Suggestion:
Create a several channels for general purpose.
Why:
Sometimes one needs to communicate with groups of people with messages that do not belong to general. These people might be in distant locations and might not belong to the same faction. Communicating with all of them via pm is unpractical.
How to implement:
This could be as simple as generate channels (c1,c2,c3,c4,c5...cn).
A player needing one channel could just enter a channel and ask if anyone there minds if he uses it for a specific purpose. If there are enough channels a player should be able to find a way to communicate with the group. Alternatively there could be certain channels that one could reserve for events or specific situations.
Discussion:
My guess is that channels with some volume will develop organically and will be agreed by players, in this way players would agree for example that channel 1 is noble chat and channel 2 is crime chat... etc. If there are enough channels some minor groups (e.g. families or charters) could take possession of a channel. A benefit of this suggestion is that it would encourage communication and camaraderie which is one of the things players come looking for in the server. We already see that there is a need for players to communicate outside the normal channels and usually this is solved via skype, this points to a need that is not being satisfied with the available channels.
The downside that I see is that some channels might be organized that become toxic (e.g. a pvp channel). This is certainly not desired but I would argue that losing a feature because some assholes decide to troll people is letting the trolls win. I'd rather advocate for a low tolerance muting punishment for transgressors.
Create a several channels for general purpose.
Why:
Sometimes one needs to communicate with groups of people with messages that do not belong to general. These people might be in distant locations and might not belong to the same faction. Communicating with all of them via pm is unpractical.
As an example, if one is organizing an event and people are getting lost one might receive several PMs and might have to explain to each player the situation and relay info all while hosting the event. If all the interested players were in a previously agreed channel the situation would be solved easily and the host might even be helped by other people in the channel. The general purpose channels could also work for communication of groups (e.g. guards, criminals, noble) for discussion of a certain topic (pvp discussion) or to coordinate teams (e.g. world staff).
How to implement:
This could be as simple as generate channels (c1,c2,c3,c4,c5...cn).
A player needing one channel could just enter a channel and ask if anyone there minds if he uses it for a specific purpose. If there are enough channels a player should be able to find a way to communicate with the group. Alternatively there could be certain channels that one could reserve for events or specific situations.
If there are many channels they cannot have individual colors but general purpose channels as a whole could have a color of their own (purple? orange? brown?). These channels could also have an identifier: in the same way that messages in the "general" channel are accompanied by "[general]" a message in one of these channels could be accompanied by [c1] or [c2]...etc.
Discussion:
My guess is that channels with some volume will develop organically and will be agreed by players, in this way players would agree for example that channel 1 is noble chat and channel 2 is crime chat... etc. If there are enough channels some minor groups (e.g. families or charters) could take possession of a channel. A benefit of this suggestion is that it would encourage communication and camaraderie which is one of the things players come looking for in the server. We already see that there is a need for players to communicate outside the normal channels and usually this is solved via skype, this points to a need that is not being satisfied with the available channels.
The downside that I see is that some channels might be organized that become toxic (e.g. a pvp channel). This is certainly not desired but I would argue that losing a feature because some assholes decide to troll people is letting the trolls win. I'd rather advocate for a low tolerance muting punishment for transgressors.
