We've covered sites like this before (Be Imba is probably the one best known), but here's another character comparison/improvement tool for you to use online. WoW Heroes is a site that will look up your character's significant info from the Armory, put it in an easy-to-read format, and then help you check out all your stats, enchants, and gear, and help you find improvements to what you're wearing. It's not as judgemental as Be Imba -- you just get the stats and the facts, not yelled at for not having gems in your sockets (though getting yelled at might be just the motivation you need to get better), but it does provide suggestions in a much gentler way, including what kinds of enchants to use and what kinds of instances to run.
And one fun feature that isn't as easy to do on Be Imba is the comparison tool -- you can put in two characters' names and servers and very easily look at both at the same time, comparing item levels and/or seeing where the gear came from. Neat feature, and very easy to get up and running, no login or signup needed.
There is one drawback -- you can't see any characters in the system that are below level 70, so WoW Heroes is only for people trying to find improvements and options in the endgame -- if you're below 70, you'll have to go elsewhere. But as an endgame character improvement tool, it's another good option to use.
Here's yet another reason for me and all my roleplaying kin to tune in to the next Blizzcast: They will be discussing roleplaying in WoW, says Vaneras. It won't be a major topic, but there is some discussion about plans to continue development of "things that are for roleplaying."
So, I am certainly excited. I can't help but speculate where this could go. What could they have planned, development-wise? Will we see more reporting tools for RP server violations? Or will we simply see more character customization options to allow us to submerge ourselves more fully into the Worlds of Azeroth and Outland? I think my big problem is going to be holding back my expectations. They're running so wild, that I can't help but that think I'll be disappointed in what's actually said.
Susana of Hyjal speculates about something I've thought about a few times before -- just what exactly are Blizzard's internal development tools like? Most games that have mapmakers can churn out new maps pretty rapidly, but we've had the same BG maps for years now, and only one or two per year since then. And even the created maps aren't fixed easily, apparently -- a few map tweaks on WSG would probably fix the turtling problem, but Blizzard instead is tweaking the rules to fix things. Just what is Blizzard using to make their game that they take so long with development?
To be fair, the rules here are a little more complicated than most first-person shooters (since you can do a lot more than just shoot at each other), so obviously the maps would presumably be a little more complicated as well. But in the age when players have access to the Neverwinter Nights toolset and even the Forge on Halo 3, surely it's a little crazy that Blizzard takes months to release one map, when other great games can pump out whole packs of them in the same time.
Now, this is WoW Insider, so it's ok if you're a Blizzard apologist. It's fine for you to say "Blizzard has the biggest game in the world not despite the fact that they're so slow, but because of it," and it's fine for you to be a fanboy/girl and say you'd rather wait three years for a Blizzard-quality Arathi Basin than play a whole "Hidden Fronts" pack. And the truth is that when Blizzard does release content, they don't disappoint. But we're still left wondering just why, after doing this for so long and having so much practice at it, it still takes them so long to do it.
As you may recall, a few days ago, I wrote a little Dear Blizzard letter on the subject of enforcing the RP and Naming Policy. Of course, Once one writes a letter to someone, it is a good idea to deliver it, and thus I delivered it, or at least the issues therein, over on the Customer Service Forum. I was lucky enough to have Belfaire, who you may remember from his post explaining Blizzard's stance on multi-boxing, answer some of my questions and concerns. I also got some pretty well thought out feedback from a couple other people browsing the forums, including some roleplayers who disagreed with some of my points, so I think the threads worth a read in itself, and I'll comment a bit more on what Belfaire said after the break, now that I've had time to digest it a bit.
You play MMO's, you chat, you express your invaluable opinion on the forums, and you /dance. Your virtual identity is all about customization, and DKPSystem.com's beta Armory Signature Generator is a quick, easy way to snag yourself a l33t forum signature. After all, you might as well try to save your adoring fans some energy; now they don't even have to look you up before they reply!
I love the simplicity of this tool. Although it allows you a fair amount of customization, it allows anyone, regardless of technical expertise, to generate a signature complete with character photo and pertinent information. From choosing which stats will be displayed, to choosing your own background, this is one handy tool that should be in every forum-goer's toolkit.
Frequent visitors to the official WoW forums will no doubt be familiar with the Forum Interceptor that Blizzard has in place for your "protection." Briefly, any time you click a link in a forum thread that doesn't lead to a Blizzard-owned domain, a bit of JavaScript loads an Interceptor page that tells you to be wary of keyloggers and things, and that the internet is a dangerous place. Possibly useful to people under the age of ten; otherwise, it gets old fast.
Fortunately, there are ways around it. Opening a link in a new tab (middle-click) works in most browsers. But what if you don't want to think about it all the time? Shouldn't links in the forums work just like links everywhere else on the freaking internet? Yes, they should. And that's why we have Greasemonkey.
Greasemonkey is a Firefox plug-in that lets users install userscripts that do things to websites. If that sounds vague, it is; userscripts can perform all sorts of tricks. The script we're interested in, called Shelter from a Blizzard, does precisely one thing: makes links on the WoW forums point directly to their destinations, skipping the interceptor page.
If you're running Firefox, and want this magic in your very own browser, here's what you do:
Install Greasemonkey, if you don't already have it. Once you're done installing, restart your browser.
Hunter's Mark has a terrific series up that's a great resource for anyone playing this game, not just Hunters. It's called "Being a Know-it-all Without Knowing it All," and if you've ever wondered where to go, what to do, or how to make your character better, reading through the series will give you access to pretty much every tool available online to figure out what's what.
None of it is really new (it's definitely not news that Wowhead and Thottbot exist), and if you read our little site frequently, you're probably very familiar with what all these resources have to offer (we're pretty thorough like that). But if you know someone who's looking for a little more insight on the game, or want a general overview of everything that's available and what each site can offer you, this is it. From the Loot Lists to Bosskillers, tons of information about everything you need to know in World of Warcraft is online, and the Know-it-all series is a great overview of what's what.
If I'd had this tool a couple weeks ago, it would have made my last Build Shop much easier. Respec is a desktop talent calculator for the Mac (10.4+, Intel/PPC), and it works great as far as I can tell. In addition to talent-calculation basics, Respec has the following features:
Save specs for later tweaking/reference
Import from the Armory
Export to Blizzard's calculator
You might argue that in this day of a web tool for everything, working on every platform, desktop tools like this are somewhat superfluous -- but that's only until you don't have internet access. Now you can play with talent specs on the plane! It's good to see someone developing WoW tools for the Mac, too. One feature request: export to Wowhead's calculator. Much cooler than Blizz's, in my opinion. By the way, what do you all think of the spec above? I was thinking of taking my warlock out of mothballs to try out that cool-looking Felguard that's always stomping me in PvP.
Ever looked at your Armory page and thought "this is nice, but I wish I could put it on another web page"? Well, now you can! MMO Guildsites has created a widget that can be embedded anywhere you like (guild rosters, maybe?), and consists of an iframe linking to a script that runs on their servers (so you don't need any server-side script support on your own site). The output is rather pretty, as you can see at right; in fact, I like it better than the actual Armory in many ways.
It does have a few shortcomings -- you can't see how much +damage you have in various schools, for instance -- but I still like it as a way to put live Armory data anywhere you want it. (It can show PvP data too, by the way, but I turned mine off for the screenshot since my numbers are downright shameful.) If you're interested, click over to their site, put in your server and character name, and it'll generate a preview and HTML for you to paste wherever you want it.
From a forum post by Jonaleth, we find this nifty little tool that will tell you everything you ever needed to know (ever) and even some things you didn't about how your mage spells push out damage.
It takes a while to load, and the site seems pretty rickety (I really hope posting it here doesn't bring it down), but once it loads up, you can realize just how powerful a tool it is. Put your mage talents in, use the checkboxes at the top to fill out info about your gear and situation, and then the tool will show you average hit calculations,damage per mana spent total, and even all of the damage coefficients (up to 2.0.1, so Arctic Winds hasn't changed here yet) on each one of your spells.
Pretty incredible tool for mages, especially for those who want to squeeze every possible bit out of their class and spec. Jonaleth uses the guide as proof that frost mages don't get to churn out nearly as much damage as fire mages do. Well, umm, yeah. What else is new?
But Jonaleth is right-- this kind of tool does provide a really clear look at what we already know to be true. Now you can see in raw numbers just how crazy powerful Pyroblast is.
I love nifty web tools. Andreas "bds" Thorstensson has created a page that lists the top-rated Arena teams in every bracket, worldwide (or filterable by region). This is nice, but the killer feature for me is the ability to show the top rated players in each class. Using this information, and since everything on this page links to the Armory, I can look into the top 5 players in each class, and see if any trends emerge as far as talent specs.
Warrior: Arms/Fury, with all five specced exactly or very close to 35/23/3
Hunter: All Marks, ranging from 42 to 50 in Marks with the rest in Survival
Rogue: Finally, some variation. Everyone's got at least 25 points in Assassination, but which tree the rest of the points go in varies. Nobody's taken any of the 41-pointers.
Warlock: more variation. Three destro, one afflic, one demonology. Everyone has a 41-point talent except one of the destro locks.
Druid: Everyone has most of their points in Resto, and everyone has at least 11 in Feral. Although three out of five have at least 41 in Resto, only one has Tree of Life.
Ybrith, of Rajaxx (Eu), has put together a lovely piece of theorycrafting apparatus. This warlock DPS calculator takes your stats and talent information, the length of the fights you're interested in, and a few strategy parameters, and comes up with your DPS over the length of the fight, as well as how fast you would be losing life. It seems to be geared towards the end-game, as it's based on level 70 spells and also not suited for calculating things like mana efficiency, which is important in leveling.
Still, for a number-head like me this thing is amazing. I've learned that with the default stats (since I have no clue what a warlock's gear is like at 70), my current leveling build (41/20/0) would do 1035 DPS, whereas sample Destro builds I threw together get 1190 (0/21/40) or 1174 (21/0/40) DPS. It's interesting to me that Aff and Destro are so close; I don't think this would have been the case pre-BC.
So, Warlocks in the crowd: what do you think? Does this thing look relatively accurate? And how do you stack up?
We've covered sites like this before (Be Imba is probably the one best known), but here's another character comparison/improvement tool for you to use online. WoW Heroes is a site that will look up your character's significant info from the Armory, put it in an easy-to-read format, and then help you check out all your stats, enchants, and gear, and help you find improvements to what you're wearing. It's not as judgemental as Be Imba -- you just get the stats and the facts, not yelled at for not having gems in your sockets (though getting yelled at might be just the motivation you need to get better), but it does provide suggestions in a much gentler way, including what kinds of enchants to use and what kinds of instances to run.
Hunter's Mark has 
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