I’m one of the most prolific WoW playing Twitter junkie on the planet. I always use it to reach out to other WoW players and bloggers. Even managed to recruit several players via the Twitterati as well. You could say I’m one of those guys who sees a new toy out on the market and is usually one of the first early adopters.
In short, you could say I’m an evangelist.
When I got wind of a new Twitter client on the market that allowed WoW players to tweet from within the game, interact on Twitter and upload screenshots as well, I had to get my hands on it.
Check out the promotional video here:
What’s it do?
- Ability to send and receive Tweets in game (causes a UI reload)
- Tweet queuing (send Tweets after the raid)
- Upload and publish screenshots taken within the game
- Tweets whenever you log in, zone into an instance or earn an achievement
Installation
Unlike most addons, this involves an actual setup executable for it to properly function. If you don’t trust it, make sure you have the latest anti-virus installed. I also purchased an authenticator for extra security. 6 bucks for piece of mind is such an awesome feeling and a worthwhile investment. But anyway…
One computer restart later and everything was good to go. It comes with two parts. One aspect is the addon itself that interfaces with the game. The other is the part that interacts with Twitter.
Usage
Very simple and straight forward to use. All I did was type in /tweetcraft to pop open the window and there were all my tweets. A nice dialog box at the bottom allowed me to write my own and either send them immediately or queue them for later tweeting. I took a screenshot of it with the Tweetcraft window up which automatically uploaded and tweeted the shot as well.
And then my entire UI reloaded.
This was when I realized that there could be a problem.
In order for Tweetcraft to properly function, it has to pull information off the web and then reload the UI so that everything becomes updated. Now depending on how often you tweet or wish to view your tweets, it’s going to become an increasingly annoying process.
Raiding? Want to tweet about some epic encounter? Watch as the rest of your raid waits in agony for your raiding addons to load as you tweet “Hodir sux.”
It’s even worse if you’re hitting the arena. Your opponents won’t even give you the time of the day to tweet how overpowered Druids are (or whatever class it may be).
Unfortunately, not much can be done about it as this is the way WoW is wired. The client has to reload UI every time in order to fetch updates. It’s a big turn off for myself personally since I do have a fair number of addons in play. Constantly reloading them is a big pain and a big hassle. I’ll be sticking to Tweetdeck as my personal Twitter client of choice and playing WoW in windowed mode.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a way to interact with Twitter from in game and you don’t mind the UI reloads or if you’re running light, then this addon might have a place for you. Think of TweetCraft as a really glorified IM program which happens to have a world you can explore while chatting with friends.
Download Tweetcraft
Found a cool addon? Want to share a UI tip? In the mood to contribute a guest post? Have some ideas for future posts? Feel free to 
Well, that’s too bad! I was really looking forward to testing this one out. Guess I will stick with my alt-tab method – takes a lot less time than reloading!
Or you could use Rogue ( http://rogue.gotgame.com/ ) which lets you browse any website while playing in fullscreen mode.
As cool as this sounds, it’s probably easier to use two monitors and run WoW in windowed mode in one and a Twitter client on the other. Props to the addon author, though.
I started to use this addon over the weekend. It was a bit spammy at first because it tweeted every time that I logged in/out, changed zones and got an achievement. I figured out how to only tweet the achievements and I am happy with that setup.
Wow I was hoping this would turn out to be an awesome mod too. Reloading the UI kills the whole thing for me. :(
It would be nice (and likely easier to manage) if there were a twitter add-on for xfire that interfaced much like the other features of xfire (hotkeys to pull up specific features without having to alt-tab out).
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Just do what I did, buy a second monitor.
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Gotta be honest Matticus… kinda shitty to call it a poor execution when in fact it’s a BLIZZARD imposed limitation from within the game client. The addon author I’m sure did everything in his/her power to ensure a seamless experience. Is it his/her fault that the UI must be reloaded for every external file update?
This is one area where having a mac is a BIG advantage. Since 3.0.3, the mac client of WoW has run in “pseudo-fullscreen” mode, where it fills the screen, hides the dock/menu bar, disables standard shortcuts – but it doesn’t take over the screen.
WoW only disables things like the Cmd-Tab switcher, or the spotlight command, and this means you can install an application switcher with a non-standard activation shortcut (I use quicksilver, <3 quicksilver) and you can switch in and out of WoW *instantly*. No, I mean instantly.
There is no difference from switching from Mail to Firefox. Because WoW isn't in real fullscreen, if you can find a way of switching apps, WoW acts just like a window, but it's still full-size in the background and you can switch back instantly and it all works near flawlessly.
This also means you can have windows on top of WoW, and they can stay there while you play, if you set them to Always on top (I use Afloat for this). Shitty twitter addons away! I enjoy using this to watch anime while the RL prattles on yet again about the next boss in Naxx25. Oh yeah, Aloft also does transparency, if you want that.
The "near flawless" part is caused by WoW's lack of awareness about spaces, if you are not on WoW's space and you switch to WoW, you will stay on your current space, the screen will lock just like normal, but WoW will still be on another space! This means you have to switch out again and manually move to WoW's space, but it's easy enough to work around.
Quicksilver: http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-alchemy/downloads/list
Afloat: http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/
Likewise, I was also disappointed in the actual product after having seen the video. Premise good, and I’d agree, execution poor.
I’ll stick with alt-tabbing, typing an update in twhirl, and then alt-tabbing back into the game. Takes a matter of seconds, and if I’m doing it when we’re looting a boss (or conversely, I’m lying dead), then there’s no issue.
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@Lumz He acknowledged that in the article… “Unfortunately, not much can be done about it as this is the way WoW is wired.”
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I’m with Grimtorn and the others here. I’ve been excited about mixing Twitter and WoW since I first found them, and while the different products have looked cool, they have turned out to be disappointing.
I haven’t actually put tweetcraft to work just yet, though I do have it downloaded and ready to go. When I saw it was a .exe file I paused and decided not to move forward until other people had tried it. So far I’m not seeing a whole lot of good about it except from those that use only a small portion of it’s functionality.
If I can only use a small portion of a set of tools though, then I’d really rather not bother with it in the first place. I’m not about to wait for a UI reload, and I don’t enjoy having to alt+tab back and forth either. That’s why I don’t bother even opening using twitter when I’m at home.
Sadly, I don’t think tweetcraft, in it’s current state, is going to do anything for me. And I’m not entirely sure that anything else will either. For now I’ll just kick back as I always have and wait for someone else to try for a stronger product.
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You neglected to mention another BIG problem with Tweetcraft: its inability to remember settings! I don’t want to clog anybody’s feed, ESPECIALLY my own, with “Luly has entered Dalaran!” or “Luly has left Desolace!” and that kind of stuff, so I immediately went in and turned all of that off. Imagine my surprise next session when all of those boxes I distinctly recalled unchecking were checked again.
Having a program force a UI reload to work is an unavoidable annoyance.
Having a program defaulting to autospam is rude.
Having a program unable to remember its users’ custom settings is poor planning.
I don’t have time for a poorly planned, rude and unavoidably annoying program.
That gets fixed though, and I’m so back.
If there were a purely ingame (Completely separate from the real Twitter) twitter client, would you use it? What would you want to be able to do with it?
Horrible idea all around, if you need explaining on why its horrible than you are most likely a tool or a little preteen girl.