Project Lore

Just last week, I was wondering who owned WoW.com and why Blizzard didn't just lay down a few hundred thousand or even million to pick it up. The acronym "WoW" is very common and I'd rather type "wow.com" into my address bar than "worldofwarcraft.com" to get to things like forums and account management. Well, my question was recently answered. The owners of WoW Insider picked up WoW.com and now WoW Insider has been re-branded WoW.com. They have a new layout and lots of new features. There are three methods of registration for WoW.com. You can make a new registration or login using Facebook Connect or using your AIM account. I've had a good experience using my Facebook account on other sites, like Digg, so I went ahead and did that. I didn't have to enter any information; I instantly had an account without even logging into the site. I was able to pick a username for my account (Heartbourne naturally) and had the ability to use the new features. My favorite feature are the user profiles. You can download their addon and application which tracks your activities in WoW. After entering in your user key from wow.com into the addon, it can track quests completed, zones entered or left, achievements, raids, leveling, and guild membership. You can write one line messages that are like tweets. After logging off, simply run the bundled application to upload your data. Users can "follow" or "friend" each other, like on Twitter, to receive updates from their friends and fans. I highly suggest that if you plan to use the addon that you think carefully about what information you want to submit. Chances are nobody cares about what zones you enter or leave, and it will spam your profile pretty badly, as evidenced by my escapade with the addon. I don't know why that feature is on by default; it really slowed down the upload process. The uploading application was slow and crashed a couple times for me, but that was with dozens of pages of zoning data. I was kind of hoping it would make an RSS feed or report back to Facebook or something with the updates. I don't really foresee myself using the WoW.com website much, and I already use Hearthstone to keep up with my friend's activities in WoW. My auto-updating Twitter is full of updates already and the updates are pushed out to people who are interested, instead of them having to sign into a website. Finally, you get your own blog and screenshot gallery setup. I think this may be a crowning feature if users decide to use it. Anyone can start blogging to a huge potential audience at a WoW-centric site. Its a great chance for new people to break the mold. If you are interested in following me, check out my profile. Do you think this is a worthwhile service, or would you rather spend your time on major blogs and in-game?

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Sometimes I make new friends who play WoW, and the chances of them playing on my primary server (Proudmoore) are very low. I'm still interested in discussing WoW with them (because I'm that much of a nerd) and keeping up with what they are up to in game - whether they are leveling a character for the first time or just downing Sarth 3D for the first time. One way I do this is through the Hearthstone app on Facebook. Hearthstone is my favorite WoW-related Facebook app. First, you register your characters with the application. Then, through various means, the application "refreshes" your characters from the official WoW armory and adds level gains, major reputation gains, and new achievements into your friend's news feed and your profile mini-feed. It also has a slick interface on your profile page if you choose to add it there as a "box". Its a great way for me to brag to my friends about my epic achievements or mock my friends for taking too long to progress through content. Then again, I haven't exactly been on the cutting edge of raiding recently on any of my live characters, so things still come up like my PUG-ed Sarth 1D on my characters and I'm on the receiving end of the jokes. The application used to automatically refresh your characters with no user action required, but scaling quickly became a problem as the WoW armory servers locked out the application. If you want to refresh, you have to manually tell the application to check for updates. If you allow offline updates, your friends can refresh your characters for you if you haven't done so in awhile and they are interested in what you are up to in the World of Warcraft. If you are interested in using Hearthstone, check it out on Facebook. Our friends at WoWinsider interviewed Chris Nolan, author of Hearthstone, back in February. In the future, you may see an interview with him here on Project Lore! Comment with any questions you'd like us to ask him. One of the cool things about Heartstone that I discovered is that it publishes an RSS feed of your activity. Using the magic of Twitterfeed, I added it to my Twitter! The server for the RSS feed is a little sketchy so I recommend running it through Feedburner, but its still fun. Follow me at @heartbourne if you want to see what I'm up to in WoW and more.

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