It seems that the guys at Rupture are still at it!
They just made it possible to auto generate a nice banner with the click of a button for each of your World of Warcraft characters. I think this is really funny as I had just submitted a feedback for not even two weeks ago with this exact suggestion. 
Recently, Blizzard released a website, the Armory, that gives users access to character information ranging from what profession skills they have to what they are currently wearing. This is an ability that Rupture had recently made available through it’s service.
So, what are the differences between these two services? There are a few that are quite noticable, let’s take a look at the Armory first. The obvious advantages are that Blizzard is providing the data, so it’s going to be accurate and clean (versus other sources that might not be so trust-worthy). The most notable advantage is easily that the data is being pulled directly from their servers, so no add-ons are necessary. The downside to using the Armory is the lack of information. Sure, it has overall profession numbers (i.e.: “175 of 250″) but no specifics like what patterns that character has learned. It also does not show a character’s inventory, which to come players might prove to be a good thing.
Rupture on the other hand, does show things like what patterns a character has learned and what items they have in their bag and bank! It also allows for user interaction such as uploading images, befriending characters or leaving comments on other character and player profiles. It’s a lot more like Facebook or (/cringe) MySpace in those ways. The disadvantages are that you do have to install an executable which has two functions. The first is to upload gathered data to update the website, the second is actually a really neat chat client. It uses Jabber multi-user chat so one can use iChat or Meebo to talk with friends on the Rupture network. This executable also installs an add-on, the one that gathers the data about your characters as you play. Further, the executable even keeps the add-on up to date, so you never even have to touch it! So that part can be viewed as both a negative and possitive.
Overall, if Blizzard wants to stay competitive, they will have to implement some sort of user interaction (like being able to have a page for each player where the player can choose whether or not to claim all of their characters on a page. Meaning, they could claim all of the characters that other players know belong to that player, but if there is one or two that the player plays in secret, they don’t have to claim them on the player page. Uploading images seems to be a must to be so that proud players can show off their hard work. Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, if Blizzard were to expand on the amount of data that was shown for each character and gave some sort of chat interface into the game (like guild chat only or the like), then they would be WAY ahead of the game.
Well, everyone else has talked about it. Maybe I should too. I’ve been trying to find someone with a Rupture account by searching the website since it’s still in beta. In order to obtain an account, someone who already has one must invite you. Not as fun as it sounds. I’m really wanting to give my guild the ability to sign up for the service if they want to.
While searching the Interweb for someone with an account, I found another website which might prove to be interesting: Warcraft Social. I believe this site to be more for actually finding people to play with and announcing the presence of your characters on your MySpace page whereas Rupture is more for maintaining the stats of your characters like WoW Roster does. I enjoy the thought of being able to go to a website in order to see if any of my guild members knows how to create a certain piece of armor or perform a certain enchantment. Now I would like to enjoy the ability to do that instead of just the thought.
Overall, I believe Shawn Fanning’s new website to be a very sharp-looking piece of work. Now if they would just open the doors a little wider to allow those of us who truly want to help test the site, the world would increase in its “better place” points, if only by a few.
I just called Fantasy Flight Games to see if they had any further information on when the game will be released other than “Coming in September.”
They unfortunately did.
Looks like it will realisticly be arriving in stores and homes around the third week of October. That was a sad thing to hear, considering how long we’ve been waiting for it thus far. I almost would have prefered that they not announce this until a month away, just releasing press news about it instead of an entire product preview page. Looks like we had best settle in I suppose. At least we have the expansion’s manual available for reading already!
Finally, Fantasy Flight Games is releasing an expansion to the already fantastic boardgame, World of Warcraft called Shadow of War. The best part, aside from the impressive improvements? It’s only $25! It should be available sometime in September.
Having played the game as often as I have, I have noticed a few holes in the game. Things that draw your attention to the fact that you’re playing a board game instead of toward the idea that you’re controlling the fate of a character who is constantly striving to improve on his abilities. This expansion seems to be geared toward closing some of those holes.
I’ve been interested in overly complex World of Warcraft macros for a while now, but have not really had the time to investigate what can be done. Yesterday, I came up with a pretty cool feature, so I thought, as have the few people with whom I’ve share it with so far.
Alright, alright, so what do you have?
Well, from time to time, most players with create a new character or two. I know I have and still do on occasion. The most frustrating part is having to manually re-enter all of your friends into your newly created character’s Friends List. So why not macro the task!
How to do this:
When you are done, you will have a list that looks like the following:
/friend Bert
/friend Ernie
/friend Oscar
Once you’re satisfied with your new Friend List macro, just place the macro icon in one of your toolbars and activate it! If one of the listed friends already exists in that character’s Friend List, it will simply state that fact and try to add the next friend. I found that if I just add any new friends to this universal list as I meet them or as they join the game, all I have to do is click that button on my characters as I play them and their Friend Lists are always up to date!
The only thing I have run into that may need some attention is that each macro is only allowed 255 characters so if you have a lot of friends online, you may have to create multiple friend macros (i.e.: “Friends 1, Friends, 2, etc”).
