Trade, Advice Channels should be Server-Wide

[Ode1st]

Hiya,

As the post title suggests, I feel the trade and advice channels should be server-wide, rather than house/zone-wide. I think the reasoning behind this is pretty self-explanatory, though just in case:

It'd be a good idea because those two channels are for helping other players, which would greatly benefit from having a larger pool of people to gain responses from. It must be extremely discouraging when a new player is asking a question but doesn't get any response because the zone he's in is either a) lowly populated, or b) not populated enough for the residents to know the answer or c) not populated enough to have residents who care to give the answer.

I feel like it'd help players across the game. And, since some veterans and/or knowledgeable/rich players wouldn't want the trade/advice spam, I'd suggest adding an option to the chat section in the options menu that goes something like "Turn on Server-wide Advice Channel" and "Turn on Server-wide Trade Channel."

What does everyone think about this?

[gwlech]

Hiya,

As the post title suggests, I feel the trade and advice channels should be server-wide, rather than house/zone-wide. I think the reasoning behind this is pretty self-explanatory, though just in case:

It'd be a good idea because those two channels are for helping other players, which would greatly benefit from having a larger pool of people to gain responses from. It must be extremely discouraging when a new player is asking a question but doesn't get any response because the zone he's in is either a) lowly populated, or b) not populated enough for the residents to know the answer or c) not populated enough to have residents who care to give the answer.

I feel like it'd help players across the game. And, since some veterans and/or knowledgeable/rich players wouldn't want the trade/advice spam, I'd suggest adding an option to the chat section in the options menu that goes something like "Turn on Server-wide Advice Channel" and "Turn on Server-wide Trade Channel."

What does everyone think about this?

This sounds like a really good idea except, many of the vets have trade/advice off to avoid the average tard or know-it-all that posts. I am afraid if this was done, these channels would become spam central, and not really serve the purpose they are intended for. This will magnify the amount of idiots on these channels, because many people will just have it blocked regardless.

If you split it up, I am not sure how that would work. You would be seeing only parts of certain conversations and this could cause issues as well.

[Ode1st]

Maybe some kind of channel-related options would allow people to avoid the spam:

a) "Only see Advice Channel from Current Zone"
b) "Use Server-Wide Advice Channel"

Granted, you'd definitely hit the occasional "one-sided" conversation between someone using zone-advice and someone using world-advice like you mentioned.

Maybe make a separate world-advice, and separate world-trade channel? So, there'd be a server-wide advice alongside zone-advice. You couldn't really make the server-wide advice include everything said in the zone-wide advice channel, for the same reason of seeing one-sided conversations.

It's also annoying when you have a question you ask on a channel, but then change zones because you don't want to sit around for an undetermined amount of time waiting for an answer, and you'd like to get on with your session and play. The server-wide channels would fix this.

[Uryamore]

User generated channels are not restricted by area. If you want a universal advice channel, start an ad campaign to get people to join it when they have questions.

[Calebro]

User generated channels are not restricted by area. If you want a universal advice channel, start an ad campaign to get people to join it when they have questions.

/joinchannel help
It already exists.

As to trade and advice being server wide:
Advice = ABSOLUTELY not. There's enough spam and general chat in Advice as it is. This is precisely what /joinchannel help is for. I guarantee that if you use Help instead of Advice you'll get MUCH better responses, they just may take longer to get as fewer people are watching it.
Trade = Possibly, but I see potential problems with spam and general chat increasing exponentially if this happens, so I'm inclined to say that it's not a good idea.

[Pwesiela]

Worldwide spam? No thank you.

I'm one of the (likely) few vets who has /Advice on while playing. I've taken /Trade off.

And even I get annoyed with some of the questions/comments generated in just 1 area of the game (I avoid the harbor like a plague).

Having it world wide would definately make me turn Advice off. Korthos anyone?

[Ode1st]

Well, that's why it'd be an option for players to either turn off worldwide advice or not. I've been playing since the F2P (and quickly became a premium member, etc.).

I don't really understand the /joinchannel help thing. All that seems to do is create a user-made channel that the rest of the game isn't in, nor knows exists.

[Uryamore]

That's where the ad campaign fits in. Convince people to join, don't force them with a change in the existing system.

As for making it optional by a checkbox, if the default is global, it will annoy people into ignoring the channel more often than convince them to look for a new checkbox. If the default is local, very very few people will notice the checkbox to enable the global setting.