Announcement Channels

[Jezebelle]

This is something I've been thinking about since that "dimensional balance" thread came up and some RK2 players told me they would attend more shows if they knew about them, but they don't stay tuned in all the time and never expect GSP shows to be on their dimension. I think Twitter is helping with that, but some people just hate the idea of Twitter or don't want to be distracted with all their other tweets while they're playing or whatever. Something that could serve the same function within AO's own messaging system would be better.

I researched the AO messages and channels and some bot and botnet functions and asked support@anarchy-online.com if I was missing anything. They said I wasn't and would pass the idea along as a new function suggestion. So here's the idea. Maybe if we can refine it a bit and show that enough people from other orgs are interested in it for other purposes as well, they might be more inclined to implement it.

Basically it's a semi-private channel. Anyone can subscribe to it like a public channel, but talking on that channel is limited to the character or organization that owns it. Gridstream could use this to announce the start and end of each show to anyone who is subscribed, without having to send them each an individual /tell.

If the channel had a settable "greeting" message sent upon subscription or login, that could be used to let people know about the current show when they log in, without relying on them remembering to check or having a bot watch for them on a friend list and send /tells.

Alternatively, or as an optional setting, the "greeting" message could be the most recent announcement.

With just those simple functions, this system would provide a bandwidth-conservative method of keeping players informed of the in-game events they're interested in without creating another venue for spam.

I would recommend making the channel names based on the player or org's name, possibly with a suffix for subtopics. The GSP one might be "GridStream Productions - Announcements" and that would likely be enough. Services like RK2's Neutnet on the other hand, if they were to switch over to this system for more efficient messaging with fewer networked bot characters, would probably want "Neutnet - General", "Neutnet - PvP", "Neutnet - Shopping", etc.

So, what do you think? Would that be useful? Who else would use it, and for what? Are there other functions or options or details that would make it more useful?

[Sprkly]

I am completely on board with that idea. I love it. I'm sure there could be other uses for it aside from just GridStream, but can't think of any off the top of my head... I'll have to get back to you on that.

[Faithy]

Wow.. Awesome idea, Jezebelle!

[audrima]

jezy... that..just...ROCKS!!!!! your the queen of ideas *nuzzles huggles* you rock

I like it to be org based myself that would be much better to setup and no so many clones and garbage ones like "selling ao cred-$$$$" one has to be the org


Mariah

[Jezebelle]

It wouldn't do the credits-4-cash spammers any good because you'd have to voluntarily subscribe to the channel. It's not subscribed by default like OOC or Shopping. Sure, they could make their own channels, but then they'd have to trick people into subscribing and staying subscribed, which is just more work for them with no advantage. With opt-in channels that have an easy opt-out too, all managed server-side, and messages only coming from the owner(s) of the channel, spam just wouldn't be an issue.

It wouldn't help clean spam out of the general broadcast channels, but if you put channels like this in a separate window or made them a different color, you'd be pretty sure not to miss the stuff you want to see in a flood of stuff you don't.

[edit]I've posted this to AOFroobs.com as well, to get input from a larger audience that would more likely have different uses for it. I can't post on the Funcom forums, but if someone with a paid account wants to copy-paste the original post there or just post a link to it, please do.[/edit]

[BlackMaz3]

What can I say but: Great idea!