The wow.com domain name has laid dormant since at least 1998, when it was acquired by AOL along with other assets of Compuserve. The domain has been coveted by a number of AOL business units over the years, though. At one point there was a discussion of it being used to house the netscape social news assets (they eventually settled on propeller.com).
If our source is correct, a decision has been made as to the long term use of wow.com. It has been transferred to the AOL Games group and is currently being turned into a - you guessed it - World of Warcraft social network.
That makes a lot of sense, given that the first thing that comes to mind for millions of people when they hear “wow” is the ubiquitous online role playing game. Apart from selling the domain to Blizzard (which owns World of Warcraft), turning it into a World of Warcraft related site is the most obvious way to leverage the random traffic it must receive from people looking for the game. Just don’t think too hard about the fact that World of Warcraft is already a social network…
We don’t have any details yet on the functionality of the site or when it might launch, but we’re digging. In the meantime, there are plenty of social networks surrounding World of Warcraft and other MMOGs - see Rupture, Warcraft Social Network, mmoguildsites, and Guildcafe. For related news, see our coverage of Sparter, which runs a MMOG currency exchange.
As a semi-random aside, click on the image above to see a clip from the Southpark World of Warcraft episode.
It is so depressing how AOL, who for about a decade was among the top largest internet company, as well as the most revered and coveted online business suddenly imploded and is now a shell of its former self.
What are they up to these days?
How could a multi-billion dollar corporation company like that with many assets including several million subscribers disintegrate like that? What a pity.
Shouldn’t this have been done like, 2005-2006?
I though WoW was already a social network, no?
i agree with #2 - a W.o.W. site seems like the most logical choice right now for that domain, but what took so long to implement that decision?
the typical big, slow corp. i guess
for that good of a domain name, however, the site should be made into more of a mainstream mass site
you know, if it were owned by someone (i.e. you or I) other than AOL , Blizzard would have taken the domain name under the DMCA.
-Richard
I Know that is Off Topic but i haven’t another way.
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Please partecipate.
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If I owned that domain, I would put in big bold white text over a black background “NERD ALERT!” with a bazillion google ads like techcrunch.
Sounds like a great use of the domain to me.
enough with the social networks already! It’s become like hell. Every 2 seconds a new one pops up.
“It is so depressing how AOL, who for about a decade was among the top largest internet company, as well as the most revered and coveted online business suddenly imploded and is now a shell of its former self.”
A shell of its former self…. because it’s trying to make money by providing content instead of still tricking rural America into paying $30 for dialup Internet? They may not be making more money now, but at least they’re doing it in a slightly more honest fashion.
wow they realized it so soon
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
if you play wow you dont have time to shower let alone a social nerdworking site.
plus like some people already have said, wow is a social nerdworking site.
it has been a pleasure watching AOL crash and burn.
Now this takes an uber-nerd!
Check out the GGL (Global Gaming League - http://www.ggl.com). This is the ESPN of video gaming, with a social twist.
If AOL decides to use wow.com in any relation to World of Warcraft, we are bound to see lawsuits from Blizzard to get that coveted domain.
this is flippin’ idiotic. WOW is a social network.
Please just go away AOL.
I play WOW several times a week, and I can tell you there is almost zero use for a WOW social network.
First off, during the game i can interact all I want with my guildies (the people I most want to interact with ) or my friends ( who are very likely to be guildies as well ). I can chat with them, email them, quest with them, raid with them, cyb0rsex them, whatever.
Outside of the game, there are few things I need to monitor and most of them are taken care of by guild forums. Probably the best site i’ve seen in a while for helping with guild forums, maintainence, etc is dkpsystem.com
Other sites that give me info on items, quests, etc are useful, and there are other forums (including blizzard sponsored ones) where WOW related discussions take place.
In summary, introducing a WOW social network at this point is :
1) way too late
2) A waste of time
3) see #1 and #2
They better come up with some amazing stuff on this site to make it worth browsing, or the only traffic you are going to get is accidental.
The most obvious thing they could have done until now is to redirect wow.com onto wowinsider.com, one of the top blogs of Weblogs Inc. - an AOL company last time I checked.
For the Alliance!
I think it all depends on the idea/execution of what a “WoW Social Network” means.
Have all the ways of creating value among the WoW community been found? Not a chance.
Is a giant corporation like AOL is going to create a site of some value to the WoW community? Highly unlikely, but not impossible.
fine idea but WOW is a social network…
“fine idea but WOW is a social network…”
No, I’m afraid it’s a search engine now. You heard it here first:
http://anti-aol.livejournal.com/44304.html
The first comment in this thread is astoundingly clueless and indicative of exactly why AOL died.
There is room for social networks etc outside of wow itself. Look at the Armory by blizzard. It gives people a host of useful infoss that arent available ingame unless you wanna go and manually get it from each player in the game.
Personally, I’ve actually thought that a WoW social network would be a good idea for a while now. Yes, I realize that it’s a social game, but that doesn’t make it a social network. When I’m playing the game, I want to…play the game. Call me crazy. It’s not too often that I stand around in a city in the game or whatever and just chat or check people’s gear, or whatever.
A social network would be able to bring the ability to look up the type of information found in the Armory, as well as sites like Thottbot and Wowhead, together with the ability to send email to your in-game friends without the need to be on a certain character or server when you may in fact have friends that cross those boundries, as well as get to know them a little better outside of the game.
It’s not that you CAN’T do these things by simply playing. A social network would simply make it EASIER. I’ll definitely be checking it out.
Of course there is room for MMORPG related social networks outside the games themselves. Most people are so addicted to these kinds of games that they dream about them every minute they aren’t actually playing them.
That means people will go online from work, vacation, or even when the game servers are down just to get a taste of their Crack. It will be enough to tide them over until they can get themselves home and plug back in…
Arent they a bit late for this? The big WoW hype has been a year ago and player numbers are declining.