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WoW: The Armory gets an Upgrade, MMO Devs take note.
Posted June 8, 2007 by Opi3If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Along with last weeks small patch, the World of Warcraft Armory got a significant upgrade. What’s the Armory? Well according to Blizzard:
The Armory is a vast searchable database of information for World of Warcraft - taken straight from the real servers, updated in real time, and presented in a user-friendly interface. Since the Armory pulls its data from the actual game servers, it is the most comprehensive and up-to-date database on the characters, arena teams, guilds, items, dungeons, raids, bosses, and faction rewards of World of Warcraft in existence.
It’s been in open beta for some time and if you are a WoW player and haven’t used it its worth a look. Even more so now. Through some sort or real time relational database craziness ( i can’t even begin to imagine the backend ) you can now pin your profile and even search for upgrades to slotted equipment. Complete with tooltips showing you what the pinned profile has equipped in that slot.
It’s a huge leap forward for the functionality of the system and i can’t say enough about how cool it is. In combination with the zeitgeist for quests and craftables they released some time ago the official site is, by design, becoming the best place to get and track information about the game. The lesson here is that MMO’s in development and looking forward are going to have to provide a new level of interactivity in order to stay competitive. EverQuest 2 has had a similar system for sometime now, with characters items and such. Going so far as to include complete guild sites and even chat rooms that link into in-game chat. While all of Blizzard’s ideas may not be totally original, as per usual the execution is masterful. The Armory is smoother and easier to use than EQ’s offering, and just plain looks better. The system is a bit sluggish at times but hey, it’s beta.
I should note there are some concerns about privacy apparently being raised on the official message boards, but almost all of them can be addressed by a simple opt out option. I personally don’t see the big deal.
The Armory Update page contains the specifics on custom searches and the best way to maximize your use. The Armory FAQ handles basic questions and how-to’s.
Comments
Kevin Says:That new armory is pretty slick. I played WoW for 2 years, and quit right before they released this 
I keep thinking it would be fun to make a return to the game one of these days, but then I wonder if it would even feel the same … with all my old guildmates having moved on to purples, flying mounts, and what not.
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