Facebook Herald

What it Does:

This application was developed by Carolyn Armstrong Gerakines and Nick Gerakines as a way for players of World of Warcraft to to share and display their characters on their Facebook profiles.

How Well it Does it:

With over 10 million subscribers Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft is the most successful MMORPG (Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game) of all time. It only makes sense that with a fan base that engulfs both the real and virtual worlds that an application allowing you to show your pride would be developed for Facebook.

As an app I Play WoW allows you to search add your World of Warcraft characters to your Facebook profile. This is simple done by clicking on the “Add a character” tab and inputting the character’s name, realm and region and as long as the offcail armory site has updated and acknowledged that your character exist (normally post level 10) your character will be displayed on your profile in a box on the left.

The box on the profile displays the three characters that you have ordered it to. It displays a thumb nail picture depicting a generic in game model that matches your race and class in epic gear, regardless of what they are actually wearing. Next to the thumb nail the character’s name and guild name are displayed above it’s level, race, class, and realm.

Going to the interface for the application will open up some options for you. The first tab “My Characters” allows you to promote or demote them up and down the list, allowing you to control which three are displayed in your profile. This list the same information that is shown on your profile but also stats the characters dominate talent specialization. To the right of that info are some control actions. The first one is “Ding!” which when clicked will increase your character’s level by one, allowing you to update your profile box as soon as you think to do it. “Reset Character Data”, though giving me errors at the moment, I believe talks to the armory to check on the status of the character. For example, I have a Paladin that is currently list by I Play WoW as still being Protection specialized when I had switched him over to Retribution weeks ago. I assume that clicking the “reset data” link would make the application check with the official armory, note the change and then change the information in the app.

The next action is “Deactivate” which is the button you use if you have finally torn your self away from your World of Warcraft addiction and are trying to re-integrate into normal life, but still for some reason what some of your characters to be displayed. Or maybe your friend just started playing on your server and you need to delete an alt to make a new one to play with her. Either way, this button takes the character out of the application. The last button is the “Promote - Demote” button which moves characters up and down your list determining the order in which they appear and which ones you are so proud of that you have to display them on your profile.

The next tab at the top is the “My Friends” tab which displays all of your friends that are running the application and their chosen characters. The information given for them is the same as the information displayed in your profile box for yours. We covered the “Add” tab so skipping that to the “Search” tab is pretty straight forward. You can search by realm. I have a character on the Smolderthorn server, so I can search to see who on Facebook is running the application from that server. That search gave me 500 results in alphabetical order. Each listing shows character level, race, class, name, and specialization but also shows the player’s name and provides a link to their Facebook limited profile so that you may send them a friend request if you wish. It also allows you to search by character name to recieve the same information.

The “Invite Tab” allows you to invite up to 20 of your friends at a time to use the application. This is obviously not any use to your friends that do not play WoW but you may have a friend or two on Facebook that plays but doesn’t know about the app. The last tab is “Settings” which allows you refresh your profile to make changes to the app appear and to set the image properties for your display box, and character deletion. There is also a “Help” tab with a FAQ to get you going if you are having issues.

This is a well executed app that achieves what it is supposed to and does more than it needs to. The creators could have stopped at the profiles displays and had a mighty fine application, but the idea to make it more social and allow the locating of players, though on occaisons a bit creepy, is still a win. This application holds nothing for you if you do not play WoW so you can skip it out right unless one of your addicted friends gets you into with a free trial. This application can be obtained for free from: I Play WoW

Score: 10/10

Popularity: 2% [?]

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What it Does:

This application was developed by Alex Moskalyuk as a way to display your video game collection on your Facebook profile.

How Well It Does It:

The app does this by allowing you to select games from an expansive list of box art that includes the current generation of consoles (Wii, XBox 360, PS3) and hand helds (PSP, and Nintendo DS), goes one step further and allows for the previous generation of systems (XBox, PS2, Gamecube, GBA) and PC. There is one more option which is labeled “Old School”. Old school contains everything that came before the last generation of game systems with your ability to find software getting iffy right around the Super Nintendo era.

All in all the software library you can choose from is pretty impressive. You will be able to find current releases with a problem, including those games that have not hit the shelves yet. This last bit is important, because not only can you list the games you have, you can also list the games you would like. If you have recently because disillusioned with review sites like Gamespot that allow you to keep a “Want List”, like I have, this is a welcome feature if only for the fact that you can keep track of what games you wanted in the constant streams of releases. This feature also allows any friends that you have running the app to see what games you would like and provides a link to the product on Amazon so that they may buy it for you. Unless you have some very generous friends, this link won’t get much use other than on your birthday or other holidays. Hmmm, perhaps it is time to hook your mother up with a Facebook account.

The links across the top are as follows: “Home”, which provides a seemingly random list of games and peripherals. Next to that is the “My Games” link which when pressed will take you to all of the items you have entered into your library. Though this is great, it has the unfortunate look of being totally randomly arranged. There are sometimes wide spaces between items on the list and there is no way to order them. It would be nice if there were a way to decide how your library displayed, such as alphabetically, by favorites or ratings, or just being able to order them how you would like.

To the right of the library link is “My friends’ games” which allows you to see the library of any of your friends using the application. For example, the first game that appears on the list is Mario Kart DS and displays the box art for it. To the right of the box art it shows the name and profile pictures of two of my friends that have the game. If you do not have the game this section also gives you a link under each friend that says “borrow it”, clicking it will notify your friend that you wish to borrow that game.

The fourth link over is the “Games I Want Link”. This is where your wish list is kept. I do not currently own Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, but to help me with that soul crushing problem a “Buy it” link is provided to the product on Amazon. The last link across the top is the “Games my friends want”; basically, your friends wish list. This is your chance to be that generous friend or mother. This is displayed just like your friends’ library, showing the game box art and then next to it the friend’s name and profile picture with the helpful “Buy it for them” link to Amazon under it.

All in all this is a pretty neat application, ever more so if you and your friends are active in video games as a pass time. Currently I have three friends using it on my personal account and if I had more friends that played I am sure it would be an easy convince for them to get it. The application is pretty non-intrusive on your profile as far as applications go. It does display a partial library and a partial wish list in your profile and it does publish to you mini news feed but all of these things are optional. The display of your wish list is particularly handy if you have some one like my girlfriend who doesn’t know much about the hobby buying you games.

Here at Facebook Herald we rate on a 1-10 scale and this application receives an 8/10, which ranks it as a keeper. It’s a good app that does what it sets out to do, but could use some improvement with the display of the list and would benefit greatly from the addition of a ratings system. This application can be obtained for free from: VideoGames

Score: 8/10

Popularity: 2% [?]

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