Hi All,
I could have just missed it, but if not, can we have some means of sending messages that persist when we or the other party are offline? I.e. email like messaging. It would be helpful with people trying to arrange events, and guilds keeping members appraised of their plans etc.
I know we could just use normal email, but I think it would be nicer (and convenient) to have the feature ingame. What do you all think?

Aye, it has been suggested before. You can leave notes for buddies, and guilds have ways of doing so either in or out of game.

I'd put in in the "one of these days" box...

It seems to me that something like this could be done as a bot. It would likely work in a similar manner to Breazle's VO Bank or whatever he called it.

It would just take a fairly smart person who can code that would consider this a fun or interesting project. We have plenty of the former, but I'm not sure about the latter criteria.

It would be fairly easy to operate....

/msg "Email Bot" "Death Fluffy" You suck.
/msg "Email Bot" msgcheck "Death Fluffy"
Message from Death Fluffy - You suck.

Seriously, one of the things I appreciate most about VO is that players can create tools and resources that enhance the game beyond what the bare bones offer. I miss community projects like Breazle's Slot Bot & VO Bank. I especially miss Nautargous(sp)'s Scar Shop. The fact that you could order something and have it delivered to an out of the way sector was cool as hell.

Using /msg is still limited to ~160 characters (~255 if you don't use the regular chat textbox), although I suppose you could concatenate messages together with a special prefix or something.

Implementation is easy. Getting someone who is viewed as sufficiently trustworthy to run it is less so.

The IRC bot?

Before you implement a mail bot, you need to be careful.

Remember, mining bots went crazy and became hive bots. What would happen if a mail bot decided to ... I don't know, maybe infect other bots by altering your email?

"Before you implement a mail bot, you need to be careful.

Remember, mining bots went crazy and became hive bots. What would happen if a mail bot decided to ... I don't know, maybe infect other bots by altering your email?"

I think this belongs in the RP forum, but I'll play along.

What you would get, if done correctly, is a result that is funny as hell. Especially if the Email Bot 'accidentally' posts the occasional message to 100.

Back to OP:

Implement it using BBS in-game.

Only requires a wap browser added to game UI, a simple lua tab. Remaining logic is server-side, available as free software.

I think any kind of communication between characters that are not online at exactly the same time is completely out of character.

P.S.

kalb: i'll try to see if i can help you kill some vpr this week.
lnh: 10mil please.
wos: 10mil (-please).

...and further more, i am sure any communication system will be spammed.

misty rouge: 10mil (or don't even bother to log on)
star buck: 10mil

etc...

Email spam have been deal properly since a long ago...

Simple separate friend emails from non-friends. Ignored players are also ignored by email.

And this must be limited to subscribing accounts only, for accountability and avoid obvious abuse of temp accounts.