Project Lore

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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