Mobile phones were created to make sure people did not lose touch with each other for even a second. It has fulfilled that purpose admirably, although there are mixed emotions to the desirability of being available twenty four hours a day and seven days a week: think movie theatres, meetings and there can be no argument. 

While on the subject of continuous connectivity and not losing touch, World of Warcraft has launched a new iPhone app that allows its players to stay connected to the game constantly. While non-players might consider the app strange and unnecessary, avid game players probably differ vehemently. 

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game or what is known in gaming circles as MMORPG. It was created by Blizzard Entertainment and is the fourth in a series known as Warcraft, where players enter the fictional universe as avatars and battle monsters and presumably compete with each other. It can be continued for a period of time, and is subscription-based. Therefore players can maintain their profiles for longer lengths of time, allowing them to build their characters on multiple levels. The game is tremendously popular, with an estimate of 11.2 million monthly subscribers.

One of the pivotal elements of the game is an individual character’s armoury. The Armoury is somewhat analogous to an inventory, where a player can view their statistics, information about other players and also ambient game environment data, among other functions. Essentially the Armoury is similar to a control centre, and can give a bird’s eye view to a player about all the parts of the game about which he wishes to know. 

Blizzard Entertainment has created an iPhone app that allows a game player to log into their World of Warcraft account and access all that data. It is customizable, allowing users to download toons and has an intuitive navigation screen. The app is very intricately designed and does its job of providing a wealth of information; however the game itself cannot be played from the app. That being said, considering the game is larger than life and is exceptionally detailed, perhaps cell phones would not be able to handle gameplay even if the app supported it. The app is completely free, available for download from the iPhone App Store, and will possibly prove to be very popular with the serious players. Prior to the app being released there were other apps that connected to the World of Warcrafts game, but since this is an official release as well as being free, chances are good that this app will possibly trump all other competitors.

However, Apple and its vagaries have struck again, and the app was taken down although the reason is still very much in the realms of conjecture. There are rumours that Apple is rejecting apps if they clash commercially with the company, however as Apple does not have an MMORPG at this point of time, this does not seem to be the issue. One never knows, it may just be a software bug.