What If The Developers Turned Off Almost All Chat in OctoWoW?

[Emersen]

I have been thinking about what made World of Warcraft feel so amazing when it first launched in 2004. The world felt HUGE. It felt dangerous and mysterious. You could walk into a new zone and not know what was waiting for you. You met people in the world because you were actually there with them. I think we have lost some of that feeling.

Today, World of Warcraft has many ways to talk to other players. We can talk across zones, groups, guilds, channels, and more. We can see messages all the time, and we can quickly find out what is happening almost anywhere. This is useful, but I think it also makes the world feel smaller.

So here is my crazy idea: turn off almost all chat in the game and keep only /say and /yell.

Everything else would be turned off.

This does not mean people could not talk to their friends. You could still use Discord, or other voice programs. I have no problem with that. In fact, I think that is an important part of this idea. The goal is not to stop people from talking to their friends. The goal is to keep that communication outside of the game world itself.

Your friends could still be in Discord talking, laughing, planning, and helping each other. However, the world of Azeroth would be quiet. You would not have a constant stream of messages telling you what everyone else is doing.

Imagine walking through a forest without seeing a wall of chat messages flying past your screen. Imagine entering a town and hearing people talk because they are actually standing there. Imagine needing to walk up to someone and say hello. Imagine seeing another player in the distance and wondering who they are, where they came from, and what they are doing. I think the world would feel bigger again.

This brings me to something I think we forget about games: silence is part of world-building.

When everything is filled with information, very little feels mysterious. If you always know what is happening, where everyone is, what people are doing, and what everyone is talking about, the world starts to feel more like a lobby than a living place.

Silence changes that. When there is less information coming at you, you start looking around. You hear the sounds of the world. You notice the players around you. You wonder what is happening in that distant town. You become curious about what might be around the next corner. Silence gives your imagination room to work, and it makes the world feel larger than the screen in front of you.

I also think this could remove some of the anger and noise that comes with modern game chat. People can be very rude when they are behind a screen and talking to hundreds of strangers. If we could only communicate through /say and /yell, people would have to think more about what they say, when they say it, and where they say it.

There is another part of this idea that I really like: reputation.

If you meet someone in the world and they are helpful, kind, funny, or brave, you might remember their character. If someone is rude or acts like a jerk, you might remember them too. Your words would be connected to the person standing in front of you. You would not just be another name in a giant chat window. You would be the player you met in Stormwind, the person who helped you kill that elite, the stranger who saved you from a group of enemies, or maybe even the jerk who yelled at you in the middle of town.

That is what can make a world feel like a community. People can build a reputation through their actions, not just through what they type into a global chat channel.

I would also add a slow mode to /say and /yell. For example, a player could send only one message every 15 seconds, while still having the normal character limit. This would prevent people from filling the screen with huge walls of text. It would also give everyone a chance to actually read what was said and think about a response before another message appears.

Of course anyone currently can turn off or leave any chat channel, but that only be sticking one's head in the sand. That doesn't help rid the game of the social toxicity. Would people still be toxic sometimes? Of course. This would not magically make everyone nice. However, it could make toxicity harder to spread and give positive interactions more meaning.

More importantly, I think it could bring back something every single MMO-RPG has lost: the feeling that you are actually inside a world.

In 2004, the game encouraged us to identify more strongly with our characters because information was limited and the world felt less connected. You did not know everything. You could not instantly talk to everyone. You could not instantly find out what was happening everywhere. That limitation was not always a problem. I think it was part of the magic.

Maybe we should bring some of that back.

Turn down the noise. Let the world speak for itself. Let players wonder, explore, and build reputations. Let Azeroth feel big, mysterious, and dangerous again.

Make the world feel like a world.

[Mauden]

You can't recreate the feeling of mystery in a game this old, you and virtually everyone else already know too much about it. No amount of artificial restrictions on communication can ever bring that new feeling back.

[Darien]

While Mauden is right -- that feeling of newness and mystery is probably not available in a game as old as this, that everybody already knows so well -- I'm four-square in favour of reducing the amount of chat spam. World channels are awful, and the very first thing I do on every character I create is /leave 4.

[Darktifa]

Wtf did I just read

[Posercorpse]

I have been thinking about what made World of Warcraft feel so amazing when it first launched in 2004
[...]
Make the world feel like a world.

Holy wall-of-text Batman!
....
Batman?
....
Oh chat's disabled.

[Uggerbugger]

You mean like /leave world?

[Sheluvsramar2]

in 2004 people were trolling in General, Trade Chat, and LFG. Stop this nonsense. The chatbox was a vital function of world building and connecting people.

A 15 second slow mode on Say completely kills the flow of RP and in person conversations that you're oh so seeking, a global cooldown lasts 1.5 seconds and you're telling me making someone wait almost 9 globals just to participate in normal conversation is going to solve the issue of toxicity and build immersion?

You mentioned that /leave world chat is just burying your head in the sand LOL

World Chat is your sole problem. Ask anyone who doesnt participate in world chat how their experience in-game differs and i suspect you havent tried it to see how your gameplay differs before coming here and suggesting such a ridiculous idea.

[Archivist]

There is a common allegation made that World of Warcraft does not attract the brightest minds to it... Posts like these don't help.

I mean it could very well be an elaborate troll post, but still, if the OP is serious about basically destroying any form of communication that actually connects people then... Yeah, it's not looking good.

[Alunda]

First thing first I do on every character creation,
is to disable General, World and Trade channels
keeping /say for Roleplay and /LocalDefense for PVP.

Somehow the game still feels exciting and immersive every time.

[Wubc]

I get what you're trying to achieve, and while running around just exploring I could see some benefit to you individually. However, what you're suggesting is simply not practical for any other style of play. Want to run dungeons? Setting up groups would be a complete nightmare. Imagine trying to find the last member for a party, having to travel to a capitol to /y, while the rest of the existing group has no way of communicating with each other. Setting up a raid? Next to impossible outside of setting up ridiculous rules about where and when everyone needs to be online for simple communication. And you better not go questing or farming ever just so you can see what people are saying. No private communications in /w? Sure, no privacy is probably ever needed anyways...

Your suggestion of these forms of communication rather taking place on separate platforms like Discord simply moves the channels there and will make them a requirement going forward. Rather than have /World in another chat tab, it is now in a completely separate program that you must have. Don't have it? Tough luck, guess you don't get to do anything.

Furthermore, as this kind of move would not eliminate those channels but just replaces them with inferior solutions, you are requiring everyone else to have to "opt in" to those only so that you do not need to "opt out" of the existing ones. I don't see how being restricted to /y and /s would somehow make people behave better, when it is no less anonymous and less people could even see your interactions, so bad behavior would theoretically not be as detrimental.