Irc?

[Vaz]

Is there an IRC channel or somesuch for Horizons?

[Milandra]

#horizons on irc.stratics.com is the current 'official' one

@ Mods: Sticky on this one ?

[Landowyn]

I think we can do without IRC this time around.

[Steelclaw]

Yarr. There's currently a channel at the address above. It's very quiet, but does have its moments. Be patient, it could be awhile till you get a response!

@Landowyn: If you don't want to chat on IRC, don't go. Simple. Do not, however, try to deprive others of that option.

[JDexter]

I think we can do without IRC this time around.

I agree 100%.

The whole IRC thing is what caused most of the adversarial stances in the past with too much cronyism going on specifically because of that and way too much information that was only given through IRC rather than the official forums.

Would like that to NOT happen this time around. Lesson learned and all that, you know?

[Milandra]

Anyway there will always be some IRC channel.
Some people appreciate to be in touch with other players even when they're not ingame.
Definitly nothing can be done against this.

As Steelclaw stated it, if you don't want to go there, just don't.

I'd like to add by the past, that IRC was a good way to just signal if for example the auth server was down.

[Steelclaw]

way too much information that was only given through IRC rather than the official forums.

Both were public and official methods of communication. Anyone was welcome to join the channel and the forum. If there was some important bit of info, it showed up in both places.

The whole IRC thing is what caused most of the adversarial stances in the past with too much cronyism going on

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "adversarial stances". Give me some examples, please.

I'll concede that it did appear that the devs 'listened' to some players more than others. However, it should also be noted that those players were able to argue their points in well-reasoned manner that went beyond "It's not fair!!!". That kind of player will get more attention anywhere, be it here on the forums or on some irc channel.

[Deth]

Both were public and official methods of communication. Anyone was welcome to join the channel and the forum. If there was some important bit of info, it showed up in both places.

To those that could hang out in IRC. Some of us would be at work or in the game and could not or choose not to be in IRC. To those of use that could not be there we were not getting what info that did come out of there. Also it was not in a uneditable permanent form, at least as far as not being able to be edited or deleted by the dev that posted it, that someone who was maybe on vacation could not come back and see.

Also no it did not always show up in both places. As my self and others complained about the lack of post by the devs about info released in IRC those that did go to the IRC stopped posting what was said as they felt flamed.

To me If it is important enough to ask or tell the player base it should be posted by a Dev, not a player so it is known to be official word no "Well we did not post that.", happening. Also it needs to be some where "perment" so that all players that choose to come to the forums be it 5 sec after the post or 5 years, can see it, not just where if your lucky and log into a chat when it happens.

[Vahrokh]

Well, we have an IRC channel even in WoW.
To log from work all you have to do is to use a WEB IRC client (freeware).

The fact the developers would listen on IRC was due to several factors not tied to some particular "evilness".

IRC is a chat like we have in game.
There were jerks that would go ignored but some that would bring:

- long, detailed and numbers supported arguments. I had to i.e. demonstrate that gold strike did not get augmented by melee stats due to a null entry in the database, that our healing sucked because one needed stat "pointed" to a wrong modifier and so on for several spells.

- it's dynamic. The programmer applied my things to the game exactly the moment I convinced him, launched the game and told me that it worked. Do it on a forum...

- you can pass data. I have uploaded files and other stuff on the fly, a thing you can hardly (and even then, with limitations) do here.

That is, IRC is a very working "work horse" way to communicate compared to the much static forums, plus on the forums you have the massive overhead of having a valid post surrounded by 10 whines, 2 rants, 3 flames, 2 off topic replies all making up for 10 pages instead of 1 page to the point.

I can also sort of understand why they did not repost the IRC logs, it'd be more of a BLOG thing than a chat, you'd lose the dynamic and fast nature of chatting if you had to stop every 5 minutes to collect it, format it, censor it and then post it on the forums.

Imagine IRC as a "voice Blight server". Just a couple of players go on Blight and contribute to the game instead of whining, despite Blight is FREE and open to everyone.

The day I see all of you logging on Blight and dutily report bugs and improvements, it's the day you can complain about doing the same activity but on IRC.

[Jasmeen]

Deth, you've got that backwards. IRC chat is unedittable. Any developer here could delete or edit a thread LONG after they post it. Once something is said in IRC, that's it, it's said. Anyone in the channel could copy what was said, paste it in a forum post, an email, just save it to use later... just about anything.

This whole "the developers told people who hung out in IRC more than they told the people who didn't" is just paranoia, plain and simple. A small percentage of players hang out to talk to one another in IRC. A slightly larger, but still small, percentage of players post on the forums. A small percentage play on Blight regularly, where the developers show up and chat. Are you going to go after those groups as well and say that they have some sort of "inside track" that people who just simply log in and play the game don't? Because the VAST majority of players, yes even in Horizons, don't do ANY of that.

You, the individual player, decide how much you wish to participate in things like IRC, the forums, Blight testing. Don't want to, or feel you can't, participate in those places? Then don't. But please don't go all paranoid on those of us who do enjoy hanging out in such places. Personally, I'll often leave IRC running when I go to work or to bed, on my computer at home so I can skim the daily discussions. If you're so worried about something being conveyed there despite everyone who HAS hung out there saying it doesn't, put up the channel and leave it running yourself for a few days. You'll find that about the most "game related" discussion that happens there is the same sort of discussions that happen in chat channels inside the game every single day. And I don't think anyone would say that those should be shut down just because every single player can't be logged in to the game every single moment of the day, are you?

[JDexter]

The day I see all of you logging on Blight and dutily report bugs and improvements, it's the day you can complain about doing the same activity but on IRC.

You don't know who does or does not log into blight and reports bugs, and I take offense at your attitude. Unless you work for the company, how could you possibly know what is being reported by whom. Nice assumption.

This is the thing I was talking about. It creates an 'inner circle' of people who have the devs ears, and some of them certainly don't deserve it, and some use it to manipulate things to their own benefit (and we know that has happened in the past.)

Your entire post was a prime example of that, but the quoted portion nailed it perfectly.

Deth summed it up nicely.

[Velea]

This thread is quickly going down hill. The OP asked for information, and that information was given, thus I'm closing the thread.