stormshield
Latest
Warlords of Draenor: Warspear and Stormshield
In Warlords of Draenor, the island of Ashran isn't just home to a potential paradise for world PvP -- it's also the location of both Alliance and Horde faction hub cities. City may be too strong of a word, however -- the two areas are more like souped up bases of operation than proper capital cities like Shattrath or Dalaran. Less giant city, more stronghold -- and slightly more spread out than the garishly charming Shrines in Mists of Pandaria -- both Warspear and Stormshield are meant to be not necessarily a home away from home, but a centrally located area for commerce and trade. Each stronghold contains portals to every capital city for your respective faction, as well as profession outposts, an auction house, an inn, and a hub of activity for the nearby PvP action in Ashran. In a way, it's kind of nice that the action is nearby. Shattrath was a fun hub city, but it was nowhere near Halaa. Dalaran was great, but having to hop a portal to get to Wintergrasp was never the most elegant solution for players that wanted to duke it out with other players. Still, one of the major concerns for players is simply the strongholds themselves, and their proximity to areas that some people might not want to partake in. So what are these strongholds really like?
Storm Shield is like having a sophisticated weather radio on your iPhone
Storm Shield, from E.W. Scripps Company, is a US$4.99 app that keeps track of severe weather for you. It supports up to five locations (besides your current location) so you can keep track of family, friends, or your vacation home. If your location (U.S. only) falls inside an alert area from the National Weather Service, you'll get an alarm and an iOS message whether the app is open or not. It has a Follow Me mode, so it knows where you are and will give you alerts even if you haven't pre-set the location. There are several types of alerts available, like fire, wind, hurricane, thunderstorms, ice, snow and more. Because the GPS tracking features can take a hit on battery life, you can set a throttle on the app so you see a scale between location accuracy and battery life. Then you can choose the intensity of the tracking. I think it's best to run the app when you think the weather will deteriorate. Running it all the time will certainly shorten your battery longevity. The app is easy to set up, and it's simple to go change your default location. The app includes a detailed radar map for the whole US which is zoomable. You can view the map in a plain map view or in a more detailed satellite view. You can add layers to show all types of conditions like flooding, tornadoes, high winds etc. There isn't much to argue with here. There are plenty of apps that will give you storm warnings, but this app has warnings as its main purpose, and it handles the job well. With the ability to save multiple locations, it is a pretty handy information tool to have as we approach the time of the years most violent storms in the U.S. The app is not universal, so does not look its best on an iPad, which is a shame because a case can be made to have that same functionality on that larger screen. %Gallery-159707%
