Currently, you can tell whether or not a given player is online by /buddy invite-ing them and seeing what message is returned. If they're offline, you're informed; if they're online, nothing happens until/unless they accept.

As with /msg back in the day, this has been exploited to determine whether given players are online. Please fix so that, as with /msg, there is no response after sending the /buddy invite if the player is offline.

Same with /group and /guild too, seems only /msg was actually "fixed".

How about instead of removing the notification when a player is offline that instead the same notification is given both for when the player is online/offline. This would at least help confirm that the invite was sent to the correct person, which is hard to tell with the proposed OP.

For example
/buddy invite "Dr. Lecter"
-> "Buddy invite to Dr. Lecter sent" (regardless of whether online/offline)

But if the user forgets the quotes:
/buddy invite Dr. Lecter
-> "Buddy invite to Dr. sent"

How about no Meridian?

That would take time to code so expect that "fix" in 2045. This thread isn't about people being wrong, they can work that out in-game usually, because you wont be /buddy invite'ng random people anyway?

For example:

/buddy invite yadaofborg
(yoda's imaginary friend) - did u get that?
(yodaofborg) - no, try again
/biddy invite yodaofborg
*** no such command biddy
/buddy invite yodaofborg
*** You have invited yodaofborg to be your buddy.

See? You are trying to fix problems which are actually human problems which; you cannot. You can just be kind to stupid people. Where as this thread is trying to fix the problem of pre-proposed (by the fact the online list got removed, /msg no longer states if a player is online or not) "no way to tell if someone is online" solution.

AKA - Go make a suggestion thread about your problem meridian. This is a bug and should be fixed.

Currently the commands that work to identify people online or not are

/buddy invite (player)
returns *** (player) is not online/does not exist if offline or does not exist, invites as buddy if they are. (should be silent to the invitee either way)

/group invite (player)
returns *** (player) is not online/does not exist if offline or does not exist, invites to your group if they are. (should be silent to the invitee either way)

/guild invite (player) - probably the least abused one, but still can be
returns *** (player) is not online/does not exist if offline or does not exist, invites to your guild if they are. (should be silent to the invitee either way)

+1 for meridian

Take the suggestions to /3/ you two.

It's a solution to the bug mentioned , what's the problem?