Prior to the introduction of Until Uru, some talented people developed a patch for Uru that would allow players to chat with each other in their independent, offline copies of the game by networking the chat system through Internet Relay Chat ("IRC"). This modification was dubbed KIRC. Perhaps more importantly, interested persons who knew the IRC server and chat channel being used by KIRC could also sign in without a copy of URU and could potentially participate in conversations.
A few months ago, Second Life released a beta (now withdrawn) of an instant messaging client dubbed SLim, or Second Life Instant Messaging. Although the client was sufficiently flawed that it received some very bad reviews, the concept was a nice one - to allow players without the ability to run the full Second Life client to engage in discussions with other players in Second Life by essentially logging into SL without an avatar (and without the 3D environment), providing access to the game's built-in communication system.
For well over a year, rumors have abounded that Blizzard was working on some mobile version of World of Warcraft. In an MTV interview dated February 13, 2008, Blizzard co-founder Frank Pierce revealed that Blizzard wouldn't be bringing the full WoW game to mobile platforms, but that they did see a market for mobile applications to "enhance the 'World of Warcraft' experience." From that intereview:
And just a few days ago, Massively.com published an article about a November presentation from CCP Games, producers of the popular game EVE Online. CCP is apparently interested in working with MIT students to improve the API (application programming interface) to EVE so that new mobile functionality, such as access to in-game mail from outside, could be possible. And already, there are several applications for Apple's hugely popular iPhone that relate to EVE Online, such as the EVE Tracker that allows a player to access his or her game character and review current stats, allowing the player to plan his or her next move in advance while away from the game.Pearce said he was excited — and then cut himself off. Maybe it was too soon to say more? But he couldn't resist and reached into his pocket for his BlackBerry. He produced it, looked at the screen and started dreaming out loud: "I have an application on my BlackBerry. It's a Google app called Google Chat. It's an IM client, and it's really cool. So as an example, one thing I think would be really cool — and whether we're going to be able to do this, I don't know, but it would be really cool — is if we could have a client on your mobile device like that that hooks you into your guild chat in the game. That would be really cool. Or the ability to view your in-game mail or view your in-game auctions. We probably wouldn't allow you to actually buy or sell via the mobile device, but you could certainly monitor."
So what can we do for Uru? Here are a few thoughts.
Instant Messager Plugins
* Plugin for Cerulean Studios' Trillian
* Plugin for the open source IM client Pidgin
* Plugin for Google Talk
* Plugin for the popular Macintosh IM client Adium
Other Chat
* A KIRC or KIRC-like gateway; this could connect to a KIRC chat channel within the game, or perhaps all chat channels on the KIRC server could be connected into the game on channels prepended with a tag like "irc_".
Rewards
A silly little app - A program for iPhone or similar, that shows the player's Relto (the player would not be able to link elsewhere). The remote player could activate/deactivate relto pages and the view of Relto would update. Upon the player's next login, Relto would look as the player had last set it from the mobile application.
Webcams
View the current DRC Webcam from your mobile phone. During events, the webcam could be placed (by shard administrator) in an appropriate location so that remote viewers, with their chat interfaces too, can feel more like participants. (Something like this might have helped more players participate during the Scars episode.)
