Comments on: Champions Online To Integrate With Twitter

By: MMORPG Stereotypes, Etiquette, and Twitter « How To Lose Your Life To An MMORPG

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:57:21 +0000

[...] We Fly Spitfires has a nice article about Twitter in an MMORPG where I commented that I thought the only “good” use I could think of for it would be as an announcer to give play by plays. It would be like the Twitter version of listening to a ball game on the radio. [...]

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 11:13:08 +0000

I think integrating with Twitter will definitely help Cryptic build intrest in the game and help promote it. Think about if you have a single player with a few hundred (or thousands) of followers constantly broadcasting “Just hit level 1 (via Champions Online” then it’s bound to attract some attention.

But yeah, I agree, prioritising it over other important features is well, plain silly.

By: AC

AC — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:19:04 +0000

One more thing…

How is it a good idea to socially network, outside of an MMORPG with others? I mean, the WHOLE idea of an MMO is the Massive Multiplayer Online feature in itself!

This is like slapping a sticker on your forehead, advertising that you play a game that 99% of the population could care less about. The only people that will use this feature to communicate with their friends… that already play the game!

It’s like sending a smoke signal to yourself.

By: AC

AC — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:13:04 +0000

Are you serious? Cryptic/Atari thinks that the cross promotion with Twitter will get subscribers? Twitter is FREE! Like people will pay a monthly fee JUST to Twitter to friends that they are playing a game?

Just an idiotic waste of time since half the stuff they promised for the game won’t be in launch, like they said it would be. Wow. Instead of all the cool features they promised, we can TWITTER instead? Way to go, Cryptic! You hit the social networking nail on the head!

*head to deak*

By: Gordon

Gordon — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:01:05 +0000

@Jeremy S. Very cool idea. I actually like the concept of being able to communicate with all of your friends regardless of the game you’re playing. They had something like that in Everquest - cross server chat. Would be cool to be playing, say, WoW but still chat to people who are playing WAR.

By: Jeremy S.

Jeremy S. — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:43:39 +0000

I wish I could find the web 2.0 app I ran across years ago that was to offer an ingame heads up display(operating similar to how xfire does now) that was to allow players to have game-to-game chat windows live in their UI. So while they are chatting with other players in their game, they could also chat with other players and friends who were currently in a different game all-together.

I think combining that with a social networking site like Twitter would be robust and offer unseen possibilities, while just adding twitter seems pretty 2-dimensional. Maybe we’ll see it flourish in unexpected ways but it seems to me that it will only appeal to an audience that wants to be heard.

The best use, I can think of, would be for tournaments where an announcer gives a play-by-play via Twitter, in the same way you’d listen to a baseball game on the radio. That could be fun.

By: Beej

Beej — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 02:46:27 +0000

If we can actually get a feed of other people to interact with, it could be a really interesting direction for an MMO. Otherwise, I think you’re right. It will just be shouting at the wind, but instead posting it in /1, we’ll be posting it in /tweet.

Will /tweet replace general chat or trade chat?

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:40:28 +0000

I agree that it will be more like shouting at people than truly communicating. Facebook statuses would work well with this system, as they are usually one-sided comments (especially before other people could remark on them). Twitter is much more a shared communication system, so being able to do a quick tweet from in-game won’t be too valuable if you can’t see what else is being tweeted.