Filter Global Chat

[stormlord]

I've been thinking about this. My thinking is to filter global chat.

First of all, the idea is not classic, but neither is global /ooc and global /auction. So that argument can't be used to oppose this idea since lots of things present in p1999 aren't classic either.

The idea I have, and that i've seen others suggest in different posts (it's not my idea alone), is to allow us to filter /ooc and /auction by city. For example, if you're leveling up near qeynos and only want to trade with people nearby, you could turn on Halas and Qeynos and Erudin. This way you can reduce the amount of chat on your screen and also not see trades that're too far away.

I'm giving two options I can think of for implementing this...

Option 1

(this is displayed in the filter tab on the options window)

Show ... /ooc & /auction - Qeynos
Show ... /ooc & /auction - Erudin
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Rivervale
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Freeport
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Ak'anon
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Felwithe
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Kelethin
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Oggok
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Neriak
Show ... /ooc & /auction - Halas
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Kaladim
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Paineel

I don't know whether this method would work or not because the client hardcode might not allow it.

Option 2

Make it a command. Like:

/globalchat filter:qeynos,erudin,halas
Global chat filter is set to: qeynos,erudin,halas.

-or-

/globalchat filter:kaladim,kelethin,akanon
Global chat filter is set to: kaladim,kelethin,akanon.

-or-

/globalchat filter:none
Global chat filter is disabled.

-or-

/globalchat
Global chat filter is set to: freeport.

I'm guessing that command strings like "/globalchat ..." are sent to the server without explicit client checks. For example, if you enter "/mcdonalds" it will tell you that the command is not available. My guess is that the server is receiving it and giving a negative response and the client is informing you.

This method, I think, has hte advantage of being able to be set on a per character basis, automatically on character creation. So when a new character is created, the filter is disabled by default. You might later enter "/globalchat filter:erudin,paineel,qeynos,halas" to enable it for a character in Erudin, for example.

.....

The developers and players would determine which zones would be near to these cities. For example, permafrost and blackburrow and Qeynos Hills would be attached to Halas. Blackburrow, Qeynos Hills, Qeynos Catacombs, Erud's Crossing, Surefall Glade, West Karana, North Karana and maybe some others would be attached to Qeynos. Etc. Some redundancy is good because people might not know if a zone is attached to their city or not even though it's not far away. For example, is surefall glade attached to halas AND qeynos? Should it be? I think that in this case, you should always liberally add zones, but not too many. For example, surefall glades and qeynos and west karana should probably be added to Halas, but i wouldn't add north karana to halas.

If we're going to have global /ooc and global /auction, which are not classic, we need to update how it works to reflect the fact that this isn't classic so it needs different answers. I don't like to see /ooc and /auction from people all across the world - that's 600+ people at peak hour. I can't run across the world and I don't like to see so much chat fill my screen. I'd like to be able to filter it. This wasn't available in classic, but then again, classic didn't have a global chat like this so it didn't have 300 or 400+ people constantly chatting.