Players today have ever increasing demands on how they want to interact with their MMO games. This is no small wonder, investing in an MMO means a commitment of both time and money and for the hardcore players this means a significant amount of both. In todays world of internet access available most everywhere you turn, from desktops, notebooks and tablet computers on down to handheld smart phones players need a way to keep up with their investment from these devices. So how do we make that possible in ANH based games? More importantly how do we keep up with new trends that players themselves set in how they interact with the game?
The short answer is... we don't! It's complete hubris for a development team to believe they can fully anticipate the direction that a large group of players of all varieties of backgrounds can take a game. With this in mind the Station Manager aims to provide an initial set of web based applications for interacting with ANH games and more importantly exposes an public API that allows players and developers to create their own applications.
By giving the player base the power to shape their game experiences this extends the longevity of a single games lifetime. Examples of goals that are intended to be possible through the Station Manager API are abilities to manage character inventories, perform non-combat related tasks like crafting and player buffing. The initial list of features will include a method for generating an authentication token (essentially a session id) and retrieving cluster status.