Spam in chat channels - Are you really bothered?

[n00bonicPlague]

"/o igw"? I guess I'm one of the 99% that doesn't know what that is. What does it do?

[Genopath]

"/o igw"? I guess I'm one of the 99% that doesn't know what that is. What does it do?

Stands for "option ignorewhispers" (from non-friends)

[n00bonicPlague]

Holy crap — that would've been useful.

Anyway, if they designed stuff right, things like whispers could become obsolete.

[Crazy_Jonny]

Don't really care for chat channels.

It's not so much that the spam was annoying (and it was) but clans abused the hell out of these - using bots as means to recruit, its unfair. Website also got advertised by bots and whatnot - probably one of the big reasons Blizzard doesn't want them to come back.

Then there were also people asking for certain custom maps, which is hardly necessary anymore in the new system.

So out of all the things that could come back in Bnet 2, chat channels are the most useless IMO, since they do more harm than good TBH.

[GnaReffotsirk]

I'd rather have you guys on my list than some random guy talking about his exploits or even bots asking me for a date in some chatroom.

On that note, I'll go ahead and post my facebook account somewhere around here when the time is come.

[Noise]

No I do not care at all about spam

[sandwich_bird]

I hate spam in every ways so yeah it REALLY bothers me. I also understand Blizzard decision: no chat channels = no need to hire moderators to watch over those channels consistently. Also, a game filled with spam affect greatly the reputation of the game. Maybe some people don't care about it but there will certainly always be a large group of individuals who can't stand it and no company wants to lose their costumers. See, this question is like asking '' do you mind having your room dirty?''. Well maybe you don't but I'm sure that you feel the need to clean it when one of your friend is coming over (and if not = you're a sad person).

To be honest, I really don't give a crap about the chat channels and I'm still trying to understand why people want them back so bad even with the promise of something possibly better (group/clan chat).

[Gifted]

Nobody said they did, and nobody said the current system was good, or even acceptable. The current system is crap. But the desire to create a new system that is free of problems of the old system is commendable. And spam will always exist, but clearly there can be measures taken to reduce it.

For the record Newcomplex, I pretty much agree to the portion of this post I didn't quote, so don't fret on that one buddy.

Regarding this part though, while it's a noble stance (and agreeable) to take overall, I will admit that the way which Blizzard originally approached this issue doesn't make sense in terms of identifying the pros and the cons at this time. This definitely would probably make more sense if we knew how the group functionality would work, or even if they had a final direction they wanted to go with IDs.

What I'm trying to say (which is compatible with your view) is that in many cases you want to maximize pros and so far it looks like Blizzard is putting out more cons to this circumstance than pros.

I'm anxious to see the remainder of the solution we don't know yet... while at the same time concerned. Good posts none-the-less.

[Nicol Bolas]

To be honest, I really don't give a crap about the chat channels and I'm still trying to understand why people want them back so bad even with the promise of something possibly better (group/clan chat).

I think it's more that:

1: They don't know about Blizzard's plans for group/clan chat.

2: They want it now regardless of the form.

even if they had a final direction they wanted to go with IDs.

Yeah, really. There's nothing anyone can do about any of these issues, chat or cross-realm play, until Blizzard figures out how they intend to handle uniquely identifying a person on a multi-million player system.

This is very different from MMOs, because in an MMO, each MMO server is an island. Each server may handle maybe 50,000 people tops. It's easy to allow unique IDs there; you can even have globally unique IDs using the server they play on + their unique name on that server. Kind of a "Vandros of the Ullios realm" thing.

Whereas in something like SC2, each individual region may potentially have millions of players. Do you want to really limit people to having a unique name among millions of people? Or do you want to have some way to allow name duplication? If you allow duplicates, how do you uniquely identify someone? And so on.

Until you iron that out, you can't have cross-realm play of any kind. And chat becomes an iffy proposition if you can't uniquely identify who you're talking to.

[TWD]

I hate spam in every ways so yeah it REALLY bothers me. I also understand Blizzard decision: no chat channels = no need to hire moderators to watch over those channels consistently. Also, a game filled with spam affect greatly the reputation of the game. Maybe some people don't care about it but there will certainly always be a large group of individuals who can't stand it and no company wants to lose their costumers. See, this question is like asking '' do you mind having your room dirty?''. Well maybe you don't but I'm sure that you feel the need to clean it when one of your friend is coming over (and if not = you're a sad person).

To be honest, I really don't give a crap about the chat channels and I'm still trying to understand why people want them back so bad even with the promise of something possibly better (group/clan chat).

I think this is a point that many people forget. It's not just that spam is annoying. It costs Blizzard resources and reputation. Having more bots than there are active users is a huge waste of resources. They have to spend time policing the system, and fixing all the problems that spammers and hackers try to cause with the network. It's simply easier to maintain, and I think that's one of the main reasons why most other game developers like valve simply don't bother with open chatrooms anymore.
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