New Chat Site?

[Cystuni]

hello. been RPing here since before TSR moved off AOL onto their own site for chat. since then I've witnessed good RPing, and bad. but NEVER a chat site as bad as this new software. all the functionality is gone, I'd have to redo every single character I have, and that's alot. redo all of their descriptions. the interface isn't nearly as good, and it looks like it was put together by commitee. is there one good reason they are moving the site to this horrible software? if they do, I plan to move all of my characters to another Ichat site. I will NOT use this software and I hope to take as many people as I can with me. if you'll all excuse me now... lets see where else I can post this to get it noticed...

 

[Dontella]

Now.. We all know that I have long been a fan and supporter of Wizards, from the earliest days.

Like others, I have seen AOL. I have seen a change in patterns and attitutdes, TSRO's to WizO's and more..

I can not, in all pure and simple honesty, believe that Wizards of the Coast, and Hasbro, have simply gone so broke, as to be unable to provide roleplayers with a better site.

I am, in all honesty, more than appalled at what I have seen. I promised not to speak out, unless I tried it first.. but I tried it this afternoon.

To begin, login took me a good ten minute to accomplish. My Computer has never been fond of Java. And in all actuality, There are some Operating Systems that do not support Java so well. Windows XP-Pro, really seems to dislike it, they even took Java support out of the browser when it was designed. I had to go and download a seperate client, just to load the chat.

The old commands do not work, having been disabled. While all the rooms are intact, it is harder than ever to change between them.

Currently, you can only log Characters that are registered on the message boards into the chat, so that means if I want to play someone I am not registered as, I basically have to recreate dozens of identities and passwords.

EDIT: There's more it turns out. No longer can we do /describe edit. And when some of us, go to edit our profiles, not only does it now allow us to use the option, it also displays our I.P. Address and information to anyone who happens to be looking at it. And while I tried to change such, and make it private, I was in fact, unable to do so.

So not only is not conducive to roleplaying, it also can provide private information to others. The inability to work the old commands, and the new ability to access personal information... adds yet another factor as to why this new client, should not be adopted.


I'm not saying this, because I dislike Wizards. No. I am saying this, because Wizards has been a place I have come to enjoy a great deal. When this new software takes over... not only will it cause many technical issues, it is going to run off, alot of players.

Truly, can we not find something better? Is this in all honesty, our only option?

 

[Nevine]

Wow..

If there is any chance the move to this new software is not set in stone, please let it be known. I'm going to complain anyway.

I loved two things about the Wizards chat, the people and iChat functionality. I can probably find other places to play with my friends, but there aren't many (if any) rooms that offer the things iChat does. I despise mIRC and java clients, yes they offer pretty colors and alias, but that's about it.

The staff has made wonderful choices in regards to the boards software, however the decision for the chat rooms is a grievous error, I believe. I know it may seem "cool" to link the chats and the boards, it isn't though. Which area gets the most traffic (excluding when there are guest speakers and trivia)? ISRP. I could stand this if there was support for character descriptions, which is a (if not the THE) sacred cow of ISRP and Wizards.com. Without it, there really isn't anything this site offers anymore that can't be had off in mIRC or Java land.

No, sir. I don't like it.

Edit: To clarify, I know the ISRP hosts and management are not at fault and I'm not trying to cruel to you. You do everything you can and I appreciate the environment you work so hard to provide. I suspect you had little, if any, say in this matter. I'm merely expressing my displeasure to be passed along to the people who did have a hand in this brilliant plan.

I hate to bring it up, but if it would matter to these people, you need only remind them of the time when the FFRP section was closed (and being revamped to ISRP). The chat rooms were a ghost town and everyone made a mass exodus to RealCities. It could happen again.

 

[Krystal]

I agree. I had been thinking to hold this off, but I agree with all of you. I love wizards, I always have. Yeah, I've annoyed a few, yeah, I'm sometimes opinionated. But I've never had a happier chat community.

It's horrid. I can't believe how horrid. I do understand that we as users don't pay for this, and wizards has to cut corners somewhere... but egads.

I've mentioned it earlier on the other board: I plan on leaving and going somewhere else when this is made final. I urge all others who feel similar to stand up and say so, too.

 

[GreyFox]

the time has come where we as players may be force off our favorite chat site by the people, the very people, who created it. I for one will not stand to have my IP address plastered all over the internet. for several reasons the most obvious... IT'S MINE. I don't post people's phone numbers on the internet, why are should wizards allow others to see our IP addresses? second, the IP adress is a doorway into my PC and every PC in my house and I cannot abide my it being hacked by every Tom, Dick and Harry on the internet. I know hackers who would come out of retirement for the gold mine of personal info tied to the IP address's they could get from this new site. third, and for those of us in the ISRP aspect, this also should go without saying. I don't want everyone to know every character I play.

plus if I have to insert every character I play, rewrite every description, and try to play on THAT interface, I'd just assume move to groovechat or some other ichat site and play my characters there. I know a couple admins there that like us and I can probably get them to make us a couple nice rooms.

I absolutely hate and I mean HATE having to step OOC out of the kind hearted, gentle guise of GreyFox to say this, but enough is enough.

 

[Babylon]

You know what's sad. For once, I have nothing more to add really. I've been around the block a few dozen times here. My brother's been on site since, I don't even remember when. And he introduced me to a wonderful chat program here. Something I grew to love, and accept as my home away from reality.

Like many others, I have a plethora of characters. And most of them, I didn't sign up for the boards. Because they didn't have a reason to be there. So that's nearly forty or so names that I have solely to RP with, and not touch the boards. My blacksmith certainly never needed a board SN. I don't have the time to sit and make all these character have a name on the boards.

I . . . logged into the new server only once as Babylon. And It only lasted about three seconds before I quit. And, not to toot my own horn, but I have to quote myself on the exit. "/quit This is just . . . ew!"

IRCs can be fine and dandy. For short stints with small groups, one or two people to a room maybe a thirty minute session. But an IRC, Java-based or not, for thousands of people just doesn't work. And I don't just spend my time in ISRP either. I move between ISRP and Live. This was nice and easy to do one iChat. But this new system puts them on separate programs. I compete in the RPGTO every month, and usually place in the top four, hell, I won December '04 under the SN Ann_Aster.

I don't have the time to log out from the ISRP server, and move over to the Live server for an Event. Especially when I don't move until Dabby announces the five-minute mark. And like Dontella said, with a ten minute wait for the applet to load, an applet that most OS's are moving away from would require me to move from ISRP long before the first call. That detracts from me having fun on site. And that's what this was meant to be, fun.

And I have to emphasize the lack of security as well. My computer houses information on it, which I don't need people getting to asides from myself and my partner. And when you run a program that . . . to be generous is a piece of crap to chat on. You really risk that security. I mean, IRC's are not the hardest things to hack. Most of them you can hack through the program itself.

And descriptions as Dontella mentioned . . . To me, a description is a piece of art, an extension of the writer. I enjoy reading good ones. And the artsy ones. The ones that make me wonder, and think. And open my mind to new possibilities. That inspires me to draw that inspire me to improve my own writing to make a better description, which’s something that's important to me. And when I can't know what I'm dealing with . . . How am I to know just what I'm dealing with? Asking the player is fine when you don't understand something, but, when you have everyone without an easy to access dessy, it's just time consuming, and not everyone has all the time in the world to spend asking these people. Some of us are there to RP. I need to have something to quickly view a race. Maybe I'm running a Drow with a penchant for the ruthless slaughter of surface elves (Which I have one, J'ath'laur, whom ironically doesn't have a board SN.) I want to be able to quickly see that, Donny (sorry) is a surface elf. So I can act appropriately towards her character.

Like so many others, I am not moving over to the new server when iChat is taken down. I'm going to lose an important development tool of mine. IRL I'm not a very social person. And my IM contacts can vouch. I can be pushy, and arrogant. I'm the kind of person IRL that you like, or dislike immediately. There isn't an in-between. For me, Wiz was a chance to improve my own RL abilities. If I screwed up with one character, I could change to someone else and try again. That's one of the reason that I'm looking for new sites, and have a few good potentials already.

I guess in a sense, this is a eulogy. My tribute to the death of what used to be one of the best RP sites I've ever seen. It's had its good times, and it's bad. And, I've, to quote R.E.O. Speedwagon, Rolled With the Changes. And at one time I figured I could just keep on rollin'. And for a while I did. But this change became a boulder before my cart. And . . . it stopped. I couldn't roll any further. I found myself confined to one server or the other. And, well, it's time for me to fly.

 

[Jetbomb24]

Look at the bright side; it could be worse... a lot worse

They could have done what Nintendo did; give 2 years of it'll be up soon, including announcements in their magazines, and then replace it with this hunk of junk.

Still, there are worse excuses for interfaces. I think we can grow to get used to it once they finally get it running well and enable a few features. We're still going to have a lot of problems and this excuse for an interface dramatically impacts some key elements of our RPing, though. E-motes... don't get me started on the E-motes.

Yeah, I'm in a relatively good mode because nothing will ever match the extreme betrayal and insanely ineffective group uproar that was Nintendo’s switch. If there's any chance we're going to get a decent chat, we need completely logical and well analyzed arguments (remember to spell check and proof read, get your English teacher to help if needed) [edit: Oh, and the above examples are good, if a bit emotional], a large and organized reaction by the patrons, and suggestions for acceptable alternatives that fit all of the reasons for the original switch. Also remember, the wizos are our friends... take it out on them and you can kiss our chances of making a change and our most powerful allies bye bye.

Oh, one little thing... I'm going to be first out of here if this impacts TMP, but I'm not expecting a walkout to make a major impact. This is something they're providing for free with no direct financial benefit. Unless this makes a huge dent in their product sales, the suits are not going to care.

 

[Bhryn Astairre]

I guess you can sign me on as one of those who'll be jumping the sinking ship once this farce comes into play.

The new chat site is horrible, its going to make lots of lives a total misery and its a shame that they couldn't find a much better alternative to a terrible chat prog than this one.

Like Donny said, those of us who chose XP-Pro for functionality when it comes to certain programmes (although mine currently can't run adobe without coughing and hacking like its coming down with TB -_-) dont have Java installed automatically. I had to find it independantly and the Java isn't easy to be found sometimes.

It loads incredibly slowly, we lack descriptions, we lack a decent interface: in essence, we lack everything that we're going to be losing and it's a crying shame this has to happen.

 

[Tharivious_Meliamne]

As much as I hate to say it, I'll be another leaving the chat-site permanently if this software goes through.

I logged into it two nights ago for all of two minutes, after 10 minutes of load-time and 5 minutes of waiting for Firefox to accept the security authorization for it, and that was about all I could stand.

I believe that iChat is essentially non-supported at this point (I remember hearing such when a certain site-I-shall-not-name was being assembled that iChat was no longer available), but if this is the best alternative, then online chatrooms might as well go the way of the dinosaur. Sure, it looks nice and fancy, but the lost capability of iChat is too high a price to pay for something that HTML coding could very well replicate. Honestly, Freewebs provides better free-chat rooms (which are the only reason I even had Sun Java installed on my Firefox browser to begin with) for their non-paying clients than this ungainly program. Even basic mIRC chat programs are superior to this in my limited experience.

I may not have had a huge presence in the chats over the last year and a half or so, but this software is enough to kill any remaining interest in returning to the site in any real way. All this will serve to do is drive devoted players away from the site that has grown to be loved in spite of its flaws and into other places that are far inferior.

I strongly believe that this change is an error that should be halted before it helps to destroy a long standing community.

Oh, and Jet: I think that this is the long-awaited software that was supposed to be installed when TMP premiered, the same one announced roughly a year and a half ago. So this is a bit similar to your reference.

I agree that we need to find a way to convince this change to be reconsidered before being fully implemented. Personally, I would rather see the iChat program remain in place (even if Firefox can only access it through Java-lite). While it may not have the bells and whistles and shiny new graphics that this suggested platform has, it is somewhat reliable, secure, and familiar to the patrons of this site.

And as for a walkout, that may not have an effect on Wizards of the Coast executives, but they lost much (all) of my business long ago when their products became less and less balanced and more and more expensive. So patronage of the chat-site and message boards is all the time of mine they receive these days.

 

[melynxt]

Not quite sure what's going on, as i've pretty much not rp'ed in months...but from the sounds of it all, it ain't good.

Someone want to bring me up to speed here? I tried logging in with a multitude of characters, and they all went on quite easily. Just trying to figure out what's goin' on >.<