Spellborn Quick Tip: Chat Filters

If you’re anything like me, one of the first things you do when you start an MMO is turn off the “General” chat channels. Nothing breaks immersion like the on-going bitch-fest that is General Chat which happens in every single MMO I’ve ever played. In Spellborn, this constant bitching and epeen displaying happens in Zone Chat. Getting rid of it is a little tricky.

To the right of the chat entry window is a little ‘bubble’ icon. If you click on that you get a bunch of chat options, including filters. You can untick Zone chat, and you’d think you’d be done. You’d be wrong. What you’ll see now is the same chat with a warning:

[POST EDITED BECAUSE PEOPLE TAKE THINGS TOO LITERALLY]

Zone: Player1: So psyched for BSG finale tonight! (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player2: I love that show! (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player3: Where can I find Young Bears? (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player2: I need Young Bears too! (warning, channel not active)
Zone: Player4: What’s BSG? (warning, channel not active)

And so on. Clearly the game REALLY wants you to see the Zone chat. So what you have to do is, under that same pop-up chat widget, pick “New Channel” (which really means “New Tab”). On the old tab, re-enable Zone Chat, then move to that new tab, and set your filters accordingly (ie, untick Zone Chat there). Your preferences will be respected in your new chat tab, as long as “Zone chat” is un-filtered in another tab (which you can blissfully ignore).

Now you can enjoy the lore and the magic of Spellborn without all the asshats breaking your immersion!

10 thoughts on “Spellborn Quick Tip: Chat Filters

  1. I judge a game’s community by its general chat. I never shut it off as soon as I find a new game, otherwise how would I ever know what kind of people I’m playing with?

    Crappy general = crappy community = game I won’t bother sticking with.

    So you’re saying basically Spellborn sucks?

  2. That’s a little narrow nowadays, Scott (IMO YMMV and other TLAs and FLAs πŸ˜‰ ). There are so many gamers of so many different stripes all trying out games now that the global chat channel is almost bound to be full of poo (and poo-flinging). I’m actually starting to believe there’s a subset of MMO gamers who go from game to game PURELY with the intent of logging in and trolling on general chat — they’re everywhere, and they don’t actually seem to play anything themselves. They live to troll.

    But hey, if you’re determined to prejudge, I won’t stop you! πŸ˜€

  3. @Scott
    “So you’re saying basically Spellborn sucks?”

    Huh? That’s a stretch. I guess I need to refine my post….

  4. Narrow? I thought I was being more accepting and judging on what I actually see in chat. Narrow to me is installing a new game, logging in and immediately shutting off the chat without giving people a chance. That’s when I draw the line and start wondering why people don’t just play a single player game.

    I have no problem with solo vs. group, which is when most people start whining “if you’re going to solo, just play Oblivion” blahblah. The point of MMOs are the ability to interact with all those other people, should you choose to. But immediately cutting yourself off from the entire population? I don’t see the point. MMOs are downright horrible single player games. That’s my varying mileage anyway. πŸ™‚

  5. Scott, not that I really feel the need to justify my play style to you, but I prefer interacting with people “face to face” rather than zone or server wide.

  6. @Scott I think Pete is mainly saying that it doesn’t take long, these days, to notice when a global channel is going to be full of asshats. They’re everywhere… and they probably don’t know how to chat in anything BUT global, *especially* in the starting areas.

    The worst thing about that, to my mind, is the effect it has on the non-trollish starting players, many of whom don’t dare speak up for fear of being trolled. It’s increasingly common and rather sad. (Though it often seems to improve once the trolls move on. VG had a bad global chat for a while, but got much better and much more helpful after they left. I’m sure it’s not the only example, either.

  7. Scott, I don’t think he’s drawing that conclusion at all. Looks like you’re projecting your own point of view that a game with sucky general chat sucks overall. Pete never said or even implied that, besides the fact that your conclusion is nowhere in the remote vicinity of the point of his post.

    Back on-topic: I don’t like to turn off zone-wide chat unless it gets really stupid or really spammy, and even then it’s usually only temporary. That’s just me, though…I like helping folks out, and /ooc is often the first place they ask.

    I DO, however, *despise* server-wide chat (like the level chat in EQ2). There’s always way too much e-peenery and not enough substance. The only server-wide chat channel I have turned on is the Crafting channel, since all my girls are crafters and are usually available to help out with crafting quests or fulfilling orders. I don’t feel as though I’m missing anything by turning everything else off.

    How to turn off (or hide) chat channels is always good info to have. I’m sure current and future Spellborn players will appreciate someone putting this technique out there. πŸ™‚

  8. Yeah, that’s why I find Scott’s comments so irksome. The point of the post wasn’t “the content of chat in Spellborn sucks” it was “If you want to turn off a chat channel, there’s a trick to it, and here’s how.” I’ll admit I snarked it up a bit in an attempt to be funny…the initial ‘example’ chat was 100% made up. I thought that would’ve been obvious but I guess not.

    I was trying to be helpful and he comes along and starts doing his best to twist me words? WTF?

    For the record, Spellborn is in *open beta* and the first area is free for anyone to play in. I don’t think you can judge a game’s community by the first day of open beta, and the constant uninformed criticisms of the combat system (and the increasingly frustrated replies) was getting irritating.

    By Scott’s yardstick, LOTRO must suck too, since the OOC chat there is often just as horrible as in any other game. (Scott’s Law is “Crappy general = crappy community = game I won’t bother sticking with.” and OOC is LOTRO’s General, yet he plays it. Huh?) I have it turned off there 90% of the time (I leave on LFF and Advice) and whenever I try turning it back on, it takes about 10 minutes before I have to shut it off again. And yet I find LOTRO to have an excellent community. 95% of a game’s population can be great, but if that last 5% is constantly talking shit in a chat channel, leaving that chat channel on is going to give you a skewed opinion of the community.

    I prefer talking to people face-to-face in MMOs. In towns, near the beginning of popular questions spots, and so on. The people I’ve met in Spellborn this way have been fine, as a rule. The established community in Closed Beta and the people in Open Beta that show indications that they’ve played before, are fine. But there’s a lot of people playing it because its new and free, and when it isn’t WOW 2 they start their typical bitching that boils down to “This is different from WoW so it sucks” and that riles up everyone else and it’s just noise and I choose to turn that off.

    There is zero indication that this chat is typical of what the chat is like in the “I’ve chosen to pay for this game” zones and I resent Scott trying to turn my post into an argument for that being the case.

    And one last time, for the record, turning off general chat is not “immediately cutting yourself off from the entire population? ” That’s a deliberately inflammatory statement to make, particularly coming from someone who enjoys LOTRO with its well-established gathering places like the Prancing Pony in Bree.

    Some of us do still play these games as ROLE PLAYING games and general chat, even if its not full of friction between players, isn’t conducive to role playing.

  9. Just to clarify, Pete, while your statements got me started on that tangent, my comments were not directed at you in particular. I’ve read several posts/forums recently saying the same thing only much more harshly than you did and who did have the exact sentiment that they were logging in and shutting off the chats because all MMOs are full of asshats and they don’t want to read the garbage. Add 3 hours of sleep and my coffee hadn’t finished yet this morning, and apparently I didn’t come off quite the way I intended to either.

    As an example, though, everyone always complains universally about WoW’s general chat. Unfortunately, while WoW may be a great game (whether we individually like it or not) it’s not exactly encouraging. Guild Wars is just… wow (not WoW) too. Your (apparently made-up) Spellborn chat made me instantly think of the very worse of GW chat or Barrens chat or the e-peenery/bitchfest that usually takes place in games with a lot of unattended kids or otherwise immature anonymous idiots, and that didn’t sound attractive to want to stick around long in.

  10. Had to cut that short, my girlfriend came over. Anyway, as I said, I’d read other comments recently that *were* intentionally being anti-social, per their own admission, and when I read your post this morning… it was a little shocking in a “he’s not that way too is he? I’d never have guessed from his writings.” You’ve explained, and I am rest assured that no, you’re not that way either.

    My intention was not to start a flamewar or twist anyone’s words. I didn’t think I was at the time but after reading everyone else’s comments and going back reading my comment cold… yeah… I blew it.

    I apologize everyone, I’ll just go shut up now.

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