I have been waiting.
You could tell it was coming. All of the signs and portents have been there.
C&Ds to iPhone app programmers from Blizz. The move of the authenticator into app format. This morning, I noticed, the Anti-Christ had arrived.
The World of Warcraft iPhone Armory
(for further information - http://eu.wowarmory.com/iphone.xml)
Its ... well, I have to say its pretty fantastic. You get:
A fully functional and up-to-date talent calculator
All of your characters and any others you want to see
Achievements and their breakdowns
Item database to plough through at your leisure
The in-game calendar in all of its glory
And lots of other bits!
And what makes this all the more shocking is that it is .... FREE! I expected a $1.99 download maybe, but no - this one is free, gratis and for nothing.
So whats so great about it? Well, the armoury business is something that I expected to be done sooner rather than later. For me, its the Calendar that is the real shocker. As the Calendar is a 'living' item within the game, in theory, it allows in-game to out-of-game communication. It only works one way (ie. you can only read what is in the Calendar, not edit it yourself.) but it is a start.
What other living parts of the game could they do this for? Well, the bleedingly obvious one is the Auction House, allowing you to manage your AH buying from your iPhone. Would that disrupt the game? Not at all. You pay a flat fee each month and if you access the AH from your phone, Orgrimmar or Undercity, it makes little difference.
This could be the start of a very interesting phase in the development of the game. And it gives me a lot of new things to waste time doing between lectures!
1 comment:
The more WoW (or any MMO, but WoW has the critical mass) moves to the wider contextual collaboration model the better.
Xbox Live made moves in this direction and then sort of ditched the ideas.
The goal is to make people contextually aware of the 'in game' while 'out of game' - this can have tremendous power in terms of getting people to play more due to not missing something or making a spur of the moment decision.
As an example, how many games do you miss on Xbox Live by not being on? None if you notice it happening via MSN and thus go and boot up your Xbox. Same in WoW - notice a raid being formed by your guild while watching TV? Etc.
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