Armory updated to include stats and achievements

by Mike Schramm Nov 26th 2008 at 11:00AM

Blizzard has updated the Armory with a new Wrath of the Lich King theme, and achievements and stat information for each player. It's very cool -- not only can you check out what each player has done so far (including all and recent achievements, and all of the statistics available ingame), but you can also compare players to each other, both in the stats and achievements pages, and you even get, as you can see above, the totals for everything, so you can see just how "achieved" you are.

Very cool. We've been expecting this one since patch 3.0.2 came out (if it's in the game, why wouldn't it be in the Armory?) but obviously other priorities rose to the top before now. Blizzard did a great job with it, though -- they can all head off to the holiday weekend now without worrying about the update.

And then, when they get back, maybe we can haz an official API?

Update: Just noticed that Blizzard also has a news feed on the main page when you log in that tells you about goings on and realm firsts for your character specifically, from who's downed the heroics recently to the first characters to 80 on your own realm. I wonder what they'll report on when all the firsts have been taken, but we'll have to see -- that might be an interesting feed to follow (they provide RSS for it as well).

Tags: achievements, armory, blizzard, design, feats of strength, FeatsOfStrength, stats, updates, wrath, wrath-of-the-lich-king

Filed under: Odds and ends, Blizzard, Leveling, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)

Laynne Nov 26th 2008 12:00PM

Hehe what a great visual, a little shammy with velcro shoes :)

I've noticed the same type of thing. I've been on 1 arena team, and played 10 matches total ever (all in 2v2). But when I look at my stats, it lists things for 3v3 and 5v5, which doesn't make sense...unless my character is doing something after I log off I don't know about...

JohnC Nov 26th 2008 12:34PM

same im a new 70 but under my stats i have hundred of 5v5 3v3 2v2 kills but under the actual arena HK tab i have none:S and my biggest hit is 29k....(im a hunter, i swearr i never hit that high)

FenSat Nov 26th 2008 12:59PM

@JohnC

Those hits are likely either from the bombing runs (those count) or the Wrathgate event (the buff increases damage to insane levels). My lock's biggest hit was around 39k and the biggest hit I sustained was around 37k (I aggro'ed Puttress during the Wrathgate event...Puttress hits hard...)

The only thing I'm not liking about this is the wealth information. I'm not that wealthy, but I'm not necessarily a fan of making my characters' income common knowledge. While it's true that it would be difficult for someone with malicious intent to link a character's name to an account name, I really don't like possibly providing an additional incentive for those people to even try it. I can see the potential for wealthy characters to become targets for hacking...or at least for slacker friends/relatives/guildies to bum gold from. lol

ustilago Nov 26th 2008 8:20PM

That's nothing. I've got a hunter that's supposedly picked somebody's pocket over 2,000 times. Of course, seeing as how she's equipped with a Darkmoone Lunacy card, she DOES suffer frequent episodes of kleptomania.

Jason Nov 26th 2008 11:38AM

They need to add a Reputation bar to Horde Expedition (and whatever the Alliance equivalent is) since that's the actual faction you have to raise in order to buy from the Quartermaster.

Cubby Nov 26th 2008 11:34AM

Now if they could just make it so I could pin and compare any toon I want again instead of having to log in and only compare my own. Ideas?

Darkwind Nov 26th 2008 3:25PM

If you select your character and change to the Achievements tab, there is an option (with a green + next to the name) to "Add a Character to Compare".

If you use that, you can compare any character you wish to your own, as long as Armory can find the character. It doesn't have to be on your server, in your guild, or related to your own characters at all.

Good luck.

Faldrath Nov 26th 2008 11:35AM

Just a tiny nitpick, but the Armory still seems to be missing glyphs. Add that, and then it'll be pretty much complete.

Oreo Nov 26th 2008 11:50AM

Still waiting to see ppls profession recipes, but this is a nice change in the right direction

Cap Nov 26th 2008 12:19PM

/agree

I've been waiting on professions on the armory since, well, since it was released.

Cy Nov 26th 2008 2:56PM

Last thing I need is a screen full of whispers or mails asking me to make crap for random people when I log in.

If I want my recipes known to the player base at large, I'll link it in trade chat. That's why tradeskills are linkable now.

Myria Nov 26th 2008 12:15PM

Ah yes, because armory trolls didn't have enough to use in their ad hominems. I suppose if it replaces arena ratings as the troll device of choice it could at least be a tiny bit more entertaining.

"Hey, you haven't gotten the cat lady achievement, therefore nothing you say on any subject matters!"

You can look up your own achievements in-game, other then for armory trolling or laughable e-peen stroking, why in god's name would anyone care about someone else's achievements?

I can't even figure out why anyone would care about their own "achievements" (most of which aren't "achievements" in any real sense, let alone anything to be proud of), let alone those of others.

Kyol Nov 26th 2008 12:36PM

Sweet, it's finally not broken-as-sin in Safari any more, from the brief glance I just gave it. (The item popups used to be anchored to the wrong part of the document, so they'd show up where the item was when the screen first rendered, not after you scrolled, but a bit more complex than that.)

Kyol Nov 26th 2008 12:37PM

And I spoke too soon - the top tabs (Character/Talents/etc) aren't quite displaying right, but it's still a ton more functional than the old one was.

zappo Nov 26th 2008 12:45PM

I think I might go die from hogger just to see that as a filled in statistic. Might be tricky on a level 71 rogue though...

Daniel S. Reichenbach Nov 26th 2008 1:04PM

@Mike Schramm:
There is an error in your post. The WoW armory already has an API. While you will see a full featured character page when you open the armory in your browser, the armory actually publishes XML data for everything, including arena teams, characters, guilds, and items. Your browser only loads an XSL stylesheet to make the XML look shiny.

There also is a PHP class (with and without database backend) to retrieve store the armory XML data. I am the maintainer of this PHP API for the armory and have released version 0.4.1 today. It supports achievements and statistics, and can be downloaded from my website at http://www.marenkay.com/

The 0.4.1 release post is here -> http://www.marenkay.com/tipsresources/programming/phparmory-041-call-to-arms-released/

Cy Nov 26th 2008 3:03PM

Don't try explaining technical stuff to Mr. Schramm. It tends to confuse him. (Anyone recall the "hacked" authenticator account?)

Plus he's a bit lazy about it. All he had to do was ask anyone who programs any of the player stats websites and they could have told him this.

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