The Daily Grind: Do MMOs need more social networking services?
by Akela Talamasca 
May 7th 2008 at 8:00AM
Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind
Web 2.0 is all about giving Joe User more choice, more of a voice, and more opportunities for interaction. User-created content is king, as witness the rise of such sites as YouTube. However, many MMOs are still closed systems -- you can't talk to your gTalk friends within World of Warcraft, you can't post to Twitter from Tabula Rasa, and you can't there's no Facebook integration with Everquest 2.But who cares? Chances are you're too busy playing to care about any of those things anyway. However, as these apps mature, and people find more ways to integrate them with everything else, it probably won't be too long before new MMOs will offer connectivity with them right out of the gate. Will this be a boon or a bother? Do you wish your favorite MMO already had this integration?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim said on 4:28PM 5-23-2008
I would seem to me if they could integrate the chat with other IM software or SMS that would be cool.
Imagine grinding away and getting notice from your buds that its wet teeshirt night at the bar: that would be awesome!
Reply
fanguad said on 10:12AM 5-07-2008
I remember there was some talk in the FFXI-hacking community about replacing (or supplementing) the in-game chat with IRC, so you could talk to friends on other servers, and so forth. I don't think anyone ever implemented it.
I know that IM would be nice, because then I could talk to my friends who aren't logged in without swapping in and out of the client.
Reply
Ted R. said on 3:14PM 5-09-2008
The FFXI chat -> IRC/Web stuff has been done and released by a linkshell on odin (OrionsDoor).
You can find the source (or links to it) on bgforums.
Scopique said on 10:33AM 5-07-2008
One cool-esque thing that a few titles do is to offer the ability for external apps to access data feeds. If you view the page source on WoW's Armory, you'll see that the whole damn page is XML. THAT is a brilliant move on Blizzard's part, because any app can just load an Armory page (for a character, guild, etc), and parse the info for use on guild homepages, dynamic signatures, etc.
A lot of folks who have to work during the day, but are so horribly addicted that they spend their time day-dreaming about the game would benefit the most from external services. I agree with the whole external chat suggestions, or an IM service. If you're an occasional player, but want to keep up with friends whom you might not be in contact with enough to learn about goings on, it would be a great help.
Reply