The Armory iPhone App Has Been Updated

The official Mobile Armory iPhone App was recently updated with a few common sense features that were painfully missing from the app’s initial release. The first version of the Mobile Armory app was an incredibly useful, almost exact clone of the current Armory website. It allows the viewing of tons of information about every character on your account including: gear, achievements, talents and guild information as well. You could bookmark any character not on your account to make tracking their information easier as well.

Unfortunately, the first version was missing the best part of the actual Armory website and that’s Gear Upgrades. The web site lets you select any item on your character and get a comprehensive list of every piece of gear in the game that would be an upgrade over your existing piece of gear.
Other upgrades with this new version include some simple stuff like changes to the user interface and some new sound effects. The new sound effects, while unimportant to someone who has never used the app before, are a boon to people like me who found the version 1.0 sounds to be absolutely terrible.

Larger improvements include the ability to save and load talent builds you make with the app’s built-in talent calculator. I bet this is brutally awesome when you’re on your lunch break at work and thinking about what things you need to work on that night at home. Or equally awesome when you’re sitting at your desk at work trying to look like you are doing important stuff on your phone. When you couple this feature with the gear upgrade function the Mobile Armory becomes the most important application on the phone of every WoW math nerd out there.

With the recent removal of non-official World of Warcraft applications from the App Store it’s important that Blizzard maintains and continues to improve the Mobile Armory. If they’re going to be iPhone bullies and remove third-party applications it’s key that they bother to show support for the platform and produce products that are even better than those they had forcefully removed. I’ve been harsh in the past on Blizzard’s policies regarding developers (see the debacle over Add Ons for proof) but as long as they keep pumping out improvements to the Mobile Armory and work on other apps, such as the Authenticator, I’ll be happy.