In the future, just because you have a friend on a different World of Warcraft server won’t mean you can’t play together.
The separation of players between servers in MMOs is a necessity so that network infrastructure doesn’t become overwhelmed, but it often leads to a division between friends that play the same game in a different world. However, a new World of Warcraft initiative may change this common aspect of the genre.
Blizzard community manager Nethaera posts on the World of Warcraft forums that the company is working on a way for players from any realm (Blizzard’s term for “server”) to play with each other without having to pay for a transfer. It would be an extension of World of Warcraft‘s Dungeon Finder group system.
“We wanted to give you a heads up about a new feature currently in development,” the post reads. “[It’ll] allow players to invite Real ID friends of the same faction to a party regardless of the realm they play on, and then queue up for a 5-player regular or Heroic dungeon.”
Real ID is Blizzard’s social service that connects players across all of Battle.net instead of just a single game. Nethaera calls the cross-realm system “fairly complex to develop” and adds that some parts of it may come at a premium cost. However, only the player sending the invitations will need access to the premium service, so the cost could potentially be shared.
Blizzard isn’t sure when cross-realm invites will be enabled, but aspects of the system will likely show up on the public test realms first. Though players on separate servers may never get to dance naked in public together, they’ll at least have the opportunity to invade dungeons to acquire phat loot.
Source: Battle.net
Published: May 18, 2011 05:53 pm