Massively multiplayer games already have a reputation for eating the lives of the millions of players who play them. They're immersive, addictive and time consuming by design. Often, when you're not playing them, you're thinking about playing them. That's why ArenaNet may be the most evil company in the world after announcing what they call their "Extended Experience."

The Guild Wars 2 Extended Experience is basically one or more mobile apps (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android etc...) that allow you to stay connected to Guild Wars 2 while you're out buying mountain dew. We spoke to the team working on it, and while they were reticent to reveal any details, we do know a few things.

This isn't the first time mobile apps have been developed for an MMO, of course. World of Warcraft has a couple very popular ones. This is more than just a standard Armory or Auction House app, though. Players will be able to communicate both within and outside the game with the app. "Initially we're targeting communications features because that's what MMOs are all about - being social," the developers told us. "As for how easy communication is; when you are in-game, your friend will appear 'online,' which doesn't mean they are necessarily playing, it just means they can be reached. For example, if you send them a whisper to a friend, you won't have to worry about how they are connected; your whisper will reach them. Currently we're investigating custom chat clients, texting and how we can support various instant messenger clients."


There's more to it than that, though. The Guild Wars 2 map, within the game, is interactive -- you can click and drag it, look at important locations and set markers. The Extended Experience will move this to your phone too, letting you look around the game's map in real time. This isn't all that impressive until you realize that the game's map tracks the locations of NPCs, who move in accordance with the game's dynamic event system.

Likewise, you can watch (to some extent, anyway) as the dynamic events themselves unfold, and even alert your friends to the latest via a message, and ping the map to show them the location. It has the potential to allow guild leaders to still be active even when they're not near their PC.

Of course, this is both awesome and horrible. From a technological and conceptual standpoint, this lowers the boundaries between the game world and your everyday life, which is cool. On the other hand, it lowers the boundaries between the game world and your everyday life. Like we needed another way for MMOs to permeate deeper into our daily habits. Luckily, the team insists that if you don't want to be pestered at work by guildmates, you won't be. It will be very easy to control how and when people from within the game can contact you.

This whole Extended Experience thing may trigger hopes inside of you of one day being able to play a game like Guild Wars 2 -- in its entirety -- from your phone, and it seems like that's the direction the team eventually wants to head in. " Ultimately, our plan is to provide as much of the PC experience as we can on mobile devices," they told us. "While it won't be the same experience until (and if) mobile platforms reach hardware parity with gaming PCs, there are many compelling games on mobile devices today. There's no reason why there shouldn't be a compelling Guild Wars 2 experience also."

Despite my brain telling me that this is what will ultimately be my downfall, I'm actually very excited to try this out, and to see how mobile platforms can be used as a tool to enhance the social-side of the MMO experience.

What are your thoughts on the Guild Wars 2 Extended Experience? Let us know in our comments section below.