I'd Love a Standalone Chat Client for WoW

Posted on May 8, 2008 at 1:48 PM
Related Categories: World of Warcraft

The good people at Blizzard may never go for this, but I'd love to have a standalone chat client that would allow me to chat with people currently signed in to the game (or the game via the text-only chat client).

As I've moved in to the role of raid leader, I find that it would be quite useful to be able to quickly communicate with others who are in the guild and may be playing the game when I am not. I could communicate setup issues to other officers or ask that a set of consumables be created. I know it would be great if guild members could log in to a standalone WoW chat client at work, let me know they're running 20 minutes late to a raid, then sign off. Right now, you either have to know someone's phone number (which not a lot of people are willing to give out), or communicate via the much slower system of a guild web site bulletin board, or email. Chatting via this client wouldn't be as bad as playing WoW at work, but it would let you communicate with guild mates and other in-game friends when you needed to — not just when you were in-game.

You'd have to have a valid, active WoW subscription, of course. You'd be limited to the general chat in whatever city or zone your character logged out, guild chat (and officer chat if you're an officer in the guild), and your own custom chat channels.

I think this would make an excellent addition to the social nature of the game, and get people to play even more than they already do (if that's possible). It would held maintain the longevity of the game even if a challenger comes along in the MMORPG market. I'd guess that some folks who stopped playing the game would keep up their subscription just to be able to chat with the friends they made in the game. The data is there. Chat clients aren't terribly difficult to make (especially if Blizzard maintains the same, bare-bones interface and features of in-game chat). Blizz wins all around.

Comments (3) |

Print |

Send | 1614 Views

Comments

I stubled across this and I had to reply. I agree with you. Having a standalone via webchat would be great. They did it in EQ2 and even in EQ1 they had a eq im floating around. I dont see why they couldnt. Have it hosted on there site and you have to log into there to even get it to work. That would fix alot of problems. Then again this isnt eq1 or 2 so I dont think we will ever see it. I have to say good thinking tho. I was searching for that tonight ( being on graveyard with locked down computers and nothing to do.

Later

# Posted By Dragius | 12/18/08 12:56 AM

There is one, it's called Xfire. (www.xfire.com) Xfire is an in game instant messenger. Problem is, is that you might get blown away while using it, unless you use the voice chat feature. Not only does it work in WoW, but it also works in thousands of other games. If I was a game maker, and had this option, I'm not sure that I would worry over making an integrated instant messenger either. Let someone else worry over this, and let me worry about my game. Just my opinion.

# Posted By babyhewy | 1/17/09 1:36 AM

I agree, the idea is cool, but I have never met anything of the kind, though try to follow all fresh soft, games etc, that appear at rapidshare (do it by http://rapid4me.com SE). I think, I give a try to Xfire and say how it worked for me.

# Posted By pesrter | 9/15/09 8:47 AM