Cataclysm: Website

With Cataclysm, Blizzard released a new website. The new Battle.net has a lot of interesting bells and whistles that I enjoy enough to write about. First and foremost, the look is a lot cleaner. Things are organized a little more intuitively. Comments on Blizzard's news items actually have indented threading now! This makes it a little easier to follow the replies. I wish they would add this to the forums, but given the average IQ of the playerbase, they'd rarely end up under the correct post I'm sure.

I do dislike General doubling as the Suggestion forum. Having a separate suggestion forum helped keep down some of the clutter and made it easier to run through them offering my two cents.

One of the biggest changes in the website is the information available when you are logged into your account. I can check upcoming events (whether static game events or guild events), I can skim the guild news for what my guild has been up to that day, and most importantly, I can see how many auctions I have up, sold, expired, and how much gold from the AH is sitting in my mailbox, and even how full my mailbox is.

Not only can I keep an eye on my main's economic activities, but it also allows me to check alts without spending fifteen minutes logging between characters. This, to me, is probably the best thing ever. I can even browse the auction house without logging on (or subscribing to the mobile AH).

A number of other small features has made it so the WoW website is worth regular perusal. None of them are earth-shattering enough for me to discuss in detail, but here's a quick list:

• Easily track average item level on the Armory.
• Find my active realms at the bottom of the forums listing without having to scroll through a list of all realms.
• List of popular forum topics to glance at to see if any catch my interest.
• Ability to change active character from a dropdown menu rather than navigating to a different page.
• Latest Blue posts at the top of the forum directory
• Quick links from players/mobs/items to their page on WoWhead
• Better compartmentalization of web features makes it finding what you want a lot easier.

All in all, the new website provides a lot of new functionality and a lot of new features. Now, it's actually worth checking out on a regular basis, instead of just on Tuesdays while waiting for servers to come back up.