If you haven’t been using the WoW Remote apps for iOS and Android, you’ve been missing out. Not only do the apps give you full access to The Armory and the Auction House, but they now allow you to send whispers and messages to guild members, provided you and they are both signed up. You can even join officer chat while you’re using your phone, all without having to log in to the game from your computer. Talk about a way to find out who’s online in the game just by looking at your phone.

Here’s the scoop from Blizzard’s announcement:

We recently updated the World of Warcraft Remote page with new screenshots and information about the upcoming mobile guild chat feature, currently in development for iPhone®, iPod touch®, and Android™. This new feature will allow World of Warcraft Remote subscribers to participate in guild chat, send whispers to their guildmates, and more through their phone or mobile device. We’ll have more information on the availability of this fanciful feat of gnomish engineering soon, so keep your goggles glued to the official World of Warcraft website.

The bigger thing to note here, even if you’re not addicted to your guild chat channel and you don’t want a way to keep up with them and talk to them at all times, (ugh – I know some guildies who’ll be in gchat all. of. the. time. thanks to this….) is that this means Blizzard is and has been actively working on the World of Warcraft Remote app for a while now, ever since they introduced the Auction House features. That means there are likely more good things coming soon for the app.

Have an iPhone or an iPod Touch? Looking for a way to keep tabs on your auctions and things when you’re away from your computer or you’re not logged in to WoW? Well Blizzard will have you covered…soon.

There’s been talk and discussion about a mobile app that would allow you to interact with the game and keep track of your auctions from your phone, but they’ve all been some measure of speculation and rumor up until now. Blizzard officially announced and opened the page for their Remote Auction House iPhone and iPod Touch app (and by proxy, likely the iPad although there may not be an higher-resolution version for it yet), and also announced that the app was already in beta. When it’s released, for the price of $2.99 you’ll be able to obsessively check your auctions from anywhere using items in your bank, bags, or mailbox, collect the gold from those auctions, bid on and buy out auctions up in the auction house.

I imagine the first groups of people to latch on to this app are the ones who make heavy use of the auction house, but I’ll bet the price point and availability of the app will encourage other, more casual auctioneers to use it as well – especially after a long night of raiding and killing trash, it’ll be a great way to head to the office in the morning, put all of your stuff up for auction, and not have to make yourself late in the morning by logging in “just to check the AH.”

I’m being completely selfish here, but here’s hoping for an Android app soon as well! Many thanks to Wow.com for the tipoff, and they have an amazing gallery full of images from the mobile app as well!

The word came down on the official forums today that there may be some new features coming to the armory soon, including some kind of web access to the in-game auction house, and additionally “premium” features on the auction house that will likely cost some form of real money. What those “premium features” will be and what they’ll get you though all remains to be seen.

Here’s what Bornakk said on the forums:

Since the launch of the World of Warcraft Armory, we’ve been regularly releasing updates and new features designed to help players stay connected to the game even when they’re not logged in. Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch.

While there are still plenty of details to be worked out, we’re designing the service to offer auction functionality similar to what’s available in-game. Players have been requesting — and we’ve been hoping to implement — a feature like this for a long time, and we’re excited that the Armory and the game have evolved to a point that makes it possible.

This is a fairly complex service to develop, due in large part to its unprecedented integration with the game, so we don’t have an exact release date yet. It’s important to note here that certain elements of the service will be premium-based, which we’ll go into more detail on once the service functionality is finalized. As with all of the services we offer, we plan to integrate the Auction House and Armory in a way that won’t disrupt the gameplay experience, and we won’t release it until it meets the quality standards that we’ve set for our other features and services. You may be seeing bits and pieces of the Auction House service pop up in the test builds we use for the public test realms as we go through the process of internal testing. We’ll have more info to share with you here and at http://www.WorldofWarcraft.com as we get closer to release.

Very cool – soon we may be able to manage our auctions from the office, for those of us who just can’t get enough of the AH, and for those of us who wait to log in just to “pop on and check our auctions” may be able to head to the Armory and do that after logging in there instead.

All in all, more features will be introduced shortly, so it’s just a matter of time until we see the improvements.

The Armory got a couple of upgrades this week, most notable of which the ability to zoom in and out on your character, see what their gear looks like on their body, and even play animations all from within your browser. The layout of the character window changed significantly as well, and shows a player’s recent activity as well as their achievements, spec, off-spec, and other stats in the same window.

Here’s what the Armory Upgrade Page has to say about the changes:

Every character profile now has a 3D model viewer that displays the character in his or her currently equipped gear, and accurately displays the character’s physical features, hairstyle, and helm/cloak display as they appear in-game. Mousing over the character model window brings up a control panel with the following controls (try it now with the character to the right!):

• Camera controls: To rotate the camera around a character, click and hold the left mouse button while moving the mouse left and right, or click the arrow buttons in the top left of the window. To zoom in and out, use the mouse wheel while hovering over the character window, or click the zoom buttons in the top left of the window. To move the character within the frame, right-click and drag the character in the window (or on the small square in the bottom left corner of the window).
• Animations: Each character has a selection of animations that they can perform. Use the arrows next to the animation’s name to cycle through them. The available animations are determined by the character’s class and currently equipped weapons.
• Capture pose: If you are logged in, you can set the default pose of any character on your account. Use the camera and animation controls to create a pose, then click the save icon to set it as the default. All visitors to the character’s profile will then see the character in that pose.
• Play controls: The rewind, pause, and fast forward buttons allow you to fine-tune a pose for a character.
  Fullscreen mode: You can view the character in a fullscreen display against a selection of backgrounds. All controls will continue to function in fullscreen mode.
• Embed: You can embed a standalone, interactive version of the character’s model viewer in a compatible website, such as a social networking site, guild website, or forum.
  Options: Extra options include selecting a background in fullscreen mode and toggling the display of a character’s helm, cloak, or tabard.

Those are some pretty cool upgrades! If you haven’t looked at your character on the Armory since the changes, you should definitely head over and look; it’s a world different, and in a very good way.