Change chat channels only on logout.

Hi,

Currently, every time we move to another zone we are placed into a different trade and general channel. There are many players who are unaware of this. I had to ask a mod to even be sure of it. This leads several problems.

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- Players keep replying to stuff said in other channels after they zone (and thus switch channels). This clutters chat with messages which make no sense, killing any previous conversation with flaming or confused replies.

- Players do not know why the conversation is suddenly changing, and react annoyed when it seems like nobody replies to them anymore.

- Many messages of people who dc'd and think they can re-find people they were grouping/trading with by spamming general and/or trade. It is pointless and very annoying to others.

- Players who do realize the switching feel unattached from the community. At least I know I and a couple of my friends feel this way. It is quite frustrating having to choose between staying in a fun conversation while running around in a cleared zone, or being forced to abandon the chat to go on with the action.

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In general, the current system creates an artificial barrier which prevents people to bond a little. Staying around the same people for a while makes it more fun to interact with one another and can result in friendships more easily.

Currently the only way to do this is to quest/grind/do maps in a group... but you can only access those via an interface which throws you directly into the action. It's not really set up to form a tight community.

We all know these games are much more fun when not played alone. In the long run, people stay around more when the community is fun and promoting group play. It's one of the reasons Diablo 2 and the old battle.net were and still are quite successful.


TL;DR

Please make it so that we only change channels on logout. Or better yet: via some sort of button in the interface. Then we can choose to move on when the current chat is not interesting to us. Not everybody wants to stay around for a conversation about >insert subject you dislike< all the time, for example.

I approve of this message.

i also approve.

having us tied to a set of channels (global, trade) throughout the login cycle would be extremely helpful.
i do understand it is harder to maintain a balance of numbers of players per channel this way, but overall the consistency of chat would be far greater.

oh and since we're discussing chat channels, it would be nice if (upon login) we were placed into channels which have the least number of our /ignored players in them :) might actually be able to follow a conversation once in a while.

I had not considered chat load balancing into this idea. However, should it not be possible to simply add players to the most empty chats upon logging on?

Bumping for the sake of awareness... people just keep spamming along quite nicely. :p

Also, anyone else who would like to share their opinion is of course more then welcome to do so.

Yeah... It would be a lot better if you were in the same channel when you log in and until you log out. Mainly because it can be quite annoying when the topic changes all the time.

I'm glad more people are taking notice of this. :)

Hopefully a member of the dev team can shed some light on why this is happening. I'd like to know if a change to this behavior is possible at some point. Or if not, then might I suggest people are at least made aware of how the chat system operates, for the reasons stated in my original post? =/

Bump! Any word on this yet?

I have understood stom time ago from a mod that they are attempting to get the devs to be more aware of this... but so far still nothing. :(

I agree with the original poster, also I think it only switches channel when entering a brand new instance. Switching back and forth between existing instances won't switch the channel.

I agree, There should be an option where we can choose from a list which chat to join.