Open Data

Good morning you happy people.  I am mostly conscious today but feel like I am coming down with something.  While it has not fully hit me yet, last night I felt relatively horrible.  It is one of those mornings where I have been staring at the blank screen for ten minutes… finally comprehending that I am supposed to write something thoughtful or interesting.  It is mornings like this that I question my decisions in life… and why in the hell I ever decided to do this blog every morning thing.  However I shall persevere and push on… and try and be thoughtful and or interesting or at least something other than comatose.

Armory

2013-08-16 06_10_03-Belgrave @ Argent Dawn - Community - World of Warcraft

I am addicted to armory systems.  When I am playing a game that has them… I happily check up on literally everyone I meet just to see exactly how they are doing things.  I am not a terribly competitive person by nature, but I love peering into the inner workings of other players.  I have learned so much from sifting through the specs of other players.  Additionally when I have gotten a good drop, I used to sift through the profiles of level appropriate guild members, to see if any of them could use it as an upgrade.  If they could I would send that doodad off in the mail, because I would always rather an item go to use than end up as pocket change when sold.

The funny thing is… I thought EVERYONE liked Armory systems.  I made a comment yesterday about how much I wished that Rift had one… and immediately got a couple of responses from twitter talking about how much each of the players disliked them.  One player took the stance that they had never seen any good come of them… and that in generally they only served as a point for players to trash talk or tear down others based on their gear.  The second player said she liked to keep her spec and gear secret, that she felt like it gave her an edge in PVP. 

I guess I can see both points, but they are also both foreign concepts for me.  Firstly I rarely if ever pvp, and when I do it is on a lark and only to help complete some world event or guild quest.  I am pretty much anti-competitive and want everyone to just get along and work together towards some glorious common goal.  That said I can also see how if you do not have a protective bubble of guildies surrounding you… how you could get exposed to players that want to pick apart your gear and “call you bad”.  I’ve always found armory systems to be amazing diagnostic tools that provide easy access information sharing of how exactly a player is out performing you by so much.

Open Data

2013-08-16 06_22_55-Belghast [90 Shadowknight] - Antonia Bayle - EQ2U - Character Details

I think the king of all armory systems exists in Everquest 2.  The odd thing about it… it was built by a third party developer.  I have a friend that works in the tools division of SOE, and I can remember all these early attempts to make a reliable and excellent mobile application.  Ultimately they decided as a company that they simply did not have the manpower to adequately support an extremely detailed data visualization and armory tool on all available platforms.  So instead they shifted their focus and made an amazingly intricate data service.  This would allow third party developers to build the ultimate armory application for whatever platform they chose to.  The end result I feel was a master stroke, and they have provided better access to data than any other company out there to date.

After the data service was released, EQ2Wire a long time supporter of the community and the best news source came along and released a truly phenomenal armory system.  Essentially it provided full access to everything you would care to learn about your character.  In fact in many ways it provided more information about your character than you could actually access in game.  It had all sorts of nifty auxiliary functionalities like lists of all the dungeon maker items you had collected, or all your spells with the ability to create a shopping list for reagents to upgrade them.  When EQ2 did a massive reworking of the AA system, they offered the ability to look at the previous version of your AA profiles so you could easily see just how exactly you had specced your character.

So when I say that I would love to have an armory system in Rift.  This is the system I would most like to see it patterned off of.  I would love them to take the data they already provide about the game to fan sites… but roll into it all the information about the players and serve it up as an active data service.  Hell I would even devote development time towards working on an armory system if one decided to pop up and turn into a github project.  Likewise I am sure lots of other people would devote their time to it as well.  It would be awesome to return to being able to scour the guild roster to see who can use an item, or who has an amazingly artful spec.

One of the nice thing that EQ2 did when they rolled out their system was adding the ability for your to go off the grid of sorts.  When you check that box, your character information becomes cloaked from the data feed.  This would satisfy those players who want to keep their spec and gearing close to their chest, for PVP purposes.  A scenario like this is the best of all worlds since it would finally allow me to integrate an armory system into our guild website.  I have been working on a social roll-up page that lists various pieces of meta data from our forum profiles in one place.  So I have been able to integrate WoW Armory, and TSW Chronicle… but am missing the game we are playing the most often… and as such is what prompted this whole line of discussion.

Redeemed

League of Legends 2013-08-15 20-37-32-38

Several of my friends are super devoted to League of Legends.  For the League E-Sports crowd, I am going to sound like a complete moron…  but my friends were watching whatever event was going on last night.  I pay about as much attention to e-sports as I do to traditional sports… which is absolutely none.  This was a funny realization for me, because I feel exactly the same way while watching both.  Zero interest in watching someone else play a game, regardless of what that game is.  I guess I get bored watching other people do things that I could just be doing myself if I cared enough to do them.

All of the talk of League however made me want to pop in for a bit.  I had some RP sitting in my account and Riven is probably the cheapest I have ever seen her.  I have been told multiple times that this was a champion I would probably like a lot.  Previously I would say my three favorite champions were WuKong, Garen and Darius…  all of which have an extremely similar play styles.  Essentially I seem to be unable to get into any champion that is NOT a top lane bruiser style champion. 

I fired up a quick 1v1 custom game to put Riven through the motions, and man… I have to say I love her.  I have never gravitated towards female avatars in any game I play… I just find an inability to really get into playing them.  However I had already found at least one female champion that I really liked… and that was the super murdery Vi.  I can now add Riven to that list.  Firstly she is another champion limited only by her cooldowns much like Garen.  I really love that style of gameplay, as I hate having to watch my mana bar…  and I think in many ways that is why I love Garen so much.  Additionally she has an extremely high sustain, especially once you throw a bloodthirster on her.

She is kinda like my perfect fusion of WuKong with his insanely ganky E-Q-W combo that lets him hop in and bash things then sneak away… with my love of Garen and his complete lack of resources to fiddle with.  I still suck horribly at League because I am diametrically opposed to its click to move control scheme… but when I play Riven I feel like I suck a little less.  Additionally her combination charge/shield attack is extremely awesome at getting out of jams…  like getting too close to a turret… which I may or may not do way the hell too often.  At least I can add one more champion to the arsenal of ones that I really enjoy.

Wrapping Up

Well this has rattled on long enough… and I should really be getting on my way.  Here is hoping that I get to feeling better, and that I really am not coming down with something.  I figure it is likely just allergies as it has been all summer.  My boss is out of the office today… which normally folks would think it is a good thing.  However in my case that just means I have to fill in for him when a crisis arises.  I really hope no crisis arises… I could use a nice and chill day.  I hope you all have an excellent one, and that it begins an amazing weekend.

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