14 DAY TRIAL // With the crowd of games that are in development and aiming to use the Wii Balance Board somehow, it was just a matter of time before someone with considerably high engineering skills managed to get the Balance Board working in games it was not specifically designed for.
The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, which sounds as a rather serious organization filled to the brim with academic types, has decided that the biggest game in the world needed to get some Balance Board action so they took it upon themselves to adapt the Nintendo-made peripheral to work with World of Warcraft. Running while raiding has never been the same since they completed the initial stages of their work.
They even posted a YouTube video of the ways in which the Balance Board can be used in the MMO, without revealing exactly how the connection between the peripheral and the PC is done. It has been suggested that a Bluetooth connection together with a custom designed application could create a link between the two and then translate the actions of the player on the Balance Board into controller input for the game.
The work of the people at German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence must still be in the early stages as the video posted shows no actual walking that translates into an on-screen and in-game similar action. There's a lot of leaning going on that affects the way the character orients itself in World of Warcraft and that's about it.
Even if the results of the cross between the Balance Board and World of Warcraft are limited at the moment, there's still great hope for a breakthrough that will allow all the hopeless MMO addicts to get their share of exercise while also running guild raids in the game.
Here's the YouTube video: