Here's another geekily interesting thing about World of Warcraft: Cosmos and Thottbot. Blizzard decided to make their interface scriptable and open, so Cosmos is an entire alternative UI to the game that provides a number of addins (like a clock that estimates how long it'll take you to level at your current rate of XP accumulation, which is both good and very very bad, as well as additional hotbar spots, enhanced friend management UI, better loot pickup, etc etc etc -- the amount of stuff is staggering).
What's especially interesting is that Cosmos gathers data about where you pick up stuff in the game, and pushes it to Thottbot, which is basically an almanac of all things WOW. Need to know where you can find an item or an NPC or a quest? It's in there. Want to know what the odds are that a particular monster drops that item? It's in there. And it's all experientally gathered by players.
Now, you might think Thottbot would take all the fun out of exploration, but you'd be wrong -- the game is already plenty epic. Instead, it adds a kind of additional shared resource (above and beyond asking players in game) for discovering the lay of the land. It's an impressive testament to the kind of third party enhancements you can get for your product if you leave the front door open and cookies on the table.
Also, Cosmos works on the Mac, as well -- just ignore the .exe file. 4:21:02 PM ()
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