This to me brings up some interesting questions. Both Convert to Raid and The Blue Recluse have discussed this a little, and both had some great points. Some of which I will repeat a little here, others of which I am curious about.
The first of which is the discussion over whether this will be competition with Twitch T.V. It's possible I suppose, but I don't see it unless both Blizzard and Facebook not only incorporate a full interface so people can interact with those streaming, but so that users can monetize their streams as well. I can tell you from trying to set up a twitch stream once or twice, that it involves third party software and playing around an looking up different settings. At the end of the day I decided it wasn't worth the hassle. I'm not divorced from the idea of doing some sort of streaming someday, but I'm not going to be doing it with Twitch, or my current set up, or both. Youtube still interests me....
I am not sure Blizzard intends this to be a competitor to Twitch. I think i'ts more likely it is going to be along the same lines of the Twitter service. Something in the Wow interface that a player can turn on, or off that will do a small stream in the same manner of the "Live" feature that Facebook just added. Not something for money, but something for the casual gamer to say he, look friends at what I'm doing with a simple click/option in the interface.
Either way this is brilliant on Blizzard's part. Think about all the people who are on Facebook stopping to watch for a few moments while their friends are playing the game. This will put game play in front of millions of peoples eyes and bring attention to Azeroth. Folks will see what the game looks like, and more over, they will see people enjoying playing the game. Let's be honest, you aren't going to stream to Facebook just to show off your Talbuck hooves gathering skills.
Or maybe people would. That might be a drawback to this. A casual observer might click on his friends stream and see how beautiful our World of Warcraft looks. They might watch and enjoy the scenery as their friend walks around killing monsters and gathering items. Then it might occur to them, "This world is cool looking, but Tommy here has spent the last fifteen minutes killing ghosts for essences?" That might be a little strange to some people.
I'm also curious about voice over. If I record/stream myself playing I am going to want to be able to do an audio track people can listen to. (I've been debating doing this with my blog) Am I going to have to use Blizzard's internal voice chat/program. I know it's gotten better with Overwatch and the new focus on team game play, but I still remember Blizzard announcing in game voice chat, and how well that worked. If they do this, I'm going to want a plug in for Ventrillo, Mumble, and whatever else voice program I might want to use. Either that, or I will need to see some good proving of their voice integration.
What do you all think of this? What are your hopes and dreams tied into Facebook integration in World of Warcraft? Is this something you will use? Do you care about this? Are you worried for any reason? Feel free to drop an opinion.
I also recommend listening to the last "The Blue Recluse," and or "Convert to Raid" podcasts. Both discuss this a bit as mentioned above.
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