Do you remember the first time you met an annoying player online? Yeah, me neither, but if you've ever played an online game at some point, chances are you ran a dungeon with someone. And maybe you were really awesome DPS, a tank or a healer or playing a female character (sad but true that people care about this) and maybe one or more of the people you were running with was pretty annoying. And then they added you as a friend because one of the aforementioned reasons and then you had to either entertain them or ignore them to get on with your gaming life.
Or let's say you just want to log on and play by yourself for a while for whatever reasons, and then your friend asks you to come play with them. Sigh. If only you could just go invisible without having to block people, be harassed or alienate friends.
Well, now Blizzard is making that possible by adding an Appear Offline option, much the same as instant messaging. It sounds small, but it will eliminate distractions when you just want to focus on your gaming or raiding, or even stop people from stalking you or asking you to run them through something. I know I wish I had had it while I was still playing World of Warcraft, so I know the feature will be very useful to players.
The feature will be included in Diablo 3's Patch 1.0.5 which is currently on the PTR servers. Starcraft 2 won't get it until its next expansion at the end of the year however, though neither will World of Warcraft which will be getting it sometime after the Mists of Pandaria launch today.
Source: Cinemablend
