Posts with tag gotgame

Here's an interesting post on GotGame that sounds different from almost everything we've heard about professional Arena tourneys and Blizzard so far. Whenever we've talked to anyone involved with Arena tournaments, they've always told us Blizzard is very supportive of the events. But this post alleges otherwise -- they say that Blizzard is falling short of professional Arena support.

There are two main complaints: first, that Blizzard doesn't supply any onsite Arena servers. We know this is true -- Blizzard has event servers that they use for events like this, kept offsite so they don't have to set them up all the time. But GotGame claims that this causes problems -- as much as 300+ ping, which in the quick world of Arena matches, is practically unplayable. We're not sure why Blizzard doesn't allow setups on site, but that seems like a reasonable step to take if they're serious about making professional Arena big.

The second is a little tougher: this post claims that Blizzard has brought the pro Arena servers up to the Season 4 patch, but locked the gear down at Season 2. Our own Zach Yonzon says he's not sure where the Arenas are -- he doesn't believe that official Arena matches are underway after Wrath yet, and if that's true, then Blizzard may already be updating this (bringing the gear on the realms up to level 80 levels to match the talents). But either way, it's strange to hear someone say that Blizzard isn't supporting professional Arena matches correctly. You'd think that if they were as into supporting WoW as an e-sport as they say, that they'd address some of these concerns.

Behold the power of WoW Insider -- GotGame told us about their browser and social networking service a little while ago, and we were so much more fascinated with the browser part of their app that they split it off. And here it is: Rogue is what they're calling their ingame browser application -- you can download it for free from the site, and after a quick install, you can open up a browser in any PC game.

As lots of commenters said on our last post, this isn't really an ingame browser, it's more of an overlay that lets you browse while playing the game. And all it really does is save you the couple of minutes it would take to tab out and check your own browser (or just run WoW in a windowed mode, and use both at the same time).

But there are a probably a few users out there who would find it really useful. Downtime is the main issue I can think of (though lots of my downtime is filled lately with the Bejeweled addon anyway). But if you've been waiting for a solid, standalone ingame browser to come along (complete with Flash support, which makes it easy to pull up Hulu or Pandora while playing), Rogue is it.

The folks at GotGame kindly sent us a note about their new service -- they're running a "closed beta" (which just means you have to sign up for it, but they're increasing the number of people in it each week) of some software that will let you actually crack open a web browser ingame, with some social networking services attached (so you can keep track of your friends in the service and what they're playing).

You can see some screenshots of how it works in the gallery below. Personally, I've never been too big a fan of any of the "cross-game" social networking services (Xfire is a really popular one that we've talked about before, and a friend invited me to Raptr as well recently), mostly because I already know what my gaming friends are playing, and I've got enough social services running to distract me from my work anyway. And while an ingame browser is kind of nice (EVE Online actually has one built-in to the game), my own browser is already just an alt-tab away (and I've always got Lightheaded when I just need to pull up some game help). It's nice that this one works in more than just World of Warcraft, but really, why bother playing anything else?

So the GotGame software didn't really strike a chord with me, but maybe if your friends are already on it, and you're looking for a more robust ingame browser, it's just what you need. Get Adobe Air installed, and then you can try getting into the beta on their website. Any other ingame browsers that you guys use regularly or, like me, do you prefer that things outside the game stay there?