Armory iphone update is pretty shmick

Holy crap, the most recent update for the Armory which came out a week ago is a great update in functions, and highly worth it.

The highlights are:

• 3d viewer,
• app seems to run faster,
• activity feed,
• improved character summary page.

The stand out for me is the improved summary screen for your character, and the 3d character viewer. Both are great and really make the Armory app seem more and more like something you need, rather than something to play with. Now this entire app might be a silly toy, and it might actually add no value to my game-play, but it seriously rocks. For anyone who is a fan boy of wow this is eye candy of the finest quality.

One thought I had was a feature they should add is a list of the patterns for each profession your character has, so I can look for specific patterns for mates. That plus the coming of the guild chat, means we can actually add some value to our fellow players who not logged in.

Paying for a turbo-wow-iphone app?

So the apps for playing wow away from wow will cost a little bit. Like using the AH from an iPhone, nice idea. What is your squeal price for this?

• the interface and features have to be freaky-high quality to be even worth pondering.
• the free version of the iphone app had better stay, because cheap wow’ers (like me) are not keen to miss a bit of functionality; particularly if it gets taken away for a paid version.
• If they start charging for the app and then remove the free one, does that mean that we can get back all the free versions that Blizzard shutdown a while back?

It rings false to me that this should be a paid app, unless of course the fee is so damn small that they’re basically giving it away. Then again that statement is interesting in itself.  That just means I’m not actually adverse to a purchase, just that my squeal price for an app is not the same as everyone else. $1 yep, $3 probably not, $10 piss off jerk.

So my cost is basically a coffee. If it gives value and costs a coffee, I’d get it. If it costs a lunch its out. If it costs a dinner I’ll get pleasure when I hear folks using it, because they’re making me feel that they’re that much more crazy about this wow offline-online thing than I am.

The way we as consumers purchase is well understood, and I think that one thing intelligent marketing and product types understand is how to figure the best squeal point to capture the most money by the end of the product life. More power to them, in fact I respect the math and theory that goes in to it.

Quick review of Curse Updater v4 client

The new Curse client is availaible as a beta to try, and it looks really darn good.

Functionally not much is different. It still updates your mods far faster than doing them manually – so I’m happy. I’d be ecstatic if this version allowed the user to update more than one at a time, but this is a feature of the paid subscription (grrrr*). Also the Curse Client still slugs your internet connection when updating. Like you’d expect really.

However the visual look and feel is much better, and very different from the old version. It is clearer about how to update or ignore a particular mod, the version numbers are clearly shown (and can be easily hidden), and the advanced options are exposed well through an initial walk through. Some folks who like simple table layouts might be a bit miffed, but really for a free mod that makes life easier to play games, this is a good tool. I can say that the glassy affects and all the special presentation is  not needed for me. Run, update, close is what I need – anything else is nice, but not critical at all.

If you’re using Curse regularly and not using an updater then you’re in for a treat with this.

A minor consideration is how keen the Curse Updater app is to get installed and running by default on your pc. I am not a fan of anything running in background on my pc, and was pleased to see this was easy to avoid. Just read the screen when you load it initially, and deselect the defaults. Easier to disable in fact than in the last version.

Found via WoW.com rss article feed.

*Aside – the old version for Mac used to give a “premium” account to all users, because I don’t think they had a normal version. I miss everything auto-updating, but not enough to actually pay for it. I still infrequently use some mods that are not published via the Curse network, so while it takes a lot of the work out of updating (like 99% of the work), its not a total solution – although probably not through a fault of the dev writers who have done a great job.

WoW Armory for the iPhone released

We can now grab an official Armory iPhone app (wow.com article). Let me be one of the many that runs around in circles squeeling like a school girl about this, starting now – brb. *yay, squeel*

By all accounts it looks nice. That reminds me…*yay, squeel*

I’ll write impressions after a few days of playing around; but for a starting question:

Q. Why can I login to this using my Username and Password, but not using an Authenticator?

A. No Fucking Idea – but that is not good at all! This could facilitate account hacking / hijacking.