Please don't remove guild chat, here's why.

[Horsewang]

I've been playing here for about 3 months. When I started a guild and then discovered guild chat, I was very excited. It is SO NICE to have. I had been using UOAM chat but I found it to be inconvenient compared to guild chat. Lately I haven't even been using UOAM. I know the areas I frequent well enough to use the in-game map. I love using guild chat so I can play the game WHILE reading messages from guildmates. Usually they consist of "Hey anyone on?" "What are you doing?" "We should go do blah blah blah!" "Where did you go?" "Over at the carpenter" etc... Just plain convenient. I can keep playing and watch what is happening around my character while I communicate.

I don't have a microphone/headphones and wouldn't want to use it for UO if i did. Once in a while a fellow UO'er will come over with his laptop and we'll play together in the same room. That is a HUGE advantage when trying to do ANYTHING in the game, when you can just talk to the person VS stopping what you are doing in-game and typing. I can see why people use voice chat programs, but it's just not for me, not for UO anyway. It would feel wrong to me.

I've tried out IRC and it is just not a viable alternative to guild chat. Neither is the UO Chat system, it is really messed up. If that were fixed FIRST, and we all learned to use it for a while, I could see it replacing guild chat for me.

So I guess, if it counts, I vote to keep guild chat.
In my opinion, it makes the game better.
As far as Era Accuracy goes, wasn't this game changing constantly, throughout it's existence, via patches and updates? If you want to get really picky: Exactly what day, on what shard in the T2A era is this shard replicating??......Guild chat may have come much later, but it can help players play the game.

And as far as events go....I've been mildly annoyed by all of the event messages popping up all the time and I don't remember that back in the day......
I've entered a few events and they really don't appeal to me. I'd rather play the actual game where I lose my actual items that I've acquired if I die.

So yeah, keep guild chat. It can be one of this shard's quirks....

[Derrick]

I was testing out UOAM chat last night. You can chat without tabbing by typing "-- <message>" in the game window. It's rather slow for me, however, and I got disconnected twice while testing it -- not sure what the issue was there.

Thanks, this was the point and question I was kind of trying to make. UOAM chat functions in-game, i.e. you don't have to tab.

Thanks for the response. I really just wanted to understand why people were disregarding it.

On the comments about event messages, this is something we are going to try and address very soon.

Party is coming out. Guild is on the fence for now.

[nightshark]

I was testing out UOAM chat last night. You can chat without tabbing by typing "-- <message>" in the game window. It's rather slow for me, however, and I got disconnected twice while testing it -- not sure what the issue was there.

Thanks, this was the point and question I was kind of trying to make. UOAM chat functions in-game, i.e. you don't have to tab.

Thanks for the response. I really just wanted to understand why people were disregarding it.

On the comments about event messages, this is something we are going to try and address very soon.

Party is coming out. Guild is on the fence for now.

The biggest use I ever had for party wasn't the chat available inside it, it's the fact that health bars stay up on the screen even after your party members have left.

The new clients allow health bars to stay open (just greyed out) no matter where the player/monster is in relation to you. This is a pretty big issue in group PvP and takes a bit of the skill/feel out of the game with static health bar gumps.

Is there any way to change this, or is it entirely client based? Not sure what version of the client I'm using, but I don't have the static health bar gumps.

[Derrick]

This is either client or razor that's doing this.
To my knowledge, and I've worked more by assumption than research, there is no way to close these bar's server side. If razor (likely) or the client holds them open.

The ability to even target health bars came in pretty late in the T2A era, but this is completely a client interface feature, and we have no control over it as long as we support the modern OSI clients, which i think most would agree is preferable to requiring a specific client download just to be able to connect to UOSA.

[alcon]

Ok, but there is one big problem with it... if we remove it then it's just going to make people even more likely, and in fact, make easy uo more appealing to people. I've already heard of tons of people saying that they will just download easy uO once the patch comes into effect, so now we'll need to deal with that. And once other people use easy uO then I probably will download it too along with the rest of my guild. It just seems like keeping the party/guild chat in will prevent us from opening a big can of worms.

[Rammar]

Party is coming out. Guild is on the fence for now.

I fail to see how one merits salvation (however brief) and the other does not. If guild-chat is kept, party-chat should be as well. I do agree, however, that the additional party features should be gutted.

[Corbin]

If guild chat is kept, I want the newer crafting gumps added.

[yossarian]

The way I read the UOAM instructions, to use -- for "in game" chatting you have to have UO Assist. Is that alowed? or is UO Assist no longer necessary for this (and other sweet functions) to work?

Also, form reading another post about UOAM if you log in to the UOSA UOAM server you can just have everyone in a guild/group use the same password and only people who used that same password can chat?

If you dont need UO Assist for the -- thing to work and different passwords essentially mean separate "channels" then its is essentially the same thing as guild chat.

Im all for keeping GC, but this is a good alternative if it must go.

[Rammar]

The way I read the UOAM instructions, to use -- for "in game" chatting you have to have UO Assist. Is that alowed? or is UO Assist no longer necessary for this (and other sweet functions) to work?

Works fine with the version of razor bundled in the download.

Also, form reading another post about UOAM if you log in to the UOSA UOAM server you can just have everyone in a guild/group use the same password and only people who used that same password can chat?

Yup.

If you dont need UO Assist for the -- thing to work and different passwords essentially mean separate "channels" then its is essentially the same thing as guild chat.

Im all for keeping GC, but this is a good alternative if it must go.

It can be used pretty much the same as guildchat -- assuming you have no issues running it.
Not so much for ad-hoc parties formed in the field.

[BlackFoot]

you dont actually have to have the map on the auotomap running or working really

[Loathed]

tbh i don't care what's add'd or removed, as long as it is the way it was in t2a, with patch notes and all that to back it up, we got your back Derrick, don't let folks QQ cuz the game will be hard.

[Kublai Khan]

I don't think I will be able to play without this feature. I like to chat while I fish, PvM, or crafting w/o getting on ventrilo b/c wife is sleeping. This might be the end game for me. Who cares about party being cut out. Cutting chat is a huge deal.

I'm looking out for players exactly like you. If this was OSI 1999, you'd be fishing with other fisherman around the docks and they would keep you company. You would feel like you're actually in an RPG world.

However, fast forward to year 2010. Everyone power games skills, no one really takes their time with skills and you won't find other fishermen near the docks to interact with while you do your craft. This is why we need guild chat, it helps feel the void sometimes.

One thing guild chat doesn't do is limit player interaction. Let me make that clear, IRC and forums are what does that. Guild chat isn't as convenient cause journals are annoying to look at so never is guild chat "abused" to where you don't have to interact with players. Most players use guild chat to meet up, then proceed to use regular "speech over head" chat.

"The times they r' a changin'"

My question though was more rooted in, why are people not discussing UOAM as a viable alternative. This would allow players who aren't in the same guild (read as: allies) to communicate too.

I understand the nightmare that installing UOAM used to be, but it installs with our client installer now and works great.

I'm not proposing that the availablity of UOAM has any heavy bearing on whether we're going to keep guild chat or not, it just seems to be purposefully ignored in most of these posts.

Most people don't even use UOAM or any third party programs for that matter b/c they are worried about getting hacked or a virus on their computer. So you will have some people in your guild that will use these programs and some that don't. The ones that don't will not have as much playing anymore because they can't chat while doing very tedious and time consuming things. I am pretty sure that new people coming to the shard that don't PvP or don't PvP a lot will hate not having guild chat. I for one don't have UOAM atm b/c I didn't download the client from the website, I used an old game disc.

[BlackFoot]

new people coming ot this shard wont hate not having it because they didnt know it ever existed.

[yossarian]

Most people don't even use UOAM or any third party programs for that matter b/c they are worried about getting hacked or a virus on their computer. So you will have some people in your guild that will use these programs and some that don't. The ones that don't will not have as much playing anymore because they can't chat while doing very tedious and time consuming things. I am pretty sure that new people coming to the shard that don't PvP or don't PvP a lot will hate not having guild chat. I for one don't have UOAM atm b/c I didn't download the client from the website, I used an old game disc.

Razor is a third party program...

I'm at work and haven't been able to test it out yet, so perhaps I'm wrong, but it looks like configuring UOAM to log into UOSA's server is no more difficult than configuring razor to connect to UOSA. The majority of the population figured out how to do that on their own or with guides, I am willing to bet they can figure UOAM out. I dont know about Mac/Linux machines, Im sure there are some hurdles there.

[Astinus]

Party is coming out. Guild is on the fence for now.

I fail to see how one merits salvation (however brief) and the other does not. If guild-chat is kept, party-chat should be as well. I do agree, however, that the additional party features should be gutted.

I see no problem drawing a distinction. A guild is a system which was in place throughout T2A, and the guild chat is merely an interface allowing quick communication between an already existing system. Party chat involves creating a new mechanic which was NOT in place in T2A; being able to create your own party and chat just to those people is a gameplay mechanic not available in T2A. If all that's true, I agree that party probably has to go, as that seems to alter gameplay. I don't think the minor convenience of party chat justifies implementing a completely new gameplay mechanic from what the T2A-era had.

Guild chat, however, is more convenient and much less of a change.