Ok so this post was supposed to be about the Isle of thunder, however like all well laid out plans that one has been delayed by a couple of days. This is for two reasons; firstly time is just not my friend at the moment, secondly a couple of pieces of news this week caught my attention. These will allow me to go crazy with speculation, so if you have a tin-foil hat please equip it. Failing that stand squarely within the nearest door frame in case of building collapse.
Ok so first up the new in game browser was announced/data mined this week, whether this will make it into the final release of patch 5.3 only time will tell. Also I am not yet sure if this is that awesome feature that Ghostcrawler tweeted about a while ago. I hope it isn't as secretly I am holding my hopes out for complete character scaling allowing you to quest with low level friends as well as run older content at the correct level.
To be clear when I say in game browser, the term browser is a very lose term. As it stands at the moment, all you can access is Blizzards online support site. To be honest I am not sure if we can ever expect this feature to become a full blown web browser, or to have access to external sites that are not Blizzard. For two reasons firstly player base trust, it would be very foolish to allow the entire player base to have open access within game. While most of the players base could be trusted there will always be some people who do there utmost to access information of a adult nature. While yes Blizzard could put in place security protocols, no security is a 100% safe - people will always find a way to circumvent it in the end.
Secondly, there comes the issue of what sites would be allowed to be accessed on the browser. (I am working off the assumption it would use some sort of blacklisting for sites that are not allowed). Ok for example Blizzard decide to allow players to access Wowhead, seems fair enough to use full database site with loads of handy information. But then say the decide that people cant access WowInsider (no offence guys I love your site just needed a example) as its more of a blog based site with larger articles and not something you would check every time you get stuck in game. Here's the issue you can't allow every site - tio many security risks, but at the same point if you only allow some websites it will be deemed as favouritism. In the end the safest approach is to allow only content from your own sites.
This leads me quite nicely to my first piece of speculation. As we have established only allowing access to there own sites is the only way forward for the in game. For D3 there exists on the Blizzard site a extensive game guide along with item database that covers all your needs with regards to gear information. Secondly they recently added all the changes to battle pets and a new pet journal to the WoW site, is it to far a jump to see Blizzard cutting out the middle man and making there own WoW Database possibly? But it could happen.
One of the things that has always bugged me about WoW is the external Blizzard functions - the shop, forums and media feeds etc are all accessed outside of the game. Ok so for a while now the EU store has been down, you cannot purchase any physical items as the store is being overhauled. Now maybe the store is being overhauled so it can be accessed in game via the browser? Ok so this might be a no for that one but at the same point take the forums - if they could be accessed in game that would be awesome. (I am going to write about the forums, I have a lot of anger to vent at some of the s*** that goes on in them) My Gf has started the ironman challenge which is set up over the forums, wouldn't it be very cool if you could create a running commentary over the forums offering hints and tips without out even alt-tabbing out of the game? YES!!
Ok so finally we are going to grab the crazy by both hands and throw out this curve ball. My D3 time at the moment is largely me logging in every couple of days to re-list my stuff on the RMAH then logging out again. I think it would be awesome if I got notifications across B-net even when I am playing SC2. I am not asking for the ability to list auctions without logging into the game (though that would be nice) just for pop up notifications. This could work both ways as well playing D3 got a raid your signed up to on the calendar in WoW, boom up pops a cross game notification that lets you know in half a hour your pew pew finger is needed. The possibilities here are endless for cross game notifications and information.
Ok so this blog has kinda taken on a life of its own. I still haven't even spoken about the second thing I wanted to which is the acquisition of IPL by Blizz so you will have to tune in tomorrow (hopefully) for the second half - sorry guys.
Peace out y'all
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