Of Armories and iPhone Apps

September 21, 2009 in Aion, Rants, World of Warcraft 2 Comments

NCSoft recently announced their Aion Armory.  It appears to be fairly slick, though you can’t check any characters.  I’m curious how much they gleamed from Blizzard’s Armory for World of Warcraft.

I believe that in this day and age, an armory of sorts should be deemed mandatory.  We’ve seen the success (and popularity) of both the official WoW Armory, as well as all of the websites which pull that data to present it in different ways.  I love being able to pull a 3D rendering of my characters from 3D Armory.  I also love the simple MicroArmory for use on my iPhone.

Speaking of which, the World of Warcraft Armory app for the iPhone/iPod Touch has shown that there is a lot of interest for alternative means of viewing characters and even organizing events via the calendar.  Considering just how many people have iPhones and iPod Touches, it stands to reason that this is a very large untapped market when it comes to game developers bridging their games to such applications.

As it stands, the WoW Armory is free (as it should be), however would you pay a buck or two for an app that would allow you to access your auction house alt’s bags (and bank).  An app that would allow you to scan the Auction House and put items up for sale?

Oh, hell ya!

Some may argue that this would grant an advantage to those who have such devices, but I’d argue that if the same functions were presented in a web format, then everyone could do the same.

The problem is, I fear Blizzard doesn’t have the chops to take such a chance.

A) They would run the risk of alienating some of the playerbase that does not have such devices.

B) It would require a lot of work to implement and ensure it remains hack-free.

I thought about how nice it would be if NCSoft decided to go out on a limb with Aion.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could setup a trade booth from a web browser or iPhone/iPod Touch app?  In game, your character would be logged in, and would appear as if they were trading their goods.  On your app, you’d be presented with all of the options in a less graphical manner (to avoid heavy bandwidth issues).

All sales would register the same as if you were logged into the actual game client.

Sure, this would be bad for your office production, but it would be fantastic for game and app sales.  I’d pay for such an app.  In a heartbeat.

What about an app that allows you to follow chat channels.  What if logging into this app (whether WoW or Aion or any other game) automatically recognized your chat channel settings and allowed you to chat with your guild, custom chat channels (such as /twitter for some of us on Korialstrasz) and even send /whispers).  What if it also remembered your friends and ignores and allowed you to add to each list?

Let’s be honest.  None of this is rocket science.  It’s definitely possible.

What’s more, it would further feed your addiction, making you want to get in game as soon as you got home from work.  It certainly would work in the game devs’ favor.

What about turn-based combat for duels?  Have your character appear like a card in a TCG, with each of the spells as other cards which you can use during your turn.

No, this wouldn’t be anything like an actual ingame duel, but how frakking cool would it be to have your character and your spells as part of a deck which you’d use in a turn-based TCG setting in an iPhone/iPod Touch app?  You could easily implement this on either WoW or Aion.

Would you pay a couple bucks for such an app?

I reiterate… oh, hell ya!

The possibilities are endless for those of us with creative imaginations.  And that’s what these game devs need.  They need to start seriously thinking outside of the box and working on branching out.  It’s not enough just to offer us Twitter access from within a game (such as within Uncharted 2).

We want more… no, we crave more.

There’s an online addiction that you can feed there, and in the process, make a fuckton of money (whether by selling such services or by enlarging your player base that already pays for the game).

Think outside the box, peeps.  I assure you that you will be rewarded for such actions.  An online armory is just a starting point… one which I repeat should be seen as mandatory these days.

Aion, Armory, iPhone/iTouch, World of Warcraft