General Chat Discovery
iTZKooPA on Friday, November 14, 2008 - 28 Comments Tags: Priest, expansion, general chat, grinding, leveling, trade chat, useless feature, we were who we thought they were, wrath, wrath of the lich king 
Thanks WSU.edu and Mark J. Berry
Trade Chat and General Chat are certainly odd beasts. I consider Trade Chat to be one of the most mistreated features in World of Warcraft, as it is hardly ever used for its purpose, facilitating the buying and selling of goods. More often than not I simply ignore the channel all together in an attempt to save my intelligence and sanity.
General Chat, well, that can be forgiven for its missteps into the immature comments or pointless rants. As I roam around Azeroth grinding away at one thing, or the other, I tend to watch General Chat very closely. My eyes will tune into that block of text in the lower left of my screen out of sheer boredom, hoping that a fun or exciting discussion is going on. General Chat's conversation, nine times out of ten, will be a LFG message, a looking for this or that question, or someone begging to be saved from a camper. Yet, like Pavlov's dog, I always come back for more.
While conversing in general, I try to be as helpful as possible. That can get me in trouble though. Help one newbie and you run the risk of them chatting you up for small facts or discoveries till the end of time. Worse still, other newbies bugging you. But, when you are bored, you are bored and I don't mind the distraction.
While on my Priest the other night I found that needle in the haystack gem. I was joking around in GC in Terokkar Forest when I noticed a name I recognized – although slightly modified with an accent - from my former hardcore raiding guild. After feeling each other out to see if they were who we thought they were, we each found a new addition to our 5-man instancing group for Wrath. Score! The only drawback, it seems that they decided which character I will be leveling first for me, the Priest.
What role do you play in General Chat? The helper? Wiseass? Know it all? Annoying person with tons of questions? Player with numerous ASCII macros? Ever get anything positive out of it?
Reader Comments (28)
I have to admit I love helping. Maybe its because I remember how hard it was to level my character at the beginning and I feel better knowing I helped make it easier for someone else who needs it. If it is someone begging for items, then no, I don't always give them items because its better for them in the long run to learn how to make a profit enough to buy their own items, since a lot of the time if you give too much help they will never be able to fend for themselves when they finally reach level 70. It would be no different than that person having bought the character. In a way a character is like a child, give it bonuses when its good, but don't coddle them or they are liable to get themselves and everyone else killed in the first instance they decide to do without you there with them... well that was more than I planned on saying, but I guess I needed to vent. Thanks for the blog.
I usally just help people who ask qustions, and i dont spare on the smileys when i do it. ;) I also like to just sit back and watch how some people is complete idiots xD
To be honest I never join the Trade chat because I dont know how to join in the first place... Yes I feel like a noob at this point.
But when it comes to general I usually reply to random yells just to throw out of topic and see how other people would respond. But when it comes to LFG in general chat I tend to ignore it now especially if it is looking for DPS because I only have time to do quest if I want to ding to 80 ASAP. This also cause me to choose whether to help my fellow guilds or ignore them so I can lvl to 80. I like to help people but sometimes you have to help yourself before helping others.