/leave trade /leave general
Rant ahead. Unbridled, soul cleansing rant laced with a touch of vitriol and some fairly colorful language. You’ve been warned. Feel free to /leave blog (although I hope you’ll come back! =P ).
I hate trade channel. No. That statement was benign to the point of inaccuracy. I despise it. I loathe it. I find it to be a place of odious, annoying, mind numbing idiocy, immaturity, and verbal assault, a playground for asshats and omadhauns, braggarts and bullies, crackpots and crooks. I leave it off at all times unless there is a very specific and exceedingly strong reason to turn it on, and when it is on I almost always regret it.
I am grateful that one can report spam, abuse, and so forth. Oh, and if you’re on one of my servers and you get reported, chances are high that if I was in the channel, I was doing the reporting. However, the fact that you can report activity doesn’t seem to make the slightest dent in the frequency with which you will encounter it. It is my great wish that Blizzard would institute a policy of banning entire accounts from accessing the trade channel for abusing trade channel and terms of service. Wouldn’t that be lovely? Perhaps there could be a 48 hour warning ban for first time offenders. I don’t have the whole perfect system worked out. But here’s what I know. I do NOT want to see in trade chat the following:
1. abuse of other players. I don’t know what makes you lords of trade chat find yourselves to be so incredibly superior to your fellow players simply because you know an answer to a question they might have, or because you disagree with their opinion, or because you dislike the way they play the game. But, frankly, I have no interest in bearing witness to you puffing yourself up like a rooster on steroids by bashing other players who have the temerity to ask a question. You probably feel quite impressed with yourself and your ability to knock the legs out from under another player, to mock them with how to find an answer when they clearly were unaware of your solution, to do your best to shame them publicly for no apparent reason. Here’s a newsflash for you. When you attack another player’s intelligence or ignorance for the whole world to see, what the world is looking at is how small, how very, very, small and pathetic YOU are.
2. Politics/Religion. Ah, thank you so much Captain Ignorant for filling me in on your views of the current administration and/or state of the world. Even when I agree with you or some aspect of your opinion or the platform about which you seem to know a bare fragment, your representation of the situation embarrasses me to the point of pain. And your stance on world religions, carefully pieced together from half remembered sound bytes of spurious claims made by media whoring talking heads on television or radio shows tap dancing around the line of bare legitimacy? Fascinating. No really. I won’t ask you to expand on your views because a) I know you can’t, and b) can we truly consider these to be your views when they are clearly not views you have actually considered? Certainly you have not arrived at them through careful deliberation but have had them spoon fed to you or delivered into your lap in prepackaged splendor for easy consumption. Save it for your dinner table, your drinking buddies, or your 5th period study hall, mkay?
3. The endless joke string. There may possibly in the stretch of all imagination be some game spell, ability, talent, item, or mechanic that the geniuses of trade chat have not attached to the word “anal” and put up in trade for the sheer hilarity of it, but I am excessively dubious that any stone has been left unturned. I hate to break it to you, but the joke has run its course. Similarly, I don’t want to hear you bounce around Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker 8 gazillion more times. And for God’s sake, give Chuck Norris a rest. Because these jokes obviously continue to keep you amused (as, I suspect, would shiny objects), please feel free to form a private chat channel to discuss them to your heart’s content. But stfu about it in trade, would ya???
4. Hate speech. This is one of the things that bothers me more than anything else about playing WOW. When I see people using public channels as a forum to abuse people of a different race, sexuality, gender, culture, or nationality, not only do I become offended personally, I feel great empathy for anyone who is of the group being attacked. I report this type of behavior every single time I see it, no matter what I am doing. Keep your damn ugliness to yourself, thank you very much, and allow the rest of us human beings to enjoy the community we have built in the game.
5. Sexual content/Profanity. Ok, let’s put it out there. I’m no paragon of virtue and, on occasion, I swear like a drunken sailor. It does not burn a scar into my virtue to see people swearing up a blue streak or questioning someone’s sexual prowess in trade chat. However, I know very well that there are many people who enjoy playing this game with their children, and many kids who play without their parents. When you let fly the explitives, it is of these young members of our community that I think of. In addition, a public form is not a place that I would ever find it appropriate to go off on one of my cursing tears. It is impolite, unnecessary, and immature to use trade chat as a forum to let loose f bombs. Who are you trying to impress? Gather a little decorum about yourself, a little manners. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Of course, as bad as Trade channel is, General chat is, in some ways, much more insidious. In some places (read: Barrens), General chat has a reputation for being about as bad as trade chat, but in my experience General is pretty benign for the most part. Sure, occasionally some pinhead will have some inane or offensive tidbit that he simply must express publicly lest he explode like a festering zit and, realizing he is nowhere near a city, will spew out into General, where it will often be embraced and carried aloft by other douchebags who had no idea how much they missed trade chat until they were hailed by one of their own on General. But for the most part General is a fairly useful place for people to find help or advice with quests or activities specific to that zone. I, myself, join General in Icecrown regularly so that I can find groups for the Argent Tournament Dailies. “LFG Threat/Citadel” ftw!.
So, what is so insidious about General? Well, I’ll tell you. It disguises itself as a good channel. Because it is usually a pretty placid, helpful channel that does not make me want to rip out my hair or tempt me to feed the trolls, I usually turn it on when I need to find a group for my dailies. I then almost always forget to turn it off. Until I raid, of course. Because General chat in raid instances is one of the most annoying things on Earth.
I’ll be minding my own business, working on whatever boss I’m on and keeping an eye on my chat bar when I can spare it, but mostly focusing on health bars and not standing in fire. Suddenly, I will notice from the corner of my eye a great deal of scrolling and activity in my chat window. Curious as to what is going on,I will turn a percentage of my attention to watching the chat window, only to find that the cause for all the hubbub there is that the asshats have remembered that, even in mid raid, they have a public forum! Hooray! They will then embrace every opportunity and means that they can think of to say “look at me, pay attention to me! I’m here! I’m in this raid instance! Aren’t I so cool?” They will then go on to discuss whatever meaningless observation they can think of or manufacture with anyone at all who will bother to discuss it with them until… well, actually I don’t know at what point they stop because the instant I become aware that the idiots are talking in General again, my fingers are flying across my own keyboard, telling my computer to /leave general, leave it, leave it now, for God’s sake right now before there is more, now now, now, now, NOW!
So, to the morons who load up trade and general with the horrendous, the stupid, the innane, the misinformed, the offensive, the prideful, the spiteful, the mean, the bullying, the irritating, I give you a big, fat two thumbs down and /leave trade, /leave general. I wish that there were a better way to get you under control, but until then I am thanking my lucky stars for those two commands. Even though I know that at any given moment the asshats are probably holding sway in these channels somewhere, it is lovely to be able to walk away and enjoy the peace, quiet, and sanity of leaving them behind.
/end rant
There are 13 Comments to "/leave trade /leave general"
/agree
That’s why I use the Chatter addon and manage my chat windows. I make a separate window for things I know for sure that I want to see: Guild, Party, Raid, Battleground, and Twitter (because we keep a twitter channel open). I also add in item/money loot and experience gained so that I can see that as well.
I don’t see what people /say, /yell, /me (or other emotes), no Trade or General Chat, nothing that I haven’t selected before will show up in that screen.
I still have the regular chat window up, so if I need to see something else I can just click over to take a peek and then click right back to looking only at what I want to see.
This saves me the hassle of having to jump back and forth between /join and /leave, and it’s also remaining active at all times so that I know I can check it whenever I need to and I won’t have missed something just because I wasn’t /joined yet when it was said.
Psynister´s last blog ..Druid Leveling: 1-20 (Balance)
I can usually ignore it, because the /1, /2, and /3 color is kept bland and my eyes have been trained to never read it unless I’m actively seeking to peruse it. If it gets spammy from people talking a lot (or spamming silly macros), I switch to a different tab window, like Psynister
What I *would* like to see is a lockdown on the trade channel that will limit what people can type in it, possibly using drop-down boxes. WTB/WTS, and then a space to link an item/profession, and then price (ala AH menu). There could even be a “Seeking Enchanter” to create [select enchantment from dropdown menu], and do the same with the other professions. Portals can be included as well, since they are a service.
LFG, guild recruitment, and general chat can handle everything else, ne?
Hey now, don’t be dissing Mr. Norris. You know he uses Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker to shave right? Well…that being said I also heard that he doesn’t shave, he just sharpens his beard hair. Speaking of beards though, I ALSO heard that he doesn’t have a chin under there, he just has another fist! That reminds me, someone told me that he once kicked a horse in the chin and it’s descendants are now known as GIRAFFES!
I think out of anything it’s the political/religious ignorance and bigotry that gets me the most. They honestly make me embarrassed to be…to just be. To exist. It makes me want to turn to the extra-terrestrial standing next to me and gesture to the human race, saying “I’m not with this crowd.”
lol hummy. amen, mah brothah
I’m probably one of those immature people who love clogging up your trade chat, but at the same time I’m also the one whispering people answers to their questions and debating druid mechanics and stats.
Six of one and half a dozen of another…
@Bell, I don’t mind trade chat being clogged up with productive or interesting conversation. It’s the drivel I talked about in the post that makes me postal. If I ever saw a conversation as interesting as debating druid mechanics and stats in trade I might be more inclined to keep it turned on from time to time. Haven’t seen one like that yet though…
I believe General Chat is city by city. There is no linked general chat or world wide general chat.
Guild recruiting only shows for people who are unguilded unless they opt to join the channel. It’s hard to even figure out what that channel is.
You can’t be in LFG unless you’re searching for a group to join, and LFG has no level based squelch. I hate the endless “looking for more for (some obscure low level instance everyone hates)” noise.
I honestly think part of the problems with trade could be solved if there was a global general chat channel that automatically turned on when people were in cities, could be turned off, or turned on to be always on.
Zandrae´s last blog ..Three things the Alotholic loathes.
Well, gotta admit as a principle, I never limit my use of language depending on the forum I talk on. Like Sylly, I swear on a frequent occasion but I do still find myself reading this article and agreeing with every bit you write; the anal jokes, racists jerks, the mockery and ridicule a player has to endure for daring to ask a question, etc.
It’s a sad state that we find the game, where the chats are so polluted with crap. Although, unlike Sylly, I do not turn these channels off. I still use both channels from time to time but I can just filter it all out when I’m not using it.
The only thing I cannot stand and read, is General inside a raid instance. It used to be beneficial to have; for it was a way for raid groups to share information and exchange tactics, etc. Some even look LFM, for whatever spot that was left empty by a d/c or a member leaving. My first FL kill came about thanks to that feature, but these days I only see people flood it with their sewage.
How they manage it, I have no idea because whenever my guild raids, we are too busy actually raiding to just sit on our asses and talk about Michael Jackson.
Tomi´s last blog ..Argent Daily Guide – Part 2
… and here I was thinking I was the only one!
Trade chat makes me sad. And if you have the time to spam general in a raid, you’re doing it wrong.
One of my favorite phrases I have ever heard uttered in a raid chat was:
“Less blah blah, more pew pew!”
I think that says it all.
As if anyone would ever /leave blog on you!
I agree with you wholeheartedly – trade is a depressing, offensive, annoying and often utterly useless channel that people spam with tedium and obnoxiousness. My first act on arriving anywhere is to turn it off.
I’m sure if the problem is at all solveable though – I mean it is kind of in the nature of MMOs to generate a quantity of dross, is it not? Or I am being horribly cynical? I think perhaps if it wasn’t trade it would be elsewhere.
Tamarind´s last blog ..Now I know why Kael’thas can’t get laid
I haven’t had General, Trade, or Local Defense channels on since a few days after release. It’s bad enough to have people /yelling in cities, I’ve had to turn that off at times. Any public forum, which is what those channels are per se, is going to give a voice to the lowest common denominator.
It’s another reason that if I join LFG, I typically join under the Quest option, and I check for groups looking for healers and then I whisper them after I do an armory check. It’s easier than getting the unannounced invites from random people. I try to keep one “Group” quest in my log, even if it’s a really low lvl quest.
Ysinnia´s last blog ..Random Achievements
I’m with you – I have no fear of reporting people who are abusing trade with offensive commentary/gold selling/etc. I’d turn it off entirely but occasionally it has some usefulness as some hapless soul attempts to use it in the manner for which it was originally intended. (And then I trade – info, goods, skills, etc.) For the most part if I have it on, though, it’s a good excuse for me to dodge out of whatever city I’m in and head for the open hills.
And a good, fist-pumping, shoe-on-the-podium rant is healthy for the soul.
Taz´s last blog ..When Is A Tree Not A Tree?
I also detest this problem, and have created another tab in my chat window called “PNQ” (for peace and quiet) where all the offensive channels and such are turned off. That way I can switch with 1 click back and forth as necessary.
I think there are 2 solutions that Blizz could easily implement here, and I wish they would:
1. It is really easy to right click a name in the chat window and report spam. They should also make it just as easy to report TOS violations with a similar option. They could even go as far as allowing people to mark someone’s conversation as “offtopic” (stuff you don’t want in trade chat for example), but that might be going too far.
2. Now we need a place for people to go and take their chatting. Create a City Chat channel that goes to all cities in the same way that Trade does. Push everyone who is just chatting over to that channel away from Trade. Maybe this is facilitated with selecting text as “offtopic” and using some form of the ban from channel that you mentioned above.
I think if we give chat a place to go, give people the tools to more easily report TOS, and Blizz makes sure to enforce it’s own TOS policies, we could make most everybody pretty happy.