This game has actually lost features it used to have… like being able to see/be notified when your friends join a game or even being able to see where they are while you are in a game. Can you just re-add /f l and make “in-game character” names so you can whisper (with /w) anyone the same way, use /f m, /f a, be able to see what channels people are in, and etc. It’s the same concept that is used in WoW and can work fine in your Real ID world. You’ve basically removed a big chunk of the community & social aspect that made WC3 so great.
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Those features already exist, they haven’t been removed. with the exception of locating people in chat channels. But if you know someone you can always interact with them via the friend list and direct messages, no need to go searching for them in a chat channel. So while the social features have changed, they can still do most of the same things as before, just in a different way.
The battle.net friend list has taken the place of the game specific one.
The reality is people don’t really use the chat system that much in this day and age, and a feature that made huge sense 20 years ago doesn’t make as much sense as it used to. Thus, the general battle.net social features have been largely replacing the in-game ones. From what i’ve seen the bulk of chat about the game has been occuring on things like Discord and such. Whenever I go on the game (yes, I do actually play the game), I virtually never see anyone chatting.
The only issue I have personally, is the general channel isn’t just one channel anymore, it’s dozens of identically named channels that have a cap of like 30 users. Maybe this is to prevent people from counting the number of people in chat and using this to say “THE GAME IS DEAD” or something. I don’t know!
If there is someone you always want to be able to locate, why not invite them to your clan or join theirs? The clan channel is always accessible no matter where you are in the interface.
Bro this again? You’re still wrong, you can’t see when people are in game lobby or when they join a game… literally the most important feature. You also can’t check these things in lobby yourself because the so called new-age UI is even more limited than before, lol.
Did you ever think that maybe people don’t use the chat system anymore is because… IT’S GONE? They used to use it all the time, I played this every day for years. Even recently in 2019, when they began the start of the downfall and when they sadly remembered WC3 existed so they can eliminate it with modern Blizzard tactics. When they released that first patch for 24 player lobbies, the game was insanely active, everyone was chatting, several clan channels were full or people were typing in general sparingly.
Stop being a drone for Blizzard for one second and just admit to yourself they facilitated the killing and systematic end of this game. They can’t even figure out how to do friends list feature as good as the one 20+ years ago.
It’s not gone… but people stopped using it long before they started moving away from it.
Like I said, people in the gaming world have largely moved to game/platform-independent means of communication. your friend might be gaming on Steam one minute and playing on their PS5 the next, which is why things like Discord became popular.
All they really need to do is add discord rich presence and stuff like that.
However, it seems I made an error. I thought the game did report to battle.net what you were doing in the game, but it seems that it only shows if you’re playing the game or not. You’ll notice for other games it in fact shows other information, like what mode you’re playing, what server you’re on, etc. for other games. Since it doesn’t do this… it should. But on that, I would rather they improve those features over chat because… like I said, people tend to use the gobal battle.net systems and other social media over ingame chat.
I’m not a “drone” for Blizzard. I’ve been banned by them multiple times- mainly for defensive reactions to aggression, and had many posts deleted by salty trolls, so… yeah, I don’t work for them, I’m not being paid, and my opinions are my own. Sorry if you don’t like them, but that’s just how it is.
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Well now we agree, thank you for that. And if I absolutely had to choose, I would want all the basic friend locating features to work properly, like they still do in Starcaft, as well. Imo, we shouldn’t have to choose though, the chat could also be a fun place again but I see your point. If they had some type of Discord integration/partnership that would be the best of both worlds. Have they ever worked with discord in that way, though? I know they’ve done it with Twitch quite a bit.
I didn’t stop using it. I logged in onto the old Frozen Throne system in 2017, and in 2018, and in 2019.
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Before the rest of this post, I feel it’s important to emphasize that I’m not saying they shouldn’t improve the chat system- I’m only telling you why it’s not likely to happen.
Logging on to the game is not equal to participating in chat. I logged into the game in those years too, and never chatted outside of a custom game lobby or in-game itself (i.e., not in the general chat or any other non lobby chat channel) Why? Well in part because I don’t have many friends who play this game, but even the ones that do, we’d simply ping eachother in Discord before ever opening the game and be like “hey wanna play?” which pretty much negates any need to use the ingame chat system outside of an actual map.
Like I said, the existence of other platforms meant Blizzard felt they didn’t need a fancy robust chat system for most of their games, which don’t have custom channels and the features you might want alongside them (except clans in WoW), and all mainly use the same centralized non-game-specific friend system instead.