Doing some decidedly advanced and ruby-specific things here, don't worry if they don't make sense yet. Let me know what you have questions on.

gistfile1.rb

require 'net/http'
require 'json'

# Q:
# I kind of understand how this works. Each class is like a user made method
# (or function as I would call it). So whenever you call the player class it
# will run the parameters through. I read something about you can use that to
# make it more manageable. And you can mage gems out of it (or something - not
# quite sure on that part).

# A:
# Ok, first thing first. In Ruby, everything is an Object. Strings are
# objects, Numbers are objects, URIs are objects, etc. Everything.
#
# An object is a group of properties and methods. Properties are data, and
# methods are functions which work on that data.
#
# A Class is a definition of an object. So here I'm creating a Player class,
# which defines two methods. The first method is initialize, which is special
# in Ruby, because it gets called automatically whenever we create a new
# Player. The second is online?, which is not special at all.
#
# Ending a method name with a question mark is just a Ruby convention, that
# signifies the method returns true or false. It's just nicer than writing
# is_online.


# Q:
# Is the @variable syntax making that variable only available within that
# class? So if you used "name" within another class or anywhere outside that
# class it wouldn't hold the same value?

# A:
# @variable is how you declare properties. A property is data that is unique
# to an Object. In this case, we can create many Player objects (with
# Player.new('PlayerName'), and each one wiill have its own name and data
# properites.
#
# You can then access those properties with dot notation.
# bob = new Player('bob');
# mike = new Player('mike');
#
# bob.name would be 'bob'
# mike.name would be 'mike'

class Player

    URI_TEMPLATE = "http://census.soe.com/json/get/ps2-beta/character/?name.first_lower=%{name}&c:show=name,online_status%%20&c:resolve=online_status"

    def initialize(name)
        @name = name

        # I'm going to rewrite this below.
        # @data = JSON.parse(Net::HTTP.get(URI(URI_TEMPLATE % {name: name})))

        # Q:
        # this is kind of confusing. You're using the json parse method within
        # json object, required from the first few lines not sure what
        # .get(URI(.... does exactly. Do you need to do that because you can't
        # directly use get on the template?  i looked up the % and it says it
        # divides the first half by the second half, so I don't know what's
        # happening there

        # A:
        # The percent sign means different things in different contexts.
        # When applied to numbers it means modulo, which is the remainder when
        # dividing them. When applied to strings, it means to replace certain
        # placeholders with values provided. Let's rewrite the above, using
        # some intermediate variables.
        
        # Note that I'm not using @variable here. These are temporary
        # variables, I don't need them to be accessible on the object as
        # properties.

        # First, I make a hash, with one key and one value. The key is 'name',
        # and the value is whatever name got passed into the initialize
        # function.
        template_values = {name: name}

        # Then I use that hash with the % operator on the URI_TEMPLATE. That
        # replaces the placeholder "%{name}" token with the value from the
        # hash.
        uri_string = URI_TEMPLATE % template_values

        # uri_string is just a String object at this point, however. We need an
        # actual URI object. URI is a builtin class.
        uri = URI(uri_string)

        # Now we're going to use the get method from the Net::HTTP module to
        # get our JSON-formatted data string. A module is a special kind of object.
        json_data_string= Net::HTTP.get(uri)

        # Finally we use the parse method from the JSON module to transform
        # our JSON-formatted string into a hash. Here we WILL use the
        # @variable syntax, because we want @data to be a property that we can
        # access later.
        @data = JSON.parse(json_data_string)

        # So that's the exact same thing as before, except using some
        # temporary variables to break it out.
        #
        # In general, this:
        #
        # a = first_function()
        # b = second_function(a)
        #
        # Can always be written like this:
        #
        # b = second_function(first_function()))

    end

    def online?
        return @data["character_list"][0]["online_status"] == "1"

        # Q:
        # character_list is from the json return, and online_status is in the first
        # part (0 is first) then see if online status is equal to 1 ---makes
        # it true/false

        # A:
        # Yup.
    end

    attr_reader :name

end

%w{ ututtza publicstaticmainvoid netscrape getus }.each do |name|
    player = Player.new(name)
    puts "#{ player.name } is #{ player.online? ? 'ONline' : 'OFFline' }"
end

# Q:
# loops through array of each name, calls player and creates a new instance,
# using value of that 1 array field.

# A:
# Yes.

# Q:
# that value goes through the player class code. Then the last part is just
# the putting of the string where #{} inserts the text value of that variable.
# player.name would be the name from the array. and the player.online would be
# the online status of that player. So you created a custom class (object?)
# and name and online are the 2 methods?

# A:
# name is a property (it's just a string), online is a method (which looks up
# the online status in @data). But yes, pretty much

# Q:
# player.online? returns a boolean? then the second ? tells that 'ONline' is
# the true value and 'OFFline' is the false value?

# A:
# Yeah, it's called a 'ternary if statement', and it's kind of tricky. That
# whole line is tricky and kind of ugly, actually...

So I'm not sure if this applies to you, but if you remove %%20 in online_status%%20&c:resolve the , it reduces the amount of information you get back to just what you need. I think when I copied my portion over it kept that which broke the restricting of data retrieval.

URI_TEMPLATE = "http://census.soe.com/json/get/ps2-beta/character/?name.first_lower=%{name}&c:show=name,online_status&c:resolve=online_status"