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Posts with tag apple

More rumors of a mobile WoW

A few places are reporting, including our sister site Massively, that a company named Vollee has brought their mobile phone version of Second Life live and online. As you can see in the video on the website, it works, though it's not exactly an ideal way to play the game. They don't go into details on how it works, obviously, but my guess would be some kind of java browser emulation of a real client.

Why are we talking about Second Life on WoW Insider? Because odds are that some kind of mobile WoW app is not far behind. Vollee would certainly love to be the ones to do it (they even say that you can enter "World of Second Life" on their website), but unlike Blizzplanet, I really don't think they will be -- odds are that any mobile app won't be a full client, but rather will be a chat or AH app of some kind ("BattleChat" has already been mentioned by Blizzard), and it'll likely be designed by Blizzard themselves.

But there's no question that there's a huge frontier for this sort of thing. Within the next month, Apple is set to release the iPhone's "App Store" (a distribution platform for mobile applications and games), and we have to imagine that a mobile announcement or even a release from Blizzard will come soon after that.

Breakfast Topic: What's the big deal with the Alpha?

If you're like me, you probably geek out at every bit of news that leaks out from the Wrath of the Lich King Alpha. Granted, there really aren't supposed to be any, but we fanboys take whatever we can. The curious thing is, what's the big deal? It's a game that was announced almost a year ago and doesn't look like it will come out anytime soon. Furthermore, the biggest things about the expansion such as the Death Knight hero class and Inscription profession has already been revealed.

But every little thing stokes the fires of anticipation -- at least for me -- and even silly things like icons of items make my stupidly grin. Never mind that Blizzard has put a tight lid on everything, or at least tried, but it's kind of like Apple trying to put a lid on the iPhone before it came out. Everyone knew it was coming even though Apple wanted to keep it a secret, but in the end, people snapped it up anyway. Wrath of the Lich King is kind of like that. We scrape and claw for every little bit of information, from spells to screenshots to images of possible armor sets.

It's a huge deal for me because as much as I still enjoy playing the game now, I'm really hungry for something more. The only thing I'll ever see in Sunwell Plateau is Kil'jaeden's 'welcome' doormat. Maybe. So while the Alpha might be scraps as far as information goes, I'm devouring every bit of information like a famished man. How about you? Are you excited about information leaking from the Alpha? Does it whet your appetite for Wrath of the Lich King? What information are you most concerned about?

Testers wanted for new iPhone Armory application

Elad Shahar, a student at University of Massachusetts Lowell, has developed a web interface that will allow you to search the Armory on your iPhone or iPod touch's MobileSafari. He's released a new version today, polished to the point where he's looking for people to help him test the application and to offer ideas and suggestions.

iArmory lets you do the searches you'd expect -- by player or guild -- and serves up results in a clean, Apple-like format that's designed especially for the iPhone's screen. The one catch is that the Armory has been stripped of its images, including items, tooltips, and fancy borders. What you get is a simple text display of the information you searched for. You can see images of the interface on Elad's website, Omen of Clarity.

So, if you are, you know, hip enough to own an iPhone or an iPod touch (which I'm, uh, not), and you are reading this post (which means you probably play WoW), then get your Armory-lovin' self over to Omen of Clarity's contact page and volunteer your services as a tester. Git, I said!

WoW up your iPhone

Here's another user-made iPhone theme featuring the icons from World of Warcraft, made and sent to us by Nasum of Garithos, Hordeside. We covered one of these almost a year ago when the iPhone first came out, but this one is apparently made from scratch, and features the new iTunes store as well as an icon for the Installer.app (man, today is just a Mac gear day on WoW Insider, isn't it? I feel like I'm blogging for TUAW).

Hopefully, when the official iPhone app store drops in June, we'll see some non-jailbreak uses of this stuff -- right now, to use either one of these themes on the phone, you have to hack into the firmware and go places Apple doesn't officially want you to go. But those WoW icons definitely work great for all kinds of things: even Blizzard officially put them to OS use in a downloadable theme for XP. There are so many WoW icons floating around that they're a natural (if not exactly legal) fit for almost any use -- here's hoping that in June, Apple's SDK will turn out at least one theming program, and we'll be able to do this stuff without hacking away at the iPhone.

Update: Nasum (whose name we spelled wrong originally, sorry about that) says the theme is now in Installer.app, if you'd like to install it yourself.

Mac OS X 10.5.2 brings big FPS gains

Ever since a few WoW patches ago, many of us Mac users have been, honestly, suffering with much lower framerates than we should be seeing, given the hardware we're on. Fortunately, it looks like the just-released 10.5.2 system update will give a lot of help in that department, along with many other system fixes. Tipster Jason went from 27.5 FPS to between 45 and 60 FPS on his iMac after installing 10.5.2 and the Leopard Graphics Update (which also just came out today and requires 10.5.2), and our own Adam Holisky went from 30 to 50 FPS on his own first-gen Intel iMac. I didn't have the presence of mind to test my WoW before updating, but it's certainly running silky smooth now on my MacBook Pro. Go now, good Leopard-using readers, and run your Software Updates (always a good idea to back up before major updates, though). Those of you who have updated, are you seeing performance benefits?

WoW on the iPhone-- just barely


Apple's little sliver of gadget joy supposedly has a full installation of OS X hidden somewhere in there, and since WoW is available on OS X, you just knew WoW was going to appear on the iPhone sometime. It hasn't happened yet, but as the video shows, we're getting there.

In this case, the magic key is a little program called Telekinesis (created by the same guy who created Quicksilver, if you're part of the Cult), which lets you channel monitor output to your iPhone, as well as allows mouseclicks and even simply typing back into your computer.

So it's not really WoW running on the iPhone (yet), but rather an instance of WoW controlled by an iPhone-- it still has to be run on a separate computer. Unfortunately, implementation actually turns out to be pretty poor-- this is not even barely playable. The guy who did it says he can chat, so I guess it's a first step. But while I'm sure we'll get there, we've got a long way to go.

[ via a newly redesigned Joystiq ]

Reader WoWspace of the Week: February 21 to 27

Short and sweet this week. Okay, maybe the space is more grotty than sweet, but I'll let submitter Charlie explain:

You guys seem to be featuring really neat and nice set-ups, so I thought I'd show you what most WoW player's desks look like! In order from left to right: Latest Newsweek, bottle of water, Bourne Supremacy, LOTR The Two Towers (Extended), a Hotpocket, an old Canon AE-1 (for when I do shoot film), Klipsch speakers (eh, they're ok, field is a little narrow), Apple 20" Cinema Display, iPod Mini (it's there, trust me), 90+ year old negatives from my grandmother that I need to take into work to restore (brown envelope), BC mouse pad, USB multi-card reader I ninja'd from work, RAZR, Dual 2GHz Power Mac G5 with 2GB of RAM, ATi Radeon 9600 with 128MB of DDR (eh, need to upgrade), old Joystick from when I used to play flight sims all night long, and my Ventrilo headset.

Remember to send your submissions in to our Reader WoWspace address, along with a couple of good photos of your space.

PowerPC performance tweak


This tweak was reported to us by reader Blake some time back, but I've only recently had the chance to test it out myself. And, like most of the respondents in this thread, I agree that there's a noticeable improvement in framerate, though Blizzard poster Tigerclaw comments that the performance impact will really only effect those with heavy UI usage. The feature, added in patch 1.12.1, is designed for PowerPC Macs (the Intel systems already use "a better mode of optimization" according to Tigerclaw) with more than 512MB RAM, as it may add a couple of extra megabytes of memory usage. It's still considered a beta feature, but it's easy to enable and easy to disable if you have trouble with it. So if you run on a PowerPC system, give this a shot -- you may notice a 5-15% improvement (though some report even better improvements).

Apple Wants to Keep Kids Away From WoW

Metroblogging Azeroth points out something interesting over on Apple's page touting its new Leopard version of the OS X operating system. Apparently it's profitable now to sell software that keeps your kids away from WoW. After all, 40% of us are addicted, right?

Of course, Apple's used to bashing other software makers (uh oh, now I'm going to have the Apple fanboys on my case). But I say-- why stop there? There must be a huge market in keeping people from playing WoW. How about an anti-WoW mouse that shakes uncontrollably whenever the client is loaded, causing you to be unable to even place an auction? Or an anti-WoW monitor that's made to go off right when you're able to grab the flag in WSG? Anything is possible!

Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so harsh with Apple. After all, this feature is "Because You Said So," so, there must be lots of parents out there who want their kids off of the game. And heck, if parental controls can rid us of those twelve and thirteen-year-olds begging for "epix" in the main cities, I'm all for it.

Windows on an Intel Mac: WoW, what a difference


We've already seen WoW on an Intel Mac thanks to our resident Mac-user, but he's managed to go one better. Previously we saw the OS X Universal Binary version running at 50-60fps; running WoW under Windows on the same hardware, maximising all the graphics settings, there's actually a gain in framerate to the tune of 6fps.

Those of us with PCs creaking along on the default settings are justified in being envious. While keeping up with the vast succession of new PC games requires regular upgrades and a killer gaming rig, if your free time is taken over by WoW then you obviate the need to upgrade -- but miss out on the fantastic framerates such upgrades can afford.


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