Now I could be wrong, but I've never seen an MMO with a built in social network.  Not to mention "offline" things to do to enhance the experience.

With the success of social networking devices like twitter and facebook, I find it surprising that MMOs haven't fully incorporated similar spaces into their games.  Sure forums are there for discussions, and many games have an armory of sorts that displays your character, but There is so much more that can be done.

I would like an MMO that allows the player to still be involved with the world or the game while away from their computer.  As many people have mentioned, the community is the heart of these MMOs and I think the community experience should be enhanced.
For example, if the armory could be more of an account profile place (information displayed at the discretion of the user of course) where people could associate with their guilds while offline and post information about their characters and screenshots from recent adventures, etc. etc.

Or what about the ability to have your cellphone, or hell an irc type chat browser, interface with the in game guild chat, so you can still shoot the shit with your buddies while you are travelling or at work.

To even further the experience, there could be in game rewards for participating in these services.  Or a way to import certain files to the game like guild emblems.  Or a browser mini game linked to the MMO in which new cosmetic options could be unlocked.  Or even server rewards for high scores.

With the market ever increasing for services and games like these, I find it difficult to believe no one has tried to incorporate features like these into their games.  What do you guys think of something like this?  Would it turn you off to the game? Or would you like to be able to immerse yourself into the community while away from your client?

CCP is releasing COSMOS in December. Its a Social networking program for players in EvE online and hopefully will connect players in other CCP MMOs like World of Darkness and Dust 514 when they release.

I've thought about this myself.  It would be nice to have social networking tools within the game, along with a website that connects with the tools in game.  It would make it easier to find people with the same interests, which makes it easier to find new friends/guilds. 

I think you have to consider what it takes to have such nice features for any game. It requires a lot of resources that have nothing to do with development of the game to accomplish such features. You can't just slap a site geared towards social networking features up and expect it to do everything you want. In addition, you also have to consider your loyal fan sites that also specialize in doing the same things. Good example is like official wiki's versus fan based wiki's. It's not so easy to take features away from people who dedicate free time to support the community.

There is a lot of things to factor all of which require lots of resource, management and maintaining around the clock when you also must be focused on development of the game. :)

Originally posted by FC-Famine

I think you have to consider what it takes to have such nice features for any game. It requires a lot of resources that have nothing to do with development of the game to accomplish such features. You can't just slap a site geared towards social networking features up and expect it to do everything you want. In addition, you also have to consider your loyal fan sites that also specialize in doing the same things. Good example is like official wiki's versus fan based wiki's. It's not so easy to take features away from people who dedicate free time to support the community.

There is a lot of things to factor all of which require lots of resource, management and maintaining around the clock when you also must be focused on development of the game. :)

Yes it is resource consuming but it is doable with development and CCP will be a leader in this. I don't see it hampering the fan sites but enhancing them if they are linked to it.

Originally posted by FC-Famine

I think you have to consider what it takes to have such nice features for any game. It requires a lot of resources that have nothing to do with development of the game to accomplish such features. You can't just slap a site geared towards social networking features up and expect it to do everything you want. In addition, you also have to consider your loyal fan sites that also specialize in doing the same things. Good example is like official wiki's versus fan based wiki's. It's not so easy to take features away from people who dedicate free time to support the community.

There is a lot of things to factor all of which require lots of resource, management and maintaining around the clock when you also must be focused on development of the game. :)

I'm all for fan made sites, and I do realize it wouldn't be easy to implement a social network into the game.  If it were done, it would be a huge benefit to a game's community (imo).  Obviously it doesn't have to have as many features as Facebook (at least in game).  It could be a very simplified social network to make it easier to find people with similar interests. 

Champions is integrating Twitter into their game.   You can read about it here.

Originally posted by DevilXaphan

Originally posted by FC-Famine

I think you have to consider what it takes to have such nice features for any game. It requires a lot of resources that have nothing to do with development of the game to accomplish such features. You can't just slap a site geared towards social networking features up and expect it to do everything you want. In addition, you also have to consider your loyal fan sites that also specialize in doing the same things. Good example is like official wiki's versus fan based wiki's. It's not so easy to take features away from people who dedicate free time to support the community.

There is a lot of things to factor all of which require lots of resource, management and maintaining around the clock when you also must be focused on development of the game. :)

 

Yes it is resource consuming but it is doable with development and CCP will be a leader in this. I don't see it hampering the fan sites but enhancing them if they are linked to it.

I have to disagree with you here on it not harming the fan sites.  If you take away a feature from a fan site that's 100% dedicated to that feature then it could harm the site. It could harm it in a way that takes away unique users from the fan site because the feature they offer is also offered with the official source. Although you could argue that one source is better than the other but the point still remains that the official source may have more push and pull over the non-official one.

I do agree it does enhance something but not so much on the fan sites that develop their purpose around said feature. It's really hard to go that route because most fan sites dedicate a lot of time to focus on a few features they can manage.

Originally posted by bleyzwun

Originally posted by FC-Famine

I think you have to consider what it takes to have such nice features for any game. It requires a lot of resources that have nothing to do with development of the game to accomplish such features. You can't just slap a site geared towards social networking features up and expect it to do everything you want. In addition, you also have to consider your loyal fan sites that also specialize in doing the same things. Good example is like official wiki's versus fan based wiki's. It's not so easy to take features away from people who dedicate free time to support the community.

There is a lot of things to factor all of which require lots of resource, management and maintaining around the clock when you also must be focused on development of the game. :)

 

I'm all for fan made sites, and I do realize it wouldn't be easy to implement a social network into the game.  If it were done, it would be a huge benefit to a game's community (imo).  Obviously it doesn't have to have as many features as Facebook (at least in game).  It could be a very simplified social network to make it easier to find people with similar interests. 

I totally agree. I think we're in the time where publishers are starting to branch out into it more within the MMO genre. There is a lot of casual gaming and smaller gaming sites out their that rely on those types of features. I just think with our genre it's going to be a little while before you start seeing some of those nice features due to the amount of players we support as well the amount of resources it's needed to accomplish. We already have heavy development resources now and this kind of requires much of both ends (developer and publisher) to work.

I honestly think that it would allow fansites more of an opportunity to get involved and integrate the community.  Think about how facebook apps work.  What if fansite could add their features as apps to a game's community, much like offline add-ons?

Seems like it'd be smarter for MMORPGs to integrate with existing social networks than to create a new one entirely from scratch.

It fragments communities to force people to use a billion different social networks.  Let people keep their existing ones, and develop apps for the most popular ones, so you can see your friends online in the game, and your friends in the game can post about their accomplishments from within the game.