Posts with tag armory

Mists of Pandaria Beta: Scarlet Monastery revamp

by Megan O'Neill Apr 8th 2012 at 6:00PM

While the level 90 heroic versions aren't available on the beta servers yet, MMO-Champion and Wowhead both took a look into the lower level version of Scarlet Monastery to see all the revamps. The current four wings of Scarlet Monastery have been slimmed down into two wings, the Scarlet Cathedral and the Scarlet Halls, removing most of the unnecessary trash while keeping what made the monastery a great set of dungeons to begin with.

Scarlet Cathedral now starts with the graveyard. Interrogator Vishas is no longer there; it's just Bloodmage Thalnos, now outside the mausoleum. Before Thalnos among the mobs are Scarlet Flamethrowers, who drop explosive cannisters that players can use to damage other mobs.

Filed under: News items, Mists of Pandaria

WoW Rookie: How to look up your character online

by Michael Gray Jul 21st 2011 at 6:00PM

New around here? WoW Rookie has your back! Get all our collected tips, tricks and tactics for new players in the WoW Rookie Guide. WoW Rookie is about more than just being new to the game; it's about checking out new classes, new playstyles, and new zones.

If you're anything like me, you like to take a moment here and there to check out your character online without actually logging into the game. Maybe you're on a break at work, just doing background research into gear, or otherwise just goofing off on a computer. Essentially, you'd like to look at your character without getting in the middle of the game.

The Armory was a common way to share information about your character with other people. All of your official forum posts link automatically to your Armory profile, and it's easy to post to a link to your Armory on unofficial forums and emails. Over its existence, the Armory has continued to become more powerful. It can help you find potential upgrades, find out where gear dropped, and more. Along the way, of course, the Armory also became more complicated.

While Blizzard is transitioning away from the classic Armory, most of the functionality still exists just fine on the Battle.net WoW site. Here's a walk-through of some basic things you can use the Battle.net Armory to do.

Filed under: WoW Rookie

WoW Armory now displaying mounts and pets

by Mathew McCurley Jul 8th 2011 at 1:00PM

The World of Warcraft Armory/community site has been updated with a useful new feature showing players the mounts and companion pets they have collected so far. You'll be able to see where each pet or mount comes from or who drops them, a picture of each, and even a listing of not-yet-collected pets and mounts, making it easier to be an achievement hunter or collector.

The armory has changed drastically from its original interpretation and implementation, adding features over time that give players a more cohesive out-of-game experience. What is most interesting are the potential tie-ins later on with the previously announced WoW APIs coming down the pipe in the near future; we are still unsure of the amount of data that developers will be able to access from the WoW armory. I would not be surprised to see collected pet and mount data also being part of that package.

We've got a pretty full-featured armory at this point. What other types of data do you think the armory could or should provide? Perhaps next we'll see a tabard and title tab, showing players' collected tabards and a scroll list of titles earned. The sky is the limit, apparently.

Filed under: Blizzard

Blizzard improves the WoW community site (again)

by Michael Sacco May 7th 2011 at 8:00PM

Blizzard debuted the new World of Warcraft community site a while back, and it's definitely a huge improvement over the old one, which was really outdated and rarely helpful. The new site has a built-in Armory, better forums, a fairly robust Game Guide, and even regular dev blogs to give some insight on the development process.

Apparently the improvements don't stop there, though, as Blizzard recently announced a laundry list of updates for the site, including:

Rotatable 3-D models for gear in the item database
Boss info pages, loot tables, and ability information
Improved, easier-to-read search results
And more!

Check out the full list of changes and updates after the break.

Filed under: Blizzard

How far have you progressed in Cataclysm?

by Dawn Moore Feb 25th 2011 at 2:00PM

The other day, I logged on to an old realm of mine to chat for a bit with a few friends and old guildmates. (I do this periodically, since I'm not a big fan of using Real ID for anyone other than very close friends.) Whenever I'm there, I casually poke around on a character that was once my prized raiding toon in early Wrath of the Lich King. "Poking around" consists of organizing my bank and doing about three to five quests. I figure it would be nice to have another 85 that I could play casually, but I lose interest in it too quickly.

Anyway, at some point in the middle of a conversation with a mage friend, I said, "At a rate of three quests per night that I actually log in, I should be 85 in two years."

"It really gives you some perspective on how much you have to play this game, doesn't it?" he responded.

I hadn't been serious about the statement I made, but it made me think about the hours I had to play to get to 85 on my main. It occurred to me that if you only play WoW for an hour or so every few days, it would probably take a couple months to get to level 85 from 80, and that's only if you're completely focused each time you log in.

This got me wondering how far into Cataclysm everyone else is.

How far have you progressed in Cataclysm?
I'm leveling my main.	764 (4.9%)
I'm leveling my alts.	2321 (15.0%)
I'm gearing up my character(s) in normal and heroic dungeons or unrated battlegrounds.	3946 (25.5%)
I'm raiding normal 10- or 25-man dungeons on one or more characters.	5887 (38.0%)
I'm raiding heroic 10- or 25-man dungeons on one or more characters.	1211 (7.8%)
I'm PvPing in rated battlegrounds or arena.	597 (3.9%)
I'm waiting for the next major content patch.	764 (4.9%)

World of Warcraft community site preview now live

by Robin Torres Nov 5th 2010 at 2:00PM

A preview of the new World of Warcraft community site is now live. It has several tabs that lead you to a blog, the forums (complete with the latest blue posts), services, and a preview of what the armory will look like when fully implemented, among other things. This is the testing phase and also the prelude to a shutdown of the current forums in favor of the ones on the new community site. The full transfer of forum functionality is scheduled to occur sometime this month.

This seems to be a step in the right direction for Blizzard. I really like what I've seen so far. Try putting your character's name in the search field to bring up the armory preview. The search results are in a new format that is easier to search through, in my opinion, as well as a better way to critique yourself at a glance. And the community managers seem to be having a good time with it as well.

Note: The Off Topic forums have not been transferred to the community site and there are no plans to do so.

Update: Forum bans are also not being transferred to the updated forums.

The full text of Blizzard's announcement is after the break.

Filed under: Blizzard, News items

WoW Mobile Armory gets 3-D model viewer, activity feeds and more

by Mathew McCurley Sep 22nd 2010 at 5:00PM

The newest version of the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory has been released on iTunes, featuring a 3-D model viewer for all characters, activity feeds similar to the ones on the web version of the armory, and optimizations for Apple's iOS 4.0.

Included in the update is a cool feature called screenshot mode, allowing you to take cool pictures of your characters in front of lots of backdrops, including the racial capital cities. The screenshot mode will even remove all of the interface elements from the phone, giving you a clean shot.

This update could be laying the groundwork for the newly revealed mobile guild chat service available through the armory app, potentially unlocked in the near future for subscribers to Blizzard's Remote Auction House service. Hopefully, more light will be shed on this functionality in the near future. Until then, get updating, because these new features are pretty neat. Previously, I would have had to bookmark the armory's RSS feed for my characters and open them in Safari on the iPhone, but with the new activity feeds built right into the armory app, things have gotten a lot less clunky.

Gallery: WoW Mobile Armory for iPhone

Filed under: News items

Remote Auction House beta testing ends

by Alex Ziebart Jun 7th 2010 at 10:00PM

The Remote Auction House's beta testing has come to a close this evening and is now officially a live, paid-only service. For $2.99 every 30 days, you can buy, sell and trade from anywhere in the world via browser or iPhone. Well, anywhere that you have an internet connection. While non-paying users can still view the auction house, only subscribers can actually do business via the Remote Auction House. Check the official Remote Auction House page for a breakdown of the differences between free and paid users.

Do note that this subscription fee is only for the Remote Auction House. Every player can still use the auction house in-game as a part of their usual $15/month. If you're interested in ponying up the $2.99/month but didn't get a chance to try out the app during the testing phase, you can check out our galleries below for a little preview of the service.

Gallery: World of Warcraft Mobile Auction House

Gallery: World of Warcraft Remote Auction House -- Web

Filed under: Blizzard, Economy

Gold Capped: Using the new armory auction house

by Basil Berntsen May 26th 2010 at 6:00PM

Want to get Gold Capped? Every week, Basil Berntsen takes a short break from trying to build a raiding guild on US Drenden-A to write up a guide that will help you achieve the goal of acquiring 214,748 gold, 36 silver and 48 copper. Well, technically that's just a symbolic milestone. The goal is making gold, no matter how much you have or how much you want. Got feedback, questions or hate mail? Email Basil!

This game is constantly changing. Every new patch, Blizzard delivers new content, new rules and new interfaces. We've seen some major quality of life improvements in the auction house of late, and these are continuing. The latest one (which is still in beta) is that the mobile armory now lets you trade on the AH from anywhere using either an app on an iPhone/iPod touch or your browser.

Right now, for testing purposes, we're limited to 25 actions a day (purchases, bids, auctions), but we can clear out our mail! To be honest, that's the killer feature for me. I spend an inordinate amount of time clearing out my mail. The majority of my profits in, say, vellums will come from sales of singles. I list stacks of all sizes, but the singles are what sell best. On my mid-range population server, I can easily sell 200 of these a day, and that adds up to a lot of time watching my mailbox empty.

Filed under: Economy, Gold Capped

Pimp My Profile: Lissaris, arcane mage

by Christian Belt Mar 24th 2010 at 9:00AM

Welcome to Pimp My Profile, the column in which the WoW.com staff turns zeroes into heroes. Don't think you're performing where you should be? Not sure how your class/spec is supposed to be gearing up? E-mail us with your Armory link, and you might be next to receive our help!

I've traditionally used a modified frostfire build, which has always worked well for me. I recently dual spec'd and tried an arcane build, but I wasn't able to put out as much DPS. Any suggestions on how I can improve to deliver maximum DPS?
- Lissaris

I wasn't quite sure how to classify you in the title of the post, seeing as you've only recently respecced into arcane. The good news is that most of the tweaks I'll be suggesting today will work for both specs. Lets hear it for stat homogenization!

Filed under: Mage

Breakfast Topic: Presenting the ever-accessible auction house!

by Kelly Aarons Feb 5th 2010 at 8:00AM

So a few days ago, word was released that Blizzard is working on a new feature for the ever-changing armory...they're going to add auction house access without being in-game!

Now, I don't know about you, but I find that all kinds of awesome. I love playing the auction house (it's oddly satisfying...don't ask), and have many times in the past simply logged on to check my auctions to see how they were doing. Personally, I find this to be an amazingly convenient ability for the armory. Unfortunately, the dreaded 'p-word' has reared its ugly head:

Premium.

Most of us know that 'premium features' will usually equal 'if you want it, let's see some green.' I have to say that I wasn't super impressed with the idea of paying for yet another feature, but in today's world of micro-transactions and the like, would you pay extra money for that kind of convenience? Take the iPhone app, for example. Say the 'freemium' version is, well, free, and the premium armory--complete with auction house tracking--is...an extra five dollars. As far as micro-transactions go, that's not too shabby. Honestly? I'd pay it.

So what do you guys think? Are you excited about the auction house tracking in the WoW Armory? Do you think it's the worst idea ever? If you like it, would you pay for it? Yes/no/banana?

Discuss!

Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Lich King's loot table revealed

by Eliah Hecht Feb 2nd 2010 at 8:41PM

This is surprising: the entire loot table for the Arthas fight, on both 10 and 25-man (normal and hard, judging by the item levels) has just been posted to the Armory. Edit: the loot is also on Wowhead now, complete with 3D models. As tipster Micah noted, if this is really the whole loot table, it consists entirely of armor tokens, weapons, and Invincible's Reins (which is listed as a guaranteed drop on 25-man heroic). The focus on weapons isn't exactly new for raid end bosses, but it's interesting nonetheless.

I haven't had a chance to go through the whole list yet, but as far as I can tell, there aren't any of the nifty proc-based items we've been seeing elsewhere in Icecrown. It's pure stats on Arthas drops (though Alex points out that ~~they all~~ the 25-man heroic items have flavor text). Still, I wouldn't say no to a nice Tainted Twig of Nordrassil for my druid.

Which one's your favorite?

Filed under: Raiding

Blizzard announces upcoming premium AH through Armory feature

by Matthew Rossi Feb 2nd 2010 at 2:45PM

It's fairly common knowledge that Blizzard has kept updating the Armory with new features and new apps. Now, Bornakk comes forth with news of an app that will be to the armory what a giant Steve Allen pog was to pogs: behold, the ultimate feature! In the glorious future, we'll be able to work our auctions from the Armory itself or apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. Yes, one more step closer to actually living full time in Azeroth. I have my eyes on a nice cottage outside of Elwynn, myself.

In all seriousness, I know a lot of people who would probably club me over the head and hand me over to a cabal of secretive necromancers for this feature. No news yet on exactly how it's going to work, and Bornakk does point out that with the amount of work it will be to develop, you're probably going to have to pay extra for it.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don't have an exact release date yet. It's important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we'll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won't disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won't release it until it meets the quality standards that we've set for our other features and services.

See the rest of the announcement after the break.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Add-Ons

Blizzard launches Facebook Armory app

by Eliah Hecht Feb 1st 2010 at 9:00PM

Earlier this evening we received a tip (thanks, Taylor) that Blizzard has launched a WoW Armory Facebook application. It promises to publish data about your WoW characters to all your Facebook buddies in real time. I figured I'd give it a spin, not so much because I want to spam my friends with it as because I'm curious what they've come up with.

You can see the results in the gallery below. Here are my brief impressions:

It's a bit scary that it asks you to log in with your Battle.net account, but if you look at the URL of the popup window it is in fact from us.battle.net, one of the legitimate domains. Still, I'm not sure it's good training for users for Blizzard to ask us to log in within random popups.
The login form does not ask for your authenticator.
It doesn't tell you this in the brief description, but you choose up to five characters for the app to report to your followers. It doesn't just indiscriminately report the progress of your latest bank alt.
By default, it publishes updates on your characters to your Facebook feed, but that box is easily unchecked (fortunately).
It also by default posts to your feed that you've installed the app, which is something I can't forgive a Facebook (or Twitter) developer for. If I really want to tell all my friends I'm using your app, I'll tell them. Don't do it for me. At least this too is an option that can be unchecked.

After choosing your characters and what you want to show, you may be worried that it's not working, but just give it a minute - it doesn't populate immediately. Mine started showing data in about ten minutes.

Overall, assuming they manage to make it work, if you want your Facebook friends to know about your WoW characters, this is the app for you. If not, why are you still reading this post? Anyway, I'm glad to see Blizzard following through on some of the promise the Armory has always showed, even if I don't approve of all their methods. Innovation is always welcome.

Gallery: Armory Facebook app

Filed under: Blizzard

Pimp My Profile: Shippleton, beast mastery hunter

by Brian Wood Jan 20th 2010 at 1:00PM

Welcome to Pimp My Profile, the column in which the WoW.com staff turns zeroes into heroes. Don't think you're performing where you should be? Not sure how your class/spec is supposed to be gearing up? E-mail us with your Armory link, and you might be next to receive our help!

Hi, I'm 80 and I've been so for weeks. I've been running random heroics for gear and I followed your guides for my pet specs (though I think I messed up on my Tenacity). My DPS barely cracks 1000. As far as I know, as a hunter, there is almost no excuse for this. Please help me.

-Shippleton

Thanks for writing in, Shippleton. You are wise enough to understand that your DPS is lower than it should be and intelligent enough to ask questions. It seems likely that you are also uncommonly good-looking, a trait shared by most hunters. You are to be applauded for taking the first step down the road to becoming a death dealer, which is the right of every hunter!

Right off the bat 1k DPS seems sufficiently low that I suspect we should be taking a look at your shot rotation as well as your talents and gear. In the interest of science I went ahead and ran Utgarde Pinnacle heroic with some extremely understanding friends while I was completely naked except for my gun, shirt, and tabard. My lack of mana kept me in viper for about 50% of the fights, and I ended up at about 1,100 DPS for the run. So that gives us an absolute bottom DPS benchmark.

Filed under: Hunter, Items, Analysis / Opinion, How-tos, Guides, Talents, Pimp My Profile

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