We Fly Spitfires – MMORPG Blog

I was considering not bothering writing this article because, quite frankly (and sorry if this ruins the conclusion of the post for anyone), all of the EVE Online iPhone apps I’ve found are absolutely, utterly terrible.

As every regular reading knows, I love my iPhone. I mean, I really love it. Not just in the way a man loves a fine cigar, but completely in the way that a man loves a fine woman. So throw in my borderline obsession with MMORPGs and you’ve got a person who scavenges the App Store daily looking for MMO apps to play around with at every spare moment. So suffice to say I was pretty chuffed (British word, meaning ‘happy’) when I discovered not one, not two, but three iPhone apps for EVE.

EVE Tracker

It doesn’t work. Yep, that’s right, it doesn’t. Even. Work. I cannot for the life of me get it to accept my API key. I’ve tried creating new keys, manually typing them in, copying and pasting, and even using the built in web site parser tool (which doesn’t work either). It’s a complete dud. Very frustrating because I’ve spent the last three weeks trying to get it working.

iClone

It doesn’t work. Starting to sense a theme here? When I click on the button to add my API key, it crashes out. That’s even less impressive than EVE Tracker which at least let me enter my API key before refusing it. What is it with these apps?

Capsuleer

Capsuleer Screenshot

Yay, it works! It’s already beaten the other two apps by simply functioning correctly! So what amazing things does this app allow me to do? Well… it lets me see my pilot stats. OK. It shows me what skill I’m currently training. Uh-huh. It shows me what skills I already have and know I have. Right. It shows me ‘headlines’. Great… Don’t get me wrong, these are quite handy things to have, I suppose, but the app didn’t exactly me blow me away in terms of functionality. I was at least expecting to be able to view any and every skill (not just the ones I have) and perhaps even view certificates and create training plans. Such a shame. At least it’s free. That’s a bonus right?

Maybe I’ve just been spoilt with the World of Warcraft Mobile Armory but I can’t help but feel very disappointed with these EVE Online apps. I know they’re free and made by amateurs but still, I was expecting so much more. Maybe that’s my fault. I’ll just stick with EVEMon for now and perhaps, if I ever get enough spare time, contemplate making my own.

I love my iPhone and I like nothing better than a slick and sexy app for it. There are tons of fun games and useful bits of software to help you do anything from find a restaurant to identify a piece of music to, gee I dunno, get out of a toilet if you accidentally lock yourself in (that app is called THE PHONE CALL if anyone is wondering). My favourite apps are the ones relating to MMORPGs. Maybe I’m just a complete addict but I enjoy tinkering around with my talents or what not whenever I’ve got a few minutes to kill.

Character Profile Screen

There are already several World of Warcraft apps available for the iPhone and I’ve got a few of them although the only one I used on a regular basis was WoWTalent (a talent calculator as the name suggests). I say “was” because now it’s been made pretty much redundant, along with every other WoW app, by the release of the official WoW Mobile Armory by Blizzard. It’s quite possible one the best iPhone apps I’ve ever used. Slick. Quick. Intuitive to use. Packed with content. And absolutely 100% free.

The World of Warcraft Mobile Armory came out a few days ago and I quickly downloaded it to my iPhone. I’m used to apps running reasonably slowly and being quite clunky to use – trying to set talents with a touch screen was always quite painful – but the WoW Armory is absolutely everything you’d expect from Blizzard. It runs beautifully and is extremely easy to use. The talent calculator for instance pops up with a full description of the talent when you click on it along with a minus and plus button to enable you to allocate points. A huge improvement over the WoWTalent app.

Talent Calculator

Of course, WoW Armory doesn’t just stop at being a talent calculator. It’s a character profile viewer, allowing you to see all of your character’s equipment, stats, achievements, talents, glyphs, arena teams, and guild information. The app also has a news system, a generic calendar, a leaderboard and an item browser. Plus, if that wasn’t enough, you can also browse through all of the members of your guild and view their stats and items. All of this functionality is packaged into an attractive, simple and, above all else, very easy to use and responsive interface.

So it’s pretty obvious that I like the WoW Mobile Armory. What isn’t to like? The only thing that makes me slightly sad about it is that it’s going to destroy the competition, some of which (like WoWTalent), are used to supplement the income of amateur developers in this time of recession.

Hopefully we’ll see more iPhone apps of this calibur for other MMORPGs. I’m playing around with a few for EVE Online currently and will probably blog about them at some point however they pretty much can’t hold a candle to the WoW Armory in terms of content and polish. It’s also really cool to see mobile apps and MMOs become more heavily integrated. There are so many aspects of MMORPGs which could easily be controlled by mobile applications outside of the game (talents, auctions, guild chat, calendars etc) and it’s exciting to see it develop.

I got an iPhone a couple of months ago and since then I’ve been installing apps like crazy. Of course, as I play WoW, one of the first things I did was check if there were any apps for it. I didn’t expect to find any so I was very surprised to find several had been made and that some of them were actually pretty good. Here’s the lowdown:

WoW Talent

http://www.orzware.com/wowtalent/

Probably the app I use the most, this is basically a talent calculator for your iPhone. It’s pretty decent and lets you save and load talent builds which is handy if you want to tweak your talent setup on the move or fancy checking out the talents of another class. Since I’ve been contemplating some WoW alts, I’ve been using this quite a lot. The only downside to the app is that it’s quite slow and cumbersome to use. Unlike a talent calculator website, you can’justt  mouse over a talent to read it’s description but, instead, you have to press your finger on one for a few seconds before it opens in a new window. Maybe I’m too impatient but I find that kinda slow and annoying.

WoW Talent screenshot

Warcraft Characters

http://rudip.com/iphone-apps/characters/

This app lets you look up characters on any server and view all of their statistics and information. Pointless, I know, but it’s quite fun none-the-less if you want to spy on your guildmates or pretend to your friends that you actually care about their gaming experience. It’s free, as are all of these apps, so you’re only hurting yourself by not getting it.

Waracraft Characters screenshot

Warcraft Chest

http://sednalogic.com/

A handy little app that lets you view items drops from raids, dungeons or as rewards from badges, reputation or PvP. Not massively useful but still pretty fun if you want to satisfy your curiosity about what’s available where or if you’re just bored on the train and want to see what’s available.

Warcraft Chest screenshot

There are a couple of other apps available as well but I don’t have either of them. One is only available in the US so I can’t get it (WarcraftStat) whilst the other isn’t free and looks a bit rubbish (WoW News).

Now, where are the Everquest 2 apps?!

I downloaded the WordPress app for the iPhone yesterday and thought I’d give it a shot today and write a post using it. I have to say I’m very impressed with it so far – very easy to install and setup and seems pretty simple to use.

Is it just me or does the iPhone seem to be everywhere now? I’m surprised at their popularity considering that they are locked to a single service provider in the UK, O2. Guess they made a smart move with their exclusivity deal with Apple.

For me the big success of the iPhone has to be it’s ease of use. I’ve had a few PDAs before but never used their features much cause they were so fiddly but with the iPhone it’s all a breeze. Accessing the Interweb is seamless (it will either use 3G or wi-fi), getting the mail app to hook into my Exchange mailbox was cake and downloading games and new apps is easy… too easy – I’ve bought way too many things.

My only complaint with the iPhone? The battery life is absolutely terrible…