World of Warcraft Mobile Armory

World of Warcraft Mobile Armory

Blizzard has launched its WoW Armory iPhone app and I have to say…outstanding.

Called the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory, this thing gives you access to the Armory (whether Americas, EU or Oceanic) in full and in six languages.

Log in using your Blizzard account details and you’re good to go. Here are the features you get with this app:

Characters

From this tab you can access your own characters or your bookmarked characters from the Armory. Yes, you can browse the full Armory and bookmark those you find interesting. Maybe they are potential Guild recruits, out-of-Guild PvP partners, whatever you need.

When you click through to a single toon you get the basic Armory detail – name, class, level, server and Guild. In addition you can see the current spec (or specs if the toon has Dual Spec), current Achievement progress, health, mana and stats (all available by a dropdown menu).

What is really clever though, is the gear section. Like the online Armory the currently equipped gear is displayed around the stats. By tapping on an item you can view its stats. Tap the “View Item Details” button and you can view the item in its entirety – including where you can get it. Nice.

And, of course, you can bookmark the character from this page.

Guild

If you’re in a Guild, there is a handy tab immediately on the app’s homepage, titled with your Guild title, which gives immediate access to all the characters in the Guild, ordered by rank. Very useful for Guild Masters and Officers.

Calendar

Now…having direct access to your Guild calender from anywhere at any time is damn useful, don’t you think? Now you’ll never miss a raid, the start of a Holiday or World Event or any other date your Officers or GM wants you to be aware of.

You can also accept and decline invites to raids as well – that is truly innovative and makes you  wonder why…

…you can’t add a new event through the app and have it show up in-game. Would be nice though, eh, Blizzard?

Leaderboards

This is purely for a bit of fun. Based on Achievement points earned, you can see where you rank amongst your Guild and your bookmarked characters, as well as view the achievement points earned by all your characters. Useful? Only if you’re in a  race with a fellow Guild member or player to achieve the most. Fun? For sure!

Browse Items

Brilliant! Like AtlasLoot on your iPhone! Every item in the Armory searchable by type, (ie, weapons, armor etc) and by dungeon and raid, so you can find out who drops what where. All the item stats are included, as well as cost, vendors if appropriate. The best item search I have come across either on or offline.

Talent Calculator

Does what it says on the tin. Just like the online version, you can tweak your talent spec to your heart’s content. Doesn’t quite fit on the screen so a bit of dragging around is required, making it less useful than the online version – but only marginally.

News

I assume this will hold the latest news from wow.com or wow-europe.com at some point. At the moment it holds a welcome message and a full list of Realm firsts – which I like. Now I know who to tap up for that glyph or craftable gear item!

Settings

Sound, vibration and event alert on and offs. The app does seem to ding and vibrate a lot – but I’m damned if I know why. What those alerts are meant to mean is not clear so unless you can work it out, you may be better off setting the sound and vibrate to off. And if you DO find out what they are for – let me know!

Help & Logout

Provides…erm…help…and…erm…a logout.

Extras

Across the bottom is an always accessible menu list which contains a home button (nicely done with a Hearthstone icon), a search function – this is what will make this app most useful, especially when looking for items and specific characters, a character link just like the one described above and a direct link to your own characters so you can set which one you one to view the rest of the Armory against.

In summary, for the casual or hardcore WoW player, whether you are a GM, Officer, twink or solo player, this app has something for you. Get it. And get it now.