Hzim?

[Valareos]

I know that the Team has a lot more important things to worry about... im not expecting this to be made an urgant thing to work on (unless there is plenty of support :P) But a Horizons IM program would, in my opinion, add to the game.

Now, im not talking about the IRC channel, that is NOT what i have in mind.

This is how I envision it working:

1: it is tied into the Istaria Login server. you use your same login details, and select the character you wish to talk as. Your limited to the number of simultaneous logins based on your subscriptions, for all intents and purposes this part is treated as if you are logging into istaria

2: on login, it does not load character, items, world, or anything else except chat channels (set up however that is felt to be most effectient.) At this point, you ARE logged in to Istaria, just without any in game graphics (best perhaps to make logging into the HZIM auto recall player to bind point)

SInce the player is not seen unless they move, you wont have a large amount of "chatting" players just sitting near bind shrines. (how can you move if you got no graphical interface :P

3: You can from here modify friends lists, search for players, add or delete chats. just as you would in game.


Im not concerned too much of the question of WILL it be done, but CAN it be done, and if not, why?

Thanks

[awdz]

I'm curious... Why would you want this when you can login to the game without moving and accomplish the same thing?

[Frith-Rae]

and or add your friends to your yahoo/aol/whatever IM list and chat with them that way..



I would imagine its pretty dang hard to implement with our current engine. Considering that Blizz and other top AAA games have NOT done this either. Blizz does have its armory app where you can talk to GUILDIES (not just random people or your friends list) for a fee per month but its not exactly like what you are talking about.

And only Blizz has that. With an engine that allows for ATI updates and such (or whatever those initials are..).

Our engine certainly would not have those capabilities so I imagine it might be next to impossible to do so.

[Steelclaw]

From a technical standpoint, this is possible. There's no question there. I do wonder, however, what goal or purpose a chat-only login would serve, and if serving that purpose is a good idea.

Use of programmer resources aside, does it make sense to allow people to log in for the sole purpose of chat? More specifically, how would chat-only users affect the quality of play on the rest of the shard? One could argue that there would be more people logged in, though the argument could also be made that a greater portion of those people would be lurking or otherwise silent and idle. Incorporeal characters may also have a negative impact on immersion.

Feel free to have some discussion about it. I don't know the full impact of chat-only logins, but I do know that technical and resource hurdles are only part of the things to consider.

[Shian]

Having the ability to log in from work or school comes to mind. Anywhere where you have a computer with less than the minimum amount of graphic card or ram to run the full game. Not to get anyone in trouble or anything, but there are times where I have an hour to kill but only have my laptop with me in a tiny cafe.

I'd love to be able to log in on my laptop and watch Istaria's chat roll by while I work on something else. Running the game -and- photoshop/word just makes my computers protest either in decibles or in heat output so I cannot do it for long.

To be honest, this would have been exceedingly helpful years ago as my in game parents were on opposite sides of the world so getting times where we were all online together was quite the challenge. In game parents was quite important for me. I think that if I didn't have them, I would not have been sucked into the game quite as I did.
I think I had to get up at 4 am for my ascension or something screwy like that... By increasing the number of hours one can log in it is easier to catch those that are caught up in current RPs.
I know Order has a ton of folks that do chat RPs nowadays but I'm not sure how compelling an argument this is for the other servers.

[Teto Frum]

I can't see this having any impact on immersion, plenty of people on Order Ghost RP toons not logged in. It is nothing I'd make use of, but if there are no performance issues from it and VI is willing to spend the resources go for it.