1 Chat Channel Limitation.....why?

This is absolutely ridiculous.  What is reasoning behind this?   One of biggest reason for allowing multiple tabs is to filter out channels you might look at when you're available (i.e - guild chat)  or if you're in a party, switch to your 'party' tab to filter excess noise.....

Because that is the way they set it up and yes we all know HOW EASY IT IS TO JUST FIX IT, lol, guess you are not old enough to remember when we did not have Chat and why after all these YEARS and YEARS is this all of a sudden a problem.

Are you using the EC?  Because you can do it using the chat filters.

Drago said:

This is absolutely ridiculous.  What is reasoning behind this?   One of biggest reason for allowing multiple tabs is to filter out channels you might look at when you're available (i.e - guild chat)  or if you're in a party, switch to your 'party' tab to filter excess noise.....

Assuming that you mean why are you restricted to just 'Help' channel as opposed to Gen Chat etc since you are talking about filtering excess noise??

That's because you are playing an EJ account. Start paying the subscription and you get to join whatever chat channel you'd like. Shouldn't be a surprise that free accounts don't get all the benefits of a paid account; otherwise what is the point to pay a subscription?

@keven2002 you are forgetting that only paid accounts may post the forum.

Currently, we can only join one 'public' channel at the same time. General, Help, etc.

EJ is the only realistic way UO has of ever getting new players, no matter how slim that possibility is. Maybe there are a billion EJ accounts made by existing players, but SOME are legit people looking for a new experience. And UO needs every last one of them that the game can get.

UO is not user friendly - new players need help. There will be some dedicated folks who will switch to Help channel and miss out on General Chat, or maybe have a 2nd account somewhere to keep an eye on Help channel, but overall the potential help a truly new/returning player might get has just been drastically reduced.

That rare new player stuck in Help channel, without subscribed players having the option to join BOTH General AND Help channels to see them, will be met with a massive wall of silence. To them, this game will appear far more lifeless than it actually is. While UO is not as vibrant as it once was, Sosaria is still alive and kicking. My personal opinion is that this change, for the sake of a bit of spam, cannot be good for the overall future of UO unless subscribed players are given the ability to join BOTH channels at the same time.

I am not saying it would be easy, but it needs to be done.

Or the OP could be pissed that his paid account is the only account that can us Gen Chat and all his other XXX EJ Accounts can not.

Tanager said:

Currently, we can only join one 'public' channel at the same time. General, Help, etc.

EJ is the only realistic way UO has of ever getting new players, no matter how slim that possibility is. Maybe there are a billion EJ accounts made by existing players, but SOME are legit people looking for a new experience. And UO needs every last one of them that the game can get.

UO is not user friendly - new players need help. There will be some dedicated folks who will switch to Help channel and miss out on General Chat, or maybe have a 2nd account somewhere to keep an eye on Help channel, but overall the potential help a truly new/returning player might get has just been drastically reduced.

That rare new player stuck in Help channel, without subscribed players having the option to join BOTH General AND Help channels to see them, will be met with a massive wall of silence. To them, this game will appear far more lifeless than it actually is. While UO is not as vibrant as it once was, Sosaria is still alive and kicking. My personal opinion is that this change, for the sake of a bit of spam, cannot be good for the overall future of UO unless subscribed players are given the ability to join BOTH channels at the same time.

I am not saying it would be easy, but it needs to be done.

Did you ever make a Trial Account that was only good for 14 days?  They were way more restricted than the EJ Accounts and they were only allowed in Help so why is this now a problem with EJ Accounts when for years and years this was the norm.  It would have been so much better if UO would have just removed the 14 day part of the Trial Account and brought back the 30 day Welcome Back in the month of Dec and been done with it.  IMHO we would not be having as many Multi-Boxing going on with throw away EJ Accounts.

Years and years ago, this game had a much larger population. An 'active' shard, even Atlantic, can result in a new/returning player going days without coming across another player. What was true a decade ago simply does not apply now. The Welcome Back program was of no use to new players.

And, despite what people say, Sosaria DOES get new/returning players every now and then. The odds of keeping them are extremely low for a variety of reasons. Community-oriented people being able to join General and Help at the same time would increase those odds. Not a lot, granted. But I'm an optimist.

I will admit that it would be nice to be able to keep an eye out for new players needing help without losing touch with the general activity of the shard. 

LOL Engages gray matter
Trial Account for NEW player
Welcome back for VETs that want to see what has changed and have access to ALL CHARs and ALL BANK storage, no one said welcome was for NEW PLAYERs.
EJ Accounts are not creating new player accounts they are being abused buy (not all) current players, VS is so much better even on ATL after they were banned from Gen Chat so now tell us how great EJ Accounts are and that they were not being used to shut down VS and OMG the lack of RMT sellers in Gen Chat is so refreshing but I guess if you are for that then the question is why.

Bilbo said:

 It would have been so much better if UO would have just removed the 14 day part of the Trial Account and brought back the 30 day Welcome Back in the month of Dec and been done with it.  IMHO we would not be having as many Multi-Boxing going on with throw away EJ Accounts.

My apologies. This appeared to mean that you were suggesting the 14 day free trial be replaced by the Return to Brit program. Which would completely rule out new players. There is no need to insult my grey matter.

As for your insistence that I (or anyone in this thread) is asking for EJ to be in General Chat - you are mistaken. I am asking that I, and other people who want to help new players, be permitted to join Help channel without sacrificing General Chat.

YOU and people like you would not be effected in any way whatsoever. So why must you rail against it?

I still do not understand what the OP is asking or telling us.

Do they not know you can see your Chat, Guild Chat, Alliance Chat, and Party chat?

Or do they not want to see all of them?  If Chat is to busy, change channels while you talk in Party or Guild Chat.

The title seems to fit them only being able to go into one channel because they have an EJ account, or they do not know you can choose a channel if not EJ.

This is the only 'chat' that has a limit of 1. Subscribed or EJ, we can only join ONE of these channels at the same time. I can't think what else the OP might be talking about.

The challenge here is not seeing the messages, but how you respond to a specific one when they all use the same prefix to type in chat...

It would require a pretty extensive revamp. There would have to be channel numbers, usually done in the order that the player joins the channels. The chat commands would need to be redone so that it's something like /1 or /2 instead of just , . The return chat would have to display something like (1) [character ID number] text. It would be expected that each channel could be assigned its own color just like the other channels.

Most people seem to either outright oppose EJ getting ANY kind of help or encouragement, or do not care enough get involved. So... even if having a multichannel chat was possible, I would not expect our tiny dev team to justify spending the resources on something that only a relatively small percent of the community want.

Never hurts to ask though...

This is how I distinguish channels in EC. I believe CC can do the same thing, unless you are using the 'legible text' option. 

Bilbo said:

Tanager said:

Currently, we can only join one 'public' channel at the same time. General, Help, etc.

EJ is the only realistic way UO has of ever getting new players, no matter how slim that possibility is. Maybe there are a billion EJ accounts made by existing players, but SOME are legit people looking for a new experience. And UO needs every last one of them that the game can get.

UO is not user friendly - new players need help. There will be some dedicated folks who will switch to Help channel and miss out on General Chat, or maybe have a 2nd account somewhere to keep an eye on Help channel, but overall the potential help a truly new/returning player might get has just been drastically reduced.

That rare new player stuck in Help channel, without subscribed players having the option to join BOTH General AND Help channels to see them, will be met with a massive wall of silence. To them, this game will appear far more lifeless than it actually is. While UO is not as vibrant as it once was, Sosaria is still alive and kicking. My personal opinion is that this change, for the sake of a bit of spam, cannot be good for the overall future of UO unless subscribed players are given the ability to join BOTH channels at the same time.

I am not saying it would be easy, but it needs to be done.

Did you ever make a Trial Account that was only good for 14 days?  They were way more restricted than the EJ Accounts and they were only allowed in Help so why is this now a problem with EJ Accounts when for years and years this was the norm.  It would have been so much better if UO would have just removed the 14 day part of the Trial Account and brought back the 30 day Welcome Back in the month of Dec and been done with it.  IMHO we would not be having as many Multi-Boxing going on with throw away EJ Accounts.

 I agree I bet there way more people just using EJ accounts for throw away account or support accounts than people actually playing them.

Drago said:

This is absolutely ridiculous.  What is reasoning behind this?   One of biggest reason for allowing multiple tabs is to filter out channels you might look at when you're available (i.e - guild chat)  or if you're in a party, switch to your 'party' tab to filter excess noise.....

CC should get multi-channel chat like EC, whether for help, events, whatever. There should not be a need to explain why, e.g. bring in complexity of new players etc.

Easy fix, delete global chat.

The original post could have been articulated better. Everyone seems to have assumed that they were complaining about the new EJ restriction. Since EJ cannot post on official forums, I instead assumed they were talking about the limit on joining one channel at a time *period*. I did not feel a need to repeat the question, and instead laid out my reasoning as to why I agreed. They clearly use EC, they clearly know how to use the tabs, so I felt no need to touch on that.

For ME this 'conversation' was about convincing the Dev team to look into revamping the chat system to allow multiple channels. Doing so would entail work, and I felt there would need to be good reasons to justify the effort. Getting and keeping new/returning players is a passion of mine because I want UO to live longer. I voiced my opinion. I sincerely wish everyone was capable of expressing their opinions without insulting others. This forum would be more productive.

@Seth EC does not have multichannel chat any more than CC does.

@Tanager where as for me this conservation is about tabs that are specific to guild or party chats because those were mentioned in the OP.

 Drago said:

This is absolutely ridiculous.  What is reasoning behind this?   One of biggest reason for allowing multiple tabs is to filter out channels you might look at when you're available (i.e - guild chat)  or if you're in a party, switch to your 'party' tab to filter excess noise.....

The OP seemed (to me) to understand that EC has multiple tabs, and that you can switch to them as you wish to filter out channels. I honestly do not see a question about them from the OP. The only question I personally saw was about the limit on the number of chat channels. The only chat channels that have a limit are the public channels. (except Say.) I just assumed they went on about the tabs because UO's chat system does not indicate which channel is speaking and so they used tabs to tell the difference between, for example, General or Help (if one could join both).

I dunno, my brain is wired differently than 99% of people it seems, and I just see things differently.

It would be good if you could be in general chat but can also help people out in the help chat without having to choose one or the other. Yes. 

Lord_Frodo said:

Because that is the way they set it up and yes we all know HOW EASY IT IS TO JUST FIX IT, lol, guess you are not old enough to remember when we did not have Chat and why after all these YEARS and YEARS is this all of a sudden a problem.

I played in 97.  Times change so stop bringing up the past.  The game has evolved since then.

Tanager said:

@ Seth EC does not have multichannel chat any more than CC does.

League of legends had a similar chat system a few years back, they deleted it for the exact same problems, they were filled with spamming bots and almost no channels were being used for intended purposes. They moved to an official community discord that can easily be moderated by volunteers. It’s FREE and theirs currently has over 100k members, all helping each other to find groups, technical support ect. Take a page from a winning playbook for once.