Guild calendars implemented in the WoW Armory
by Alex Ziebart 
Oct 20th 2008 at 7:00PM
When I saw this on the official WoW website, I sort of rolled my eyes because the Armory hasn't updated my Shadow Priest's gear or spec in months. How can it possibly keep up with the calendar? I did a little poking around with it, and I was pleasantly surprised. I created a new event in-game on our guild calendar, and it showed up on the Armory about ten minutes later. I accepted the event on my alt on the Armory, and that showed up in-game almost instantly. If the features keeps that kind of stability long term, I will definitely appreciate having it. Little conveniences like this really help the community feel of guilds.
Now to bug people about integrating this into Facebook and the like.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
frobishlumpkin Oct 20th 2008 7:12PM
Nice and all but I would prefer if I could see my *character* since the patch...
Binya Oct 20th 2008 7:37PM
AMEN. My profile hasn't been updated since last Tuesday, be nice if they fixed that first before adding in new things...
Cowbane Oct 20th 2008 7:50PM
Well, The Armory is working awesome for me. As a matter of fact it's predicting the future for me. Two days from now and I have full epics it says.
Rhaycen Oct 20th 2008 7:18PM
Our guild installed Group Calendar v4.2.1 the second we had a somewhat stable version of GC. The ingame version is nice, but completely misses the main function we use GC for.
Having people sign up for events rather then having to sign people up for your events.
ObiChad Oct 20th 2008 9:05PM
Being able to leave a comment and also being able to sign up as tank/dps/heal are other features of GroupCalendar that make it superior to the in game one. Here's hoping the devs figure that out.
D.O.T. Oct 21st 2008 9:18AM
Yeah, I agree that they need to add a feature that allows us to leave notes on the calendar as well as letting us ADD ourselves.
We had a need member join our guild and now they can't add themselves to the Kara raid scheduled because they need to be invited and the person who made that raid isn't on to invite him.
Cead Oct 20th 2008 7:23PM
I have to agree with Rhaycen. This is great if you already have a set date and time for a group, but if I have to be invited then this seems to be about worse than useless. If the in game calendar had integrated the ability to simply put up an event and have those interested sign up it would have moved a long way about in game use, as it is - it is better to have the add-on.
G Oct 20th 2008 7:32PM
Found this a couple of days ago (there's a blurb about Armory access at the very bottom of WoW > Info > Basics > Player Calendar) and tried to provide a link from our guild web site. Unfortunately, you have to be looking at one of your characters to view the calendar so there is no generic way to just link to a general "guild" view of events.
And for some reason, the WoW website keeps insisting I am in Europe, even though I'm in California. This had my weeks starting on Monday instead of Sunday until I re-selected English at the bottom of the page. The official Wrath page was doing the same thing, sending me to the European WoW site with every link.
I agree this makes sense and is a good start. CalDAV support would be awesome if the Armory would keep our login long enough (more than 30 seconds) to serve it remotely with any reliability.
More..
http://www.wowarmory.com/faq-calendar.xml
dave Oct 20th 2008 8:56PM
my biggest problem with the in game calendar is not only what people have already said
its also the ability to mass invite that gcal provides that in-game does not.
make the in-game calendar able to advertise to your guild publically, without the need to "invite" people to it, and once people have been signed up and approved, mass invite them on the day. who the hell wants to click each member of a 25 man raid and select invite?
Evi Oct 20th 2008 9:14PM
Would be nice if they would fix the guild bank. I've never been able to access that via the armory. The calendar works, though.
ObiChad Oct 20th 2008 10:35PM
Thinking about this a little more, the in game calendar makes a great personal calendar, it's just not a very good guild calendar. Anyway, might be good to change the article to reflect that the calendar is accessed from your character's page and not from your guild's page.
Sloanbone Oct 20th 2008 9:43PM
Grats Blizz. Now stop dicking with the website and fix arena and all the other issues with 3.0.
PeeWee Oct 20th 2008 10:09PM
The in-game calendar is 100% phail.
You can't create events that people singn up for, unless you send invites to everyone you want there. Huh?
There is no way, other than manually, to control what roles gets filled for the event (tank, DPS, healing).
Right now its only use is a nice in-game way to remind me when the DF comes to town, that's it.
Lesley G Oct 21st 2008 12:08AM
"You can't create events that people singn up for, unless you send invites to everyone you want there. Huh?"
Yes you can. Just send out a mass invite for anyone of level for an event, call it a signup, and let them accept. You can sort them out from there. You can mark people "standby" or "out" if you wish.
It's not "%100 phail" and has been very useful so far for my guild's smaller needs.
Neil Oct 24th 2008 10:45AM
PeeWee's right.
You can only mass invite if you're an officer of the guild. For ordinary members "CanCreateGuildEvent()" returns false leaving the mass invite button greyed out.
There is an option for the guildmaster to allow other ranks to use mass invite, in the code it is the 14th permission between the ability to "Modify Guild Info" and "Repairs", but the guild control page is missing GuildControlPopupFrameCheckbox14 so it can't be changed.
So if I want to schedule a raid or an instance and try to drum up enough people, I have to find an officer and ask them to create it.
And it's ridiculous that it doesn't do timezone conversion when you tell it to show its clock in local time.
It's just a pity that it uses the same control button that Group Calendar uses or we could use both till Blizzard's either gets over its teething troubles or people write addons to make it useable.
uncaringbear Oct 21st 2008 12:03AM
I'm relieved that I'm not the only one who finds the Blizz calendar to be useless. After using Group Calendar, the Blizzard version is complete fail. Having to invite people before they can even see your event is poor design.
Evi Oct 21st 2008 9:32AM
Agreed. I had my own issues with GroupCalendar (problems with syncing, etc), but they had the functionality we needed. We used to have a raiding alliance with another guild. GC was priceless for coordinating signups.
The new Blizz calendar just doesn't have enough of what I'm looking for. I want to be able to post an event and allow anyone to sign up for it. I shouldn't have to limit it to a certain rank of the guild. I'm in a fairly large guild, and we've already run into issues because it limits you to inviting 100 people.
Vlatch Oct 22nd 2008 12:27PM
I am in agreement. I am underwhelmed to say the least about the Calendar system. I setup our first run...17 signups for 10 spots. I can't tell when they accepted. I can't set limits for numbers of players. I can't just have an event and have people in guild choose to signup (I have to "invite" them).
When creating a system like this, did developers even look at addons like Guild Event Manager before creating it.
I'm very disappointed. As a raid leader, this has made me judge/jury/executioner when it comes to raid selects. We usually did selection largely based on class limits and time of signup in the past.
I've made suggestions for improvement on the suggestions forum. Here's hoping it's improved soon.
matt Oct 21st 2008 12:38AM
I hope they have been working on this a long time. I know we've all wanted a safe and decent working calendar after the vulnerabilities of stuff like GEM.
However, I wonder if this is in correlation to the fact that warhammer had a calendar from day one?
Rowtan Oct 21st 2008 8:53AM
The other thing the new Blizz calendar fails to do, afaik, is cater for guild alliances. It's too big and clunky looking too. Group Calendar does this nicely thank you very much.