Originally Posted by Tonfish
I know blizz is capable of doing that, but the point is to implement msn or skype ingame. I think it'd benefit to blizzard and to microsoft as well, because, let's face it, lots of people are using the two, separated.
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I can think of reasons why Blizzard would not want an external program to interact with WoW.
- It opens cracks in the "sandbox" that can be exploited by others for nefarious purposes.
- It would open a convenient way for gold/power leveling spammers to advertise their "services" in game of which Blizzard would have no control over. Sure there are steps users can take but how many users actually do restrict who can see their MSN screen name? Do you really want to get gold seller IMs in addition to the in-game spamming?
- First MSN, then who else? Yahoo and AOL (AIM/ICQ) would want their protocols represented (plus their users). Then what about Jabber and other smaller networks? Not everyone uses MSN.
- Blizzard loses control over an aspect of their world. Blizzard historically has strictly controled their games and their on-line interaction. For most players, to play on-line with a Blizzard game means the use of Battle.net. Sure, if you are in the same physical building (or close to it) you can use IPX or LAN connections, however beyond that it's Battle.net (and with Starcraft 2 it's Battle.net only). Some hackers have tried creating an alternate way for Blizzard's games to utilize on-line play (BNet), however that was quickly shut down by Blizzard's version of the Nazgul (The Nazgul are the lawyers of IBM's feared Legal Department)
The chance of MSN being able to interact within the framework of any Blizzard game? 0%
Blizzard does not stand to gain from MSN within any of their games and they have plenty to lose from MSN in-game. Besides, as already mentioned, vendors like Xfire offers a solution that is game agnostic.
XFire supports it's own protocol, AIM, and now MSN. I have used XFire in the past and it works quite nicely. The only major issue is it's Windows only (since it relys on using a DirectX overlay that exists as a layer on top of a full screen application (such as WoW, media players, etc).