I would love a CoH desktop

Dear Mr Clayton and Mr. Miller,

I've been playing CoH for almost 3 years and I really enjoy the game. Playing CoH got me thinking about the nature of MMO's and the player's exposure to a 3D world and perhaps what it may look like in the future. If you have a moment to read this, I think you will see my idea may be just that- the way people will interact in the future and as an opportunity for you.

The first premise is millions of players around the world of all ages have grown used to playing in a 3D world. After running around a city or mountain, after flying through the air, after driving a car through Monte Carlo- they cannot go back to a 2D game. If fact, more games now are being developed to have the 3D realism be more accurate not less. No one is going back to old games; only forward.

The next thought is what you see on your computer screen desktop is a 2D world. Flat. I have my background picture, I have shortcut icons. I have my bottom task bar. Pretty basic and it's been that way for a decade or more. What is needs is to be 3D. But not in the way a few companies have tried to create a 3D desktop. I think one company who tried it was Bumptop. Their 3D desktop was very basic and not much of a step up from 2D. Google bought them and now who knows. They have not been heard from again.

But Paragon Studios already has the components in place to make a great 3D desktop and here's where these two ideas combined beautifully. Let me give you the example.
My desktop is the Atlas map. It isn't the game. It's my desktop program. So you don't need all the maps, just one. So, I turn on the computer and I'm standing in Atlas near City Hall. Just like if I had logged into the game- there are the 3D buildings, sounds of water, I can run and move around the town.

I have my toon and because of the character creator, my toon can look like anyone or anything. To add to the 3D-ness of the Atlas desktop, some of the buildings in Atlas are entrances to other programs on my hard drive like shortcuts icons are in a 2D desktop. In the game, you click a door and go someplace; it would be just like that. Some of the buildings may be shortcuts to the Internet or programs. Wentworth's may be where I go for websites like eBay or Amazon. Or go to the hospital for sites like WebMD. The library for news sites, etc. In 2D, those shortcuts are images on my desktop. In my Atlas desktop, the shortcuts are 3D items.

Next, I need to go to my office. The program might allow me to pick from different places I have my office- an office building, a house, the penthouse, a warehouse. So I go to a building and click the door, go in, take the elevator to the top floor penthouse and there's my office. It looks the way I want it to because the game has a base creator and I can select furniture, book cases, desk, plants- all to my liking. Those objects from the base creator may become the shortcut images for me to programs, etc.

On my desk is a stack of mail and I click it for the shortcut and select from my choices of hotmail or gmail to see what email I received. That click gets me to my email programs. The program may have selected objects that can be turned into shortcuts to programs or internet sites. The TV in my office might take me to Youtube. The picture on the wall lets me go to Tumbler. And the radio takes me to Itunes. The computer on my desk takes me to my browser. The CoH poster gets me to the game. I move my toon around the room to get to these things because I want to be in a 3D world, I want to walk around like I do in a game. It is comfortable to me and fun. After all, I already play in a 3D world for hours at a time. This desktop is familiar and expected.

Let's say my company has adopted this desktop for their employees. They can have business meetings. The appointment may be in the mission tab. The meeting is in City Hall. This action of meeting others maybe similar to going out to the internet and being in the game. CoH already has the servers. You can use a server that is under utilized. From my desktop, I go to City Hall and click the meeting room door, just like a mission, and there are all my co-worker's toons at the meeting. We can chat in local, or send private tells.

My friend's list may be coworkers, friends, and family. I can send tells to them like instant messenger does. If a friend has the Atlas desktop too, we might be able set a place to meet to talk and visit- like the park or art museum, etc. Maybe there are mini-games inside the Atlas desktop I can play. Or play with others. Really, anything is possible and with the CoH being the foundation, I am thinking a lot is already in place.

We know that millions and millions of people live in a 3D world hours a day, some spend more hours there than in real life. You probably could ask anyone to close their eyes and imagine that world the play in and it will be as real as anything to them. I cannot be the only one who wants the 3D immersion to be beyond the confines of the game. Perhaps the business application is a bit far out but even if personal use was just 10% of all game players, what is that, a potential 500,000 person customer base? I do not have the training or the money to make this happen. You do. This is not a crazy idea. It really is just a question of when. Somebody will do this. Someone will realize so many people are already there and wanting it. I hope you take a few minutes and see just how this will work and how it could be a great business for you.

Thank you for you time. If you have any questions, please write.

There might be a couple pit falls in this idea.

PS3 has a similar set up and I rarely see anyone in there. accept for a few random chatters.

I can see a senario like this happening: your meeting starts at 7am, you started running from city hall to your office "office conference program" at 6:50am. You make it to the door of your office at 7:01 and completely loaded in at 7:09am. After the meeting your boss asks you why you were late ... your only honest responce is "I forgot I was only lvl 3 and don't have a travel power yet" can you say fired.

I would enjoy this idea for a while, but don't see long term use.

You're right, it will take up resorces and perhaps be cumbersome and not as clean or effective as the other applications out there but to say there isn't a market for it, I don't believe that's true. Most of us use Windows desktop as a default. I am sure if a 3D option were availible some of us would use it instead. There are how many desktop computers out there 500 million, 1 billion? As a business idea, if converting a small portion of CoH into a desktop application, at a relatively inexpensive cost, how many could you sell? 500,000 at $20 a piece? 10 million dollars in sales? Isn't that worth the effort?

You maybe looking at this in a practical way because of your computer experience- most of us do not have that experience.

If realized, hopefully the ToT season wouldn't alter the user experience too much...

OK. I can see there are technical issues and interest levels to this idea. But, a 3D desktop is just a matter of time. How it will look or behave is up to whoever can come up with it. Frankly, all the comments describing how it won't work seem thought restrictive rather than solution based. A twirling globe of shortcuts might be the desktop. Flying through clouds might be it, too. But for computer geeks, no shouldn't be the answer. Look at this for the fun it would be, that's how many great things start.