As you can see the plugin will now tell you if your hosting servers’ PHP installation is capable of pulling data from the armory, and will show a pleasant status message on the options page. Other notable changes include the removal of the cache options. Why? We have WordPress, thus we have a database. What for would you want a file cache? Plus file caching comes with the need to set file permissions to allow your hosting server storing cache files. Potential security risks shall be avoided.

Nothing else to see. If you run WordPress in debug mode, you will notice the armory plugin also has one. Be warned, the armory plugin will parse all (did I say all? Thats 30k items) and cache their data and tooltips in your WordPress database. This will take some time. Most likely ten to fifteen minutes.

My local item cache now contains 23222 (valid aka. real) items and is taking 17.8MB of disk space. Of course, all data saved as serialised XML data in MySQL.

If you happen to be curious like I am, you will have very likely noticed that those nice PHP classes have not received much love and maintenance or bug fixing since then. Thus I decided to jump in, tasking myself with streamlining the classes and fixing any bugs I might find in there. Both the base class for grabbing and parsing XML data, and the database / file caching class had bugs and missing features, which I added.

phpArmory.class.php

• Added: language support. You now can use the setLanguage ($language) and getLanguage() methods to set and retrieve the language in which you want to query armory data.
• Added: the characterIconURL method now has a matching sister for items, named itemIconURL($itemRef). E.g. if you have the icon name from a character item slot, you can pass that and receive the full URL to the matching icon in JPG format.
• Fixed: the xmlToArray method was not properly checking if a children of the XML object really was an array. Checks added, thus warning message gone.

phpArmoryCache.class.php

• Added: the phpArmoryCache class now has a new optional parameters for its’ constructur. Using $armory = new phpArmoryCache($armory = "http://www.wowarmory.com/", $dataStore = "mysql", $dataConn = "mysql://arthas:frostmourne@localhost/northrend", $dataTable = "frozen_throne"", $updateInterval = 14400) you can now define the MySQL connection settings instead of having to hack the PHP class to enter your settings.
• Fixed: XML caching will now work again.
• Fixed: corrected storing of MySQL results. The cacheSave() method was not properly checking if a XML result already was stored. Now old data will be updated in case it exists instead of giving back a duplicated key error.

Enjoy the unofficial 0.3 release, and either grab phparmory-03tar.gz or phparmory-03.zip. Please note that all PHP files are formatted with Unix line endings, as I am mostly a Linux / Mac geek.

Feel free to leave a comment if you should end up having trouble with the classes.

Update: I have re-uploaded the archives and included the updated phpDoc code documentation.

Currently you can choose which armory you want to fetch data from. This - for now - is restricted to the US armory and the EU armory, with a few languages supported (English, German, French, and Spanish). Additionally you can choose if you want to allow armory links inside post, pages, and comments. E.g. you could allow links only in your own content, but not in user created comments.

Finally, there is working support for caching armory data in XML files. These will be saved into a folder inside the armory plugin. I plan to extend this to support your WordPress database, but this needs a few additional lines of PHP code.

Speaking of PHP, I have decided to base my plugin on an existing PHP class library named phpArmory. Library development sadly has slowed down in the last few months but I managed to fix all features that did not work, so the library now is fully aware of any locale the armory supports, and can fetch characters, guilds, and items without any errors. Caching with file and database backends has been tested and works. Cheers for me. I will upload the fixed phpArmory class once I have this plugin displaying tooltips on this site.

Expect more details and a 0.1 release within the next few hours.

While preparing a few articles I noticed that I have quite a few mentions of items and characters in my posts, and what could be nicer than making these items and characters visible for my readers without requiring them to browse to another website? Sure, it is not a must have thing, but it is a convenience which adds a bit to the overall feeling. So I decided to start developing a plugin for the recently released WordPress 2.5 which I use to create my blog.

Before jumping into my favourite text editor it seemed like a good plan to blog about the plugin, in order to describe what I want it to do, and how it should work. Having a plan is a Good Thing™ as many may remember from software engineering courses.

What do we need?

• item links: the ability to edit our posts, pages, and comments and turning item names into nice item tooltips, just like they look when you mouse over an item in the game client.
• character links: in the game client, you can SHIFT-click on any character name you read in chat, and the game client will print the basic character data like name, race, class, level, and current zone. It would be nice, to sign posts or comments with the character name and have a tooltip display the basic character values.

• full integration with WordPress 2.5+: WordPress 2.5 comes with a lot of revamped administrative features and AJAX support. I’d love to have the plugin make use of that. E.g. AJAX for pulling of item and character data from the armory and dynamically adding the tooltips where possible.
• caching of character and item data: yes, we all know it. Both the game realms and the armory have maintenance schedules and thus downtimes. Since it would suck to have no tooltips, the plugin should cache all data it has received from the armory. This has two benefits: it saves bandwidth for items we already have seen, and in case the armory is down, we still can have sexy tooltips.

• automatic installation and removal of the plugin: everything should be free of work for the user. The plugin should install itself without requiring user interaction, and it should remove itself without requiring interaction, plus it should clean up before it leaves the house.
• sane defaults: there are actually only a few options for such a plugin where a user might want to make a choice. There is the US armory, and the EU armory. The armory is available only in a few locales, not in all locales you can have your WordPress configured for, and the user might want to decide if he wants a file based cache, or if he would like to use the already existing WordPress database.

What next?

I have already built a basic framework for the plugin which is active and running in this blog. As you might notice once you open this sites HTML source, there are already a few lines added by the plugin for the AJAX tooltips, and a small style sheet for the visual look of these tooltips.

Expect an initial release on Saturday. I hope some people will volunteer for testing.

It’s been an interesting day with the team progressing slowly from the starting area into Bloodhoof Village. Roughly six hours it took from level 1 to level 10 with the team. Usually you can get from 1 to 10 in ~ 2 hours.

Why does this take so much time? Well, do you remember your first days in the starting areas? Remember, the starting areas mostly consist of kill quests where you need to kill x types of mobs, or pick-up x parts of mobs that usually not drop on every kill. Killing quests not really is an issue. Five shamans throwing a lightning bolt or an earth shock will usually put an end to every mobs’ existence with just one shot. I even tried mobs four or five levels higher than my little family, and it worked out well.

Pick-up quests though… hurt a lot. Grab a big backpack and additional bags, and bring drinks, food, and time. It seems that the drop rates for quest items in groups are only 2/3 of 1/2 of the usual rates. Where it takes one kill when playing solo, it takes four or more in a group for everyone to get the quest item. After a few trials where I was slowly getting sick by the window and character switching for each quest item, I decided to switch loot over to free-for-all mode.

This improved things a lot. At first, the random window switching for looting disappeared, I now could loot for each character step by step, toon by toon. That improved things a lot, less time wasted. After a while I noticed, this also helped with experience gain. Due to the higher amount of mob kills, I was back into the standard experience frame for the quests I did, and did not lag behind by a level or two. So now my quests are not red but all yellow which I think gives just the right amount of experience to level.

I logged off around half past nine in the evening, when the wife demanded my attention, with my experience being half on the road to level 11, and parked Ivida, Ivide, Ividi, Ivido, and Ividu in the Bloodhoof Village inn. Since I’ll take a little break to focus on a few other tasks now, they should get two or three days rested bonus.

Only slightly related… it did not last very long, until my team was discovered. Once I reach level 6 and entered the plains of Mulgore people noticed the five Tauren running around and one shooting things. It did not take long until the General chat was hit by messages like

WTF … how many Ivid… are there?

It did not to me. But let’s see a picture instead of all the reading.

Aren’t they a bunch of shiny Tauren?

One of the primary decisions you will have to make is whether you do want to multi-box using multiple computers or if you do want to jump into this adventure using a single computer. This decision is not an easy one, so I will try to provide a few pointers for the multi-boxing rookies.

At first sight you will probably notice that you need multiple accounts for this whole thing to work. Buying new accounts is easy these days, the World of Warcraft battlechest is available with the original game and the expansion The Burning Crusade. The Good Thingâ?¢ is: it comes with DVD media, so you can save a lot of time on your first installation.

I am still not sure if you can buy accounts online as I could not find this option on the European website. If you have any links for that, feel free to comment on this post.

World of Warcraft does have pretty low hardware requirements, which are meant to allow as many gamers into the world as possible. With the current requirements and the expected upgrade in the 2nd expansion Wrath of the Lich King a newly bought computer from 2006 should run the game well, even if you push the video settings to the maximum. Where the maximum would give you a view distance of approximately 50 yards and all possible details like ground clutter (aka. green stuff), buildings and non-player characters and flying objects visible very early. Plus shiny weather and nicely shaded polygons and character shadows.

Basically you can nail hardware requirements down to the following if you want to play without stuttering screens:

• 1.5Ghz CPU. This is sufficient. You can run full details with a single-core CPU like that.
• 1GB RAM: I played having only 512MB on Windows XP. With Vista available and sold on most new PCs, 1GB is the recommended minimum.
• Any 3D graphics card which comes with 256MB RAM. It does not really matter if it supports DirectX 10. DirectX 9 is fine, and the World of Warcraft graphics engine will not support DirectX 10 before a 3rd expansion gets released (which means not before 2009).
• A big hard disk. Preferably 160GB to 200GB. If possible a system with multiple hard disks. One for the operating system, one for each World of Warcraft instance.

Now you may ask, why should you buy four or five computers for what ever number of characters you want to play? The quick answer: it is easier. Grab identical computers from your favourite store, install your Windows of choice, and install World of Warcraft with all available updates. Connecting these systems to be controlled by one mouse and one keyboard is done by hardware, and it’s less likely you could fail here.

To make life easier, I would recommend to have one monitor for each computer. A TFT display with 15” size will work well, you can run WoW with a resolution of 1024×768 on this display.

Now all you miss is just one keyboard and mouse, and a little Open Source tool named Synergy. It allows you to broadcast mouse and keyboard input to multiple systems connected over a local network.

If you combine all that, you will very likely end up with quite a few â?¬ to spend for your multi-boxing adventure, not to mention the space requirements. Thus I would recommend this route only for those who have the space and the money. Since I am an IT professional, I have had the hardware available and could try this route. The chance for failure indeed is lower. The price tag you ask? For me it was ~ 1.800 â?¬ for a total of five identical systems, as in Germany - where I live currently - you can buy a machine fulfilling the minimum requirements for as low as 200 â?¬ and a decent 15” flat panel display for ~ 150 to 160 â?¬.

A description of the one system variant will follow in the next upcoming post.

To quote the inscription on the Blessed Prayer Beads:

“A friend in need is a friend without beads.”

• The mistress of leadership aka. Ivida: she will be the pack’s chief in charge, mainly because she has been created on my account that has both Collector’s Editions activated, thus you will very likely see Ivida running around with a Mini Diablo or with a tiny murloc baby that listens to the name Lurky. Ividia looks pretty impressive, her black fur and the green eyes make for a good match.
• The stomping damage crew aka. Ivide, Ividi, Ividji, and Ividu. As you may notice they do share hair style and eyes with Ivida, but all have different horns and fur style. Still they are what you expect from a Tauren female. Creatures bound to the force and will of nature.

Look forward, as we’ll soon start leveling the team up to 70. I’ll try to detail the whole process as much as possible, to make it easier for multi-boxing newcomers.

• Marenkay: Marenkay was my first Horde character, created in summer 2005 when I decided that Alliance was just not my type. She is a female troll shaman, specialized in healing. From her first talent point on, I decided to put all new talent points into the restoration tree and it stayed like that till she reached level 70.
• Jagoo: My 2nd Horde character. After enjoying the path of healing I thought it would be great to become the master of healing, and so Jagoo came into being. He is a level 70 troll priest, and his talent build is tailored for longer fights and endurance. Most of his talent points went into the discipline tree, and the rest into the holy tree. This way he is both a valuable solo character and viable for dungeons and raids.
• Shiena: And finally, after I saw most dungeons and raids from the backyard, I went a little further and stepped into tanking. With paladins being available to blood elf characters with the 2nd expansion The Burning Crusade, I took my chance and leveled Shiena to 70. Currently her gear is ready for heroic mode dungeons and Karazhan.

Multiboxing is a term used to denote one user playing multiple accounts simultaneously. This can be done using one or more machines. Solutions exist for both the PC and Mac. There are also solutions for using both PC and Mac at the same time. The following pages contain more detailed information than presented here, Multiboxing Hardware Requirements, Multiboxing Software Requirements, and Multiboxing Macros.

For some players there is not enough challenge in playing only one character at a time. Others look to recreate the feel of old time Computer Role Playing Games where a well designed team was used to adventure together. There are also some who don’t want to rely on others to play the game when one character is not enough.

I was refusing to roll a blood elf, like millions people have done, but well … resistance is futile, and only a short-living motion. Blood elves are quite an interesting race, considering they are sort of an evolution of the night elves.

Thousands of years ago, the exiled Highborne landed on the shores of Lordaeron and founded the enchanted kingdom of Quel’Thalas. These high elves, as they called themselves, created a fount of vast, magical energies within the heart of their land - the Sunwell. Over time, they grew dependant on the Sunwell’s unstable energies - regardless of the bitter lessons they’d learned in ages past.

During the Third War, the villainous Prince Arthas invaded Quel’Thalas and reduced the once-mighty realm to rubble and ashes. His undead army decimated nearly ninety percent of the high elven population. In addition, he used the Sunwell’s energies to resurrect Kel’thuzad - a powerful undead Lich - thereby fouling the Sunwell’s mystical waters. The few elven survivors, realizing that they had been cut off from the source of their arcane power, grew increasingly volatile and desperate.

In the midst of the elves’ darkest hour came Kael’thas Sunstrider - the last of Quel’Thalas’ royal bloodline. Kael, as he was commonly known, knew that the remnant of his people would not long survive without the nourishing magics that once empowered them. Renaming his people blood elves, in honor of their fallen countrymen, he taught them how to tap into ambient mystical energies - even demonic energies - in order to sate their terrible thirst for magic. In search of a new destiny for his people, Kael’thas ventured to the remote world of Outland where he encountered the fallen night elf, Illidan. Under Illidan’s tutelage, Kael and his blood elves have regained much of their former power.

Unfortunately, the blood elves’ practice of embracing demonic energies resulted in them being shunned by their former comrades in the Alliance. Thus, the remaining blood elves on Azeroth look desperately to the Horde to help them reach Outland, where they can reunite with Kael’thas and achieve the golden destiny he promised them.

Personal note: being addicted to magic is not a Good Thingâ?¢.