing -- avoiding loot drama and similar chaos -- and gives your friends a convenient fall-back name to call you by on Ventrilo or in person. Even those folks who are able to juggle a large number of characters at or near endgame -- whatever level that might be -- typically have one they designate as their primary one. However, that character might not be their first, or favorite. That oddly enduring but tenuous bond exists for may gamers -- the one toon you keep coming back to, even though it may have shortcomings, or be badly-equipped, or not in demand. In a similar vein to the previous installment of TGI, where we touched on the notion of changing titles altogether, we'd like to explore this notion of having a favorite character. Don't break out the Peter Gabriel yet, we're not going to be pining for lost love, or the one who got away here. Rather, let's take a look at what keeps us coming back to a particular digital minion despite the allure of new and different ones, both within a single game and among the myriad titles we can possibly choose from.
Mondolithic Studios creates oil portraits of virtual world characters
Here's another WoW/virtual character portrait studio -- we've covered a few before -- but I think it's the first place we've ever seen that will actually create an oil-on-canvas portrait of whatever character you choose. Most folks do it with digital art or illustration, but Mondolithic Studios goes the extra mile -- not only will they actually put a painting together, but they'll show up to photograph you in your element, too. Lots of artists use reference shots that you send them, but Mondolithic apparently aims for "combat photography," which means they'll have a toon in world with you to watch you do your thing.Interesting. There's only a few samples there at the moment, but they'll probably have more when and if business picks up. The style is quite interesting -- it certainly is oil paint, but rather than going realistic, it seems like it's designed more to mimic the actual look of the game, with a few weird polygon angles and designs.Unfortunately, there's no mention of price at all (you have to email them for estimates), but odds are it isn't cheap. Then again, if you're in search of a one-of-a-kind oil portrait of the character you've sunk so much time into, this just might be worth the money you put into it.[Via Massively]
Video of CCP artist's Ambulation presentation available
CCP character artist Ben Mathis gave a 30 minute presentation at the New York Comic Con last month. He talked mostly about the forthcoming Ambulation expansion, which will allow EVE Online players to leave their cockpits and walk around the interiors of space stations with customizable, 3D avatars. Ten Ton Hammer has a Flash video of the entire session.We saw some of the presented content at GDC earlier this year, but there's some new stuff in this video, too. As we've noted before, CCP isn't holding back; Ambulation is very technically impressive. It's ironic that EVE -- a game focused almost entirely on spaceships instead of face-to-face interactions -- might soon carry the most advanced avatar creation tools on the market.Players will be able to customize every thing from body fat to the materials from which their clothes are made. Female avatars will have makeup customization options so powerful that the differentiation between lip gloss and lip stick will be noticeable. New animation blending technology will enable realistic transitions between disparate facial expressions. Infinite morph points will be available when faces are molded, thanks to creative use of shaders. CCP's ambition is astonishing -- let's hope the reality lives up to the promise in the end.
LFG Armory uses Armory to match up characters and guilds
LFG Armory is a new site that's aiming to beat the official Armory at its own game. Blizzard's site, as complete as it is, is still occasionally buggy and slow, and LFG Armory is looking to give players an alternative. And it works fairly well -- while the FAQ claims that data may be a little behind (due to caching of Blizzard's information), both the guild and player profile pages look pretty good and load quickly (and if the site can stay up after we link to them here, that'll be a real sign that it's a stable server).But the real feature that makes LFG Armory something more than Blizzard's official site is that it has a guild and arena team matching system built in. Once you register your name and your characters, you can do a search for guilds and arena teams and try to find one that matches what you want -- percentage of level 70s, class makeup, and number of members. On the guild side, you can set your guild as looking, and then when you hit a match, LFG will match you up.It's an interesting system, but like all social networks, it all depends on participation -- when I looked for a guild for my Hunter on Cenarius (who could use a guild, by the way), nothing came up, because likely no one on the server was looking (for a Hunter at least). But as an alternative to the Armory, LFG is looking pretty good. If they can get people to the site and stay up, they might give Blizzard's official site a run for its money.[Via World of Raids]
Wrath will bring new forum icons
Tactial mentions on the forums that all of the Rogues (in fact, this is true about almost everyone) are still in Tier 4. When Burning Crusade first came out and we all reached 70, Tier 4 was where it was at -- some people were excited about being in Tier 4, even if they hadn't earned it yet. But nowadays, Tier 4 ain't that great, and yet all of our forum icons shows us in the (now old) armor.Drysc does say that the Armory is a click away from the forum icons, but surely Blizzard could take an afternoon and code a little customization into the icons. It seems like everyone else can render icons out of game -- why can't they? There is some good news for those looking for a forum icon update, though: Drysc says that when we're all level 80, we'll probably have new icons yet again, with shiny T7 on our characters.Which will be great -- until a few big content patches after Wrath, when T9 will be out and we'll all be whining that we're still dressed in T7. Thus goes the circle, the circle of life.
Apple to include Chinese handwriting recognition in iPhone 2.0
One of our tipsters, Kenneth, pointed us to a Chinese web page (Google translation) showing what appears to be an iPhone running some sort of handwriting recognition geared especially for Chinese characters. According to the post, this is how Apple will integrate Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) input into the iPhone. As you write the character, you are presented with a list of the possible characters on the right side of the input pane. According to MacRumors, Apple recently started hiring "Handwriting Recognition Engineers," could this mean the iPhone is coming to China soon? Only time will tell, but this should definitely give people something to hope for. Thanks, Kenneth.
He Said She Said: Hypermasculinty
He Said , She Said is a new feature at WoW Insider, which looks at the game from masculine and feminine points of view. This week we discuss the difference between bearing among male and female characters. David: What's the big idea with all the macho attitude in male characters? I wrote an article about this problem some time ago, and I'd like to see what you think about it. Many people don't even realize it's an issue though; they just assume: "This game is about killing things, therefore, as a male, I should look as violent and intimidating as possible." For those people that think this this way, that's fine; those people should have that option. But let's look at all the male avatars that are available to us in WoW and find out how many options there are for those of us who don't want to look like a football player on steroids. The answer is... one! Other than Gnomes, every single male avatar in the game is pumped full of that "I'm gonna kill you if you get in my way" attitude that I just don't want to play. Where's the old wizard who spends all his time reading books rather than pumping iron? Where's the skinny rogue who kills things by knowing when and where to put his dagger rather than slashing it around with arms the size of some tree trunks? Where's the option for a male to actually look wise and eloquent instead of brutish and arrogant?
Character planning in World of Warcraft
The building of a character in World of Warcraft can be just as painful as balancing a budget by hand without a spreadsheet. The number-crunching side of the game where you have to figure out hit ratings and mana regeneration rates and dodge percentages is something that few people can say they really enjoy. This is especially true when you are nearing the end-game in WoW and you can't just count on your fingers anymore. What if there was a tool that let you play "what if" games with your character (or your planned character) to see how different combinations of gear, talent points, gems, enchants, and even buffs would affect your character? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, that day is here.Chardev.org is not only a fantastic web application, it also has a gorgeous user interface that is simple to use. You can either build a character from scratch or import your existing character from the Armory. Once you've made it that far, it's as simple as pointing-and-clicking to swap out gear, switch gems, redistribute talent points and add or remove buff effects. The display of thirty-five essential statistics remains fixed on the left side of your screen during most phases of editing process. At the present time, it only supports gear from level thirty and up but that's no real drawback. There are way too many customization options on this site to describe every one. You really need to experience it for yourself.The Chardev site is a dream-come-true for people who enjoy playing with numbers, but hate doing the math. Check it out!
The Gaming Iconoclast: Whither Shortcomings?
Many MMO aficionados cut their roleplaying teeth on one of the many pencil-and-paper titles that formed the early generation of multi-player gaming. In addition to rolling (and rolling, and rolling, and rolling) some dice to come up with their basic stats and traits, character generation involved a lot of "wet work" when it came time to acquire skills. Often, players would bargain with their Game Master to get special dispensation for pushing the envelope.Player: I want to run this adventure as a zombie elf with three arms.GM: Okay, but if you do that, none of the other characters will trust you. Also, you will spend 50% more on shirts and body armor. Still want to do it?Thus, the mechanic of trading character flaws for enhanced abilities was born. One of the hallmarks of tabletop gaming is this trade-off -- saddling yourself or your character with a shortcoming in order to obtain an advantage elsewhere, either as a skill, or a talent, or just another way to go about Min/Maxing. The huge number of available options in some games (Vampire: The Masquerade, for instance) ensures that any player, with only a few minutes' consideration, will have an almost absolutely unique character, fully their own creation.And yet, almost without exception, the online iterations we all enjoy seem to have omitted this altogether. We are an immense legion of perfectly-formed, mentally-stable, socially-adept übermensch. Even the so-called "ugly" races -- World of Warcraft's Forsaken or Tabula Rasa'sHybrids -- don't explore the depth and breadth of this concept too deeply. Racial traits and differentiation are the merest tip of this particular iceberg.Why does this rich milieu, this fecund ground of roleplay fodder and character diversity, languish? (And who left this thesaurus on my desk?)
