Forums » Suggestions

AIM Chat support in-game

May 23, 2005 MightyPenguin link
I think it would be very helpful to have AIM tied into the in-game chat interface. That way, if you play for hours on end, you can easily keep up with all your friends, both in and out of game. It would be fairly easy to then be able to chat with friends privately in and out of game. Using the libs from gaim this shouldn't be too hard to integrate and you can then have access to not only AIM, but also to MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, etc.

The easier it is to be social and keep up with friends in a game the more successful it will be.

The ultimate would be in game video chat with some small 2in window on the bottom right of the screen, or ultimately, a whole row of 2in windows across the bottom of the screen if you're in conference mode or switching conversations. I think with all of the above features you'd blow away every other MMORPG out there and aquire and hold on to 100s of thousands of subscriptions.
May 23, 2005 CrippledPidgeon link
well there's already an IRC bot...
May 23, 2005 who? me? link
"... and aquire and hold on to 100s of thousands of subscriptions."

and use more bandwith than all the other mmorpg's combined
May 23, 2005 momerath42 link
As I understand MightyPenguin's suggestion, it wouldn't use any of Guild's bandwidth. On the other hand, several video chats obviously would be taxing on the client's connection and could easily result in an unplayable game. I don't imagine it would be too difficult to integrate GAIM's functionality, but I can't say that I agree that it would "blow away every other MMO..." It would be neat, and might encourage people to stay logged in, but the game needs more actual game-stuff before something like this.
May 23, 2005 Harry Seldon link
Also, if you run it in windowed mode, you can do this without any additional work by the devs.

The ability to integrate AIM into VO does not result in a better end product. VO should not be a glorified chat interface. People who want to chat with their friends can do so out of game, or in windowed mode. Immersion is an important aspect, and this in fact gets rid of that, which I believe would make VO *worse* overall.
May 24, 2005 Demonen link
Hmm...

"Demonen" has an MSN account.
"Zathras" does not.

I try to stay in-character as much as I can to help what little immersion there is, and MSN is not gonna help that.