I'll Take My WoW To Go, Please

The World of Warcraft Expansion I’m waiting to see isn’t actually an expansion, but a new platform: WoW extension games on phones and handhelds.

When we’re at home, we have no troubles getting our WoW fix. You log in, you go off to do quests, or join a raid or spend some time at PvP. But what about the free time you have that’s not at home? Blizzard has an opportunity here. WoW is the world’s largest game, and already the competition is dwindling as more and more MMO projects are cancelled because it would take hundreds of millions of dollars to even take a roll of the dice to try and seriously compete with it. But some companies are planning to do just that.

What Blizzard can do now to get a leg up on the competition is to take a page from Microsoft. I know, I know, even muttering that name in a blog or forum is inviting flames. I’m no Microsoft Fanbio, they do plenty wrong. There are a few things that MS does well though. Among them is getting their fingers into enough pieces of the pie and expanding their valuable properties to the extent that competing with them is not just prohibitively expensive, it’s ludicrously expensive.

How Expansion Reinforces Brand
Take a case in point: Windows. Sure there are other operating systems. An operating system is, in essence, a simple beast that controls access to the hardware. But Windows grew beyond that model. It not only handles the hardware, but now it’s the basis for APIs for application development. It’s the centerpiece of server architectures. It’s got a virtual ton of applications in existence. These things give it extra weight and make it incredibly difficult for any competitor to beat it by matching it on every front. And that’s what it will take in order to win against it.

Now transfer that concept to the MMO world. Blizzard holds the reigns of the biggest selling MMO there is. But all someone needs to do to beat it is build a better MMO. I know that’s not easy, and far too many have failed for their efforts. But it’s still “just an MMO”. But what if they push it into a bigger scope? Make it impossible to defeat them because no new entrant could ever compete?

What’s that new area to expand into, you ask? There is a wide range of ways that it could happen. I’ll look at one here, and while it may or may not be of interest to all players, it’s merely stated as a conceptual model upon which any number of alternatives could be constructed.

What If?
Imagine if you will, if you could participate in WoW while sitting on your cell phone or while playing with your online handheld game. Would you enjoy being able to turn that 15 minutes of downtime on the bus or in the Dr’s office into something that actually contributed to your WoW game play?

If Blizzard were to develop some handheld games, that while not being actually online to WoW, nevertheless contributed to WoW, you can capture the same sense of attachment. Possibilities include playing phone games that issues prizes for victory by adding to the rested time on your level 48 rogue. Or games where beating a boss causes a token to be sent to one of your characters that when used, adds to the faction of your choice. Perhaps beating a given scenario in the handheld game sends a nice potion to your in-game character. Maybe a game where completing a series of tasks or events or even the entire game itself results in your online chars receiving special “honor points” for a new class of armor similar to how PvP rewards Honor with which to purchase PvP armor.

Going one step further, what if the characters you played in these off-line games were based on the class and races of your in-game characters? Imagine playing your lvl 50 hunter in the handheld game to explore a dungeon in the handheld game and the time you spent at it and the successes you achieved resulted as rewards for that same character in the MMO game.

Going even further, players who have enabled their accounts for handheld use could participate in quests that combine goals from both games. This could open a lot of doors, and depending on the rewards can help boost sales of the handheld games.

There are, of course, a variety of potential pitfalls. Security, balance, reasonability of the rewards, and a host of other topics would need to be worked out. But Blizzards is raking in enough cash these days to afford to pay some talented people to work those things out. Blizzard is also in the unique position of being the heavyweight that could set up the necessary deals to push the WoW franchise out into the variety of portable gaming platforms from the PsP to the Iphone to the forthcomming Google Android phone. Now is the time to use that leverage to increase it's lead.

Why Do It?
What this would hand Blizzard is the first game where you can begin to have people involved in multiple ways with their MMO, adding a huge checkbox to the “what a new game would need to compete with WoW” list that any investor is evaluating.

Now that Blizzard is Activision Blizzard, there’s an opportunity to leverage the concept. Imagine if playing any Activision game could carry some potential rewards such as a free potion or an instant upgrade to a good sword if you start a new character. Cross leveraging sales for the company can only help to reinforce the brand.

There are lots of reasons to not build something like this. The first is “WoW is #1, why bother?” But that’s a shallow answer when you consider that many companies are continuing to chase the MMO market looking for the next big thing. No one gets to stay on top by merely coasting.

Merc Stealth Keyboard - 1 Month Later

We've had the 2 Merc Stealths in place for a while now so I figured it's time to post an update on how they are doing.

We purchased two of them and put them into primary use on our Gaming PCs at home. Here's what we notice a month later:

Keyboard 1
This is the one that gets more use. Probably roughly twice the hands on time as the other one. Normal position is left hand on the extended left-hand portion of the keyboard on the butterfly keys, right hand on the mouse.

What we noticed is rather odd. The A and S keys have begun to flake off their black coating, letting more light through and obscuring the glowing letters. This is pretty odd to me as I'd have assumed that the keys were not translucent and that only the letters are. As it turns out apparently the entire key-top (or perhaps the entire key) is translucent and is coated with black paint on the outside of the key. And while the white portion that paints in the letters is not flaking off, the black pain is.


Keyboard 2
This keyboard has it's own, but different issue. One of the buttons, the "up and right" button on the butterfly control tends to stick down quite often. And by quite often I do not mean a few times a night. I mean every 2nd or third press. To unstick it you must pound on the key a few times to shake it loose. This totally unacceptable for a primary movement key on a custom gamer's keyboard.

Conclusion
Other than these two problems, one strictly cosmetic and one game effecting, the keyboards continue to work well. Unfortunately these are premium keyboards costing over $80 each and a goodly portion of that is for appearance. No one buys a backlit keyboard and isn't in it partly for the cool appearance.

I'd have to demote our previous buy recommendation on this keyboard to a "get it if you like the Mercs but be aware they are not flawless". I'll be putting in a support call when time permits to find out what they have to say about both keyboards.