Making Communication Matter (pipe dream suggestion)

Community General Discussion
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Another one of those ‘IF IT WERE MEEEE…’ But hear me out here before you jump and let us all dream together of a better future, right? As I was flying around the empty husk of the world of Azeroth where you might find one player here and there, it dawned on me that the RP element of the game is in ruins, and there’s one way that might fix that. A hard pill to swallow for those with comfortable preferences, but a much-needed solution to bringing back the meaning behind communication.

So here are my mighty suggestions:

  • Get rid of global/local/trade chat completely.
  • Eliminate whispering/raid/party chat unless you’re in close proximity to the player.
  • Greatly enhance the mailing and message board feature.

Right, I don’t know if this has been suggested before, but let’s think about it.
In the World of Warcraft, a big part of the game is the idea of immersion, right? You want to feel like you’re in this world and actually playing a part in its events. Well, how would that be possible if you’re constantly allowed to telepathically communicate with anyone from a distance?

Making communication meaningful also means making it more scarce, so that geography and intention play a role.

In this system, you have a much more comprehensive mailing system where you can schedule mail, or send to groups or multiple people etc, maybe mail to certain destinations etc. But it would be used more often to communicate with your fellow players from a larger distance.

Furthermore, why not make local messaging boards a thing? Imagine going to a new zone as a new player, you don’t know who to turn to, instead of having the 24/7 advertising trade chat, you’d go to the local messaging board and find announcements from local players, scheduling meetings, raids, quests, guild advertisements where guild masters pay gold at an auction to have their ads featured at the top.

And if you want a faster way to get your message across? An expensive but fast ‘carrier pigeon’ message that will get your message delivered quickly, but for a steep price.

This way, you might want to meet a player into the world, you send a mail, your friend might answer (you’d have to check) you’d have to schedule and meet the player at the right place and at the right time, thus making geography a crucial part of the game. It actually would make a difference whether you’re in Desolace or Stormwind.

I think more than anything, it would make the world and its player interaction feel more meaningful.

And I know what you might say, ‘you can just mitigate that with discord’. True. I’m not saying that wouldn’t bypass basically everything, but it would give the option for a large portion of players who don’t use discord (at least not all the time and at least outside of raids) to feel more immersed into the world.

What do you guys think? Let’s brain-storm together if you find this kind of stuff interesting. Let me know what you might add/subtract.

Stay safe and take care!

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Seriously though; I don’t think this will have the effect you think it will.
People will just flock to 3rd party programs to communicate.

I have NEVER felt less immersed in the game by being able to chat with people.
The only channel that does this is the trade channel because all kinds of nonsense goes on in there. But that’s only in town and I’m not someone who hangs around in town for ages waiting for queues and such; that’s not the WoW I play.

You can always just ignore or leave channels, right?

I don’t think any of it would work honestly.

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God no.

Stuff like this is what blizz can point to when people say feedback is ignored. ie ‘you get why we ignore some stuff right playerbase?’

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Hey, thanks for the reply!

I know I know, it sounds horrible, but maybe I didn’t quite put it across quite as eloquently as I wanted to? If not then maybe we just want different things from the game :slight_smile:

I think a lot of people do indeed want the instant communication because they just want direct access to being able to play with people at any time in any place. But I’m just saying that generally, when it comes to people complaining about WoW these days (from lots of videos I’ve found from various types of players) a theme I see popping up is the lack of meaning behind playing the game. And this ofc, extends to A LOT of elements of the game (lack of interesting items when gearing, streamlining classes so they have nothing unique about them, etc).

This is just A TOPIC from many you can approach about making things generally more meaningful, in the sense that instead of having an easy way of reaching out to the player base all the time, instead you have a system that is more complex where you need to do a bit of searching so you can find out what’s going on.

I think this would help with repopulating the old world (not on its own, it would require a lot more systemic changes but I think it would help), it would help with building more localized player bases, and even the creation of secretive pockets of players (maybe duel rings, or World PVP clusters, etc.)

I agree that trade chat is nonsense, I personally use ad block and rarely pay attention to it. If you don’t mind me asking when you say ‘that’s not how I play the game’ how are you playing WoW? How are you enjoying it?

I personally have played pretty much a bit of everything throughout a few expansions starting with WOTLK so I have more of a ‘casual with a bit of experience in everything’ approach. Obviously, a super competitive player will disagree but that’s a different type of playstyle.

Cheers anyways!

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Well, I go into the world and do stuff; open world content is my main bread and butter. I do dungeons and raids only when they’re new or when I really want something from them (or farming them solo when they’re outdated content). I really enjoy being out in the world and doing content.

So I never sit around and queue for stuff. IF I queue for things; I go out into the world and do stuff while I wait.

And when I go out there, I regularly talk to friends or guildies. That doesn’t really break my immersion. When I talk to people I meet out there, I tend to use /s and not whisper, but that’s just a personal preference. I play on an RP server, so when I do use /s I usually remain ‘in character’ just out of respect; I don’t really RP myself.

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Cool, thanks for the answer!

Might I add though that

might explain a lot. I can’t say that I have a lot of experience with RP servers (I’ve only played a little bit) but I think they generally have fewer issues with the immersion bit as they’re generally more populated, there are more players who are levelling, thus finding more players in the world, and they’re more willing to remain in character.

Of course, I might be generalizing, but I think on a normal or PVP server things might be different.

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Could be yeah, I don’t know. Last time I was on a pvp server was in WotLK.

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