Today we saw the release of Blizzard’s 2nd application for the iPhone, after the release of the Blizzard Authenticator. Today it was the WoW Armory application. The application mimics wowarmory.com and brings the details to your mobile device. Before Blizzard’s release you had to settle for some lackluster applications created by 3rd parties that also cost some coin to install, which were quite buggy to begin with. But now we have a free option developed by the same folks who brought us the original site.
From Blizzard:
Ever wanted to check your raid schedule, look up a piece of PvP gear, or concoct a new talent spec while on the go? The new World of Warcraft Mobile Armory app for iPhone and iPod touch lets you access the official Armory database from anywhere you have a mobile connection, and features much of the same functionality as the Armory website (www.wowarmory.com), including:
- Search for and view any character, item, guild, or Arena team in World of Warcraft.
- Seamlessly import your own character, guild, and Arena team profiles.
- Access your in-game calendar of events.
- View achievement-point leaderboards.
- Plan out talent specs using the fully functional talent calculator.
The World of Warcraft Mobile Armory is available now as a free download from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/.
For more information, visit www.wowarmory.com/iphone.xml.
So what can we do with WoW Armory Mobile? Well the first thing you will notice is that you can login to your account. This allows you to instantly see your characters, their profiles, guild calendars, browse items, talent calculator, even a news option.
Overview
One of the first things I had to figure out though was how to switch my main, because if your main isn’t your first character, you need to go to your character screen click on edit and select who your main is. This took a few minutes of tinkering, but wasn’t initially obvious. But once I did, I instantly was able to look at my main character’s calendar, see the raid schedule I have signed up for, and its great to be able to have this information at hand, when I can’t reach the regular wowarmory.com site or login and see it in game.
Character Profile
Another obvious feature is seeing the gear on your character, review over details of that gear, like stats where it drops, etc. The gear also accurately keeps gems and enchants where as other 3rd party apps would break on that piece. One thing that the mobile armory doesn’t appear to have that the website does is the ability to quickly search for an upgrade from the character profile page for a particular piece of gear. This is one of the best features of the site and can only hope I missed out on this option, if not, I hope the next version has this feature.
Guild and Raid Calendar Browsing
Another great feature is browsing through your guild, seeing different members and clicking on them to view their profiles. Great for seeing what your guildies are speccing and gearing for and creating a dialogue with them for mutual improvement. Being able to look over your character’s calendar is also a huge plus.
Talent Calculator
In the application, Blizzard included the nifty Talent calculator, which lets me get rid of yet another 3rd party application. So now I can play with talent builds from all character classes, however it doesn’t appear to be a way to import my existing talent spec and then modify it in the talent calculator.
Achievements
It appears you can compare your overall achivement points against your other characters on your account or in your guild, but not compare individual achievements, hopefully this is a feature available in a later version. But you can go into your individual character and review specific achievements
Item Search
You can search for items in the app by name, or even by game. By game I mean WoW Classic, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King. Then you can search for a particular instance. The items can then be sorted by name, item level, and quality. However it doesn’t appear you can filter by armor type, or by slot, so you are stuck scrolling through a huge list trying to find what you really want. Also there doesn’t appear to be a good compare tool, to look at your gear and the item you are looking at to see how your stats go up or down if you got it. This is really the key piece of information you need when doing your gear planning.
News
The news section seems pretty simple so far, with just some general news that Blizzard can update, and shows all “Achievement Firsts” for your server, which is nice, but not very useful. It will probably get better when Blizz adds more useful information.
Summary
In the end, this is the most complete WoW application for the iPhone and iPod Touch to display armory type information. And all other similar apps not developed by Blizzard should be deleted immediately in favor of this one.
Now some features I would like to see in the next version:
- Achievement Comparison
- Item Upgrade Search from the Character Profile
- WoW Forum Browsing
- More pertinent news
- Importing a talent spec to modify in the talent calculator
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