Discussion: Is world chat still necessary on Octowow?

[Ticharles123]

Hi everyone,

The concept of world chat feels increasingly outdated to me. It’s an artifact from the early private‑server era of the 2010s, when player populations were so small that a global chat channel was basically required just to talk to each other and create any sense of community.

Now that servers like Octo (and previously Twow) host over 1,000 concurrent players, what does world chat actually bring to the overall server experience beyond constant spam and low‑value chatter? In my personal experience, the only truly meaningful use of world chat on Twow was when someone died in Hardcore mode. To me, those moments created a shared “community event” where everyone reacted to the same thing at once. We get a faint echo of that when an HC player crosses over from the HC realm, but it doesn’t feel quite the same.

I don’t have all the answers here, and I’m curious how different types of players (HC, PvPers, crafters, roleplayers, casuals) experience world chat. Is it still a necessity, or has it just become an unexamined tradition in the private‑server scene?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Mario]

I like the world chat. On any server. Yes on bigger servers it does get spammy but that can be solved with moderation and rules. Maybe move trade stuff into trade chat, and LFG stuff into some addons or whatever. But the core idea of a global chat is great to me and is very important in keeping the community feel.
And as usual: don't like it - just /leave world. There are people who do.

[Slaydy1]

I disagree, I think it makes the world feel alive and something I actually miss when playing SoD or retail, for example. As a new migrant to Octo from CoA, I was happy to find something akin to /newcomers or /1 (ascension) chat. Beyond that, it is a great place to joke, ask questions globally (and receive a quick answer) and have a laugh.

It is really important that it gets moderated though. I will agree with you, I hate seeing the constant BR guild advertisement spam. That should be reserved exclusively for guild recruitment channels and only those channels.

[Ticharles123]

I like the world chat. On any server. Yes on bigger servers it does get spammy but that can be solved with moderation and rules. Maybe move trade stuff into trade chat, and LFG stuff into some addons or whatever. But the core idea of a global chat is great to me and is very important in keeping the community feel.
And as usual: don't like it - just /leave world. There are people who do.

Now that I think of it, you're right; it is a great place to ask question and get a quick answer in /w. Forgot about that

[Defiant]

Hi everyone,

The concept of world chat feels increasingly outdated to me. It’s an artifact from the early private‑server era of the 2010s, when player populations were so small that a global chat channel was basically required just to talk to each other and create any sense of community.

Now that servers like Octo (and previously Twow) host over 1,000 concurrent players, what does world chat actually bring to the overall server experience beyond constant spam and low‑value chatter? In my personal experience, the only truly meaningful use of world chat on Twow was when someone died in Hardcore mode. To me, those moments created a shared “community event” where everyone reacted to the same thing at once. We get a faint echo of that when an HC player crosses over from the HC realm, but it doesn’t feel quite the same.

I don’t have all the answers here, and I’m curious how different types of players (HC, PvPers, crafters, roleplayers, casuals) experience world chat. Is it still a necessity, or has it just become an unexamined tradition in the private‑server scene?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

/leave world

My stance is that if you dislike it, leave it. There are plenty of people who very much enjoy having World Chat. Yes it's often full of nonsense and spam but that's just part and parcel with playing on a decently populated server. If it becomes too much for anyone they can just opt out of it.

And for Hardcore players, traditionally they would have World Chat and HC chat and I know from personal experience that many of us would just turn World chat off and treat HC chat as world chat-- but now that HC is on their own server it's largely irrelevant.

[Defiant]

It is really important that it gets moderated though. I will agree with you, I hate seeing the constant BR guild advertisement spam. That should be reserved exclusively for guild recruitment channels and only those channels.

In regards to moderation-- they do moderate it, but they just can't have GMs active 24/7 so they really genuinely rely on people making reports. They'll go over logs and hand out mutes and warnings and if the person keeps getting muted the mute becomes longer and longer and in some cases they will hand out bans.

One thing I did think about that would probably help make World Chat better is if we lowered the total amount of characters that can be posted per message by maybe like 25-30% which would help make the guild spam not as egregious, as well as just always having slow mode on with a 5 to 10 second delay. This would reduce the impact on chat that spammers and guild recruiters have. The vast majority of messages in chat don't come anywhere even remotely close to the character limit. Then by adding the 5 to 10 second slow mode it would stop guild recruiters ( or spammers in general ) from simply using a macro to chain multiple messages together. As things stand I've already seen some guilds utilizing macros to post a massive guild recruitment message spanning two full messages.

[Darien]

Speaking for myself, I can't stand World, because it is just a wall of useless spam almost all the time. Though, as people have said, I can just /leave 4 as soon as I create my character and all is well, and it must be said that the existence of the World channel *does* draw a lot of the spam away from the General and Trade channels, making them actually useful again.

[Slaydy1]

It is really important that it gets moderated though. I will agree with you, I hate seeing the constant BR guild advertisement spam. That should be reserved exclusively for guild recruitment channels and only those channels.

In regards to moderation-- they do moderate it, but they just can't have GMs active 24/7 so they really genuinely rely on people making reports. They'll go over logs and hand out mutes and warnings and if the person keeps getting muted the mute becomes longer and longer and in some cases they will hand out bans.

One thing I did think about that would probably help make World Chat better is if we lowered the total amount of characters that can be posted per message by maybe like 25-30% which would help make the guild spam not as egregious, as well as just always having slow mode on with a 5 to 10 second delay. This would reduce the impact on chat that spammers and guild recruiters have. The vast majority of messages in chat don't come anywhere even remotely close to the character limit. Then by adding the 5 to 10 second slow mode it would stop guild recruiters ( or spammers in general ) from simply using a macro to chain multiple messages together. As things stand I've already seen some guilds utilizing macros to post a massive guild recruitment message spanning two full messages.

I agree wholly. I like this idea and think it should be formally suggested for implementation.

[Sheluvsramar2]

Actually Im on board with this, go ahead and delete world chat and watch everyone chud around in LOOKING FOR GROUP and TRADE CHANNEL like we used to do in vanilla/classic.

By the light some of you are insufferable crybabies.

a 10 sec slowmode would do far better work than removing the global channel altogether, and with that being said. If you remove WORLD, you may as well remove LFG because the problem will only persist there as 20 yrs of history shows.

And if your solution is remove world, and police LFG... why not just police World Chat /logic, enjoy grouping and questing alone as horde because of the faction balance issue and hardly anyone uses the built in dung finder.

[Maaadcheddarrr]

Code: Select all

/leave world 

/thread