[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Rudy Fink]

Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com wrote:
> From: Amanda Walker [mailto:amanda at alfar.com] 

>> For socializing, *all* of the groups I've been involved with in
>> MMO gaming, no matter what game, have used ICQ, MSN Messenger, or
>> AIM for cross-server/cross-game/out-of-game chat.

>> Now, I may well have a very biased sample.  I tend to hang out
>> with other networking geeks, where email is second nature and IM
>> is pretty close.

> Ah well, I've never seen much evidence of it on the servers I
> played on. You would have required two pcs to use IM in EQ/DAoC,
> which isn't something most people have.

> As to using voice software, I only ever met one person that used
> it :) I have all the kit myself, but I've never actually used it
> once. Not even sure how one would scale it to 70 person raids
> etc. anyway.

A good many people used EQWin to window EQ and allow use of IM
clients.

IM wasn't subsequently used for in-game communication, since it
required a switch away from the game and really had no purpose since
EQ chat was sufficent.  Up until the point cross server tells were
implemented in EQ, IRC and IM (largely IRC) were used for cross and
out of game chat.  Players desire communication channels and will
find ways to get them.

I have used voice for large raids in EQ and found it to be amusing
but not really a benefit to functionality.  It is hard to keep the
channel clear for orginazational uses and is consquently sometimes
distracting, but it effectively provided radio-level amusement in
the background (folks chatting, poking fun, telling stories, etc).
Text still seems to provide the best many-to-many communication for
games.  Voice was very good for bonding and forming more "real"
connections to people.

> Ah but no one seems to use vicinity radius channels. They are
> often for a small area and you can end up hearing one half of a
> conversation but not the other. Yuck.

> At least with zone lines you have a clear border, although yes
> spam is a side effect. Still, I think spam has a place as it
> creates ad-hoc conversations with random people you wouldn't
> normally converse with.

Radius based communications always proved tricky for me and
consequently were generally avoided.  This was primarily due to the
question in certain cirumstances of whether or not the party would
indeed hear what was being said.  It is highly undesirable to think
you are communicating and not have the recipient(s) recieve what is
being said.


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