I noticed recently that none of my global channels work 100%; general, trade, localdefense, etc. I can log into any of my characters and not see anyone posting but randomly some stuff comes through. No one looks to see what I post.
Done everything remotely possible I can think of to troubleshoot the issue.
Reset UI, reinstalled WoW, ran WoW on another machine completely, left the channels and rejoined them, reset chat, reset my cvars. Absolutely nothing fixes it.
Opened a ticket with support and they closed it asking me to do the above that I already told them I did.
To get some of the more obvious questions out of the way:
where you are trying to access channels like Trade, Services, General? Those are only available in cities. (Edit to clarify I mean the usually more popular city General chat)
what realm/shard do you play on? Some realms are just WAY less chatty than others and also depends on time of day.
Is your account funded or is it a starter account? While you can still chat, there are restrictions for starter accounts.
You see some chat so it’s not completely disabled for you.
General chat channel is global, just for clarity. Every zone just has its own “partition” of it. Cities see about the same amount of General chat use as other zones, so it’s usually pretty dead.
Trade chat, however, is tied to all cities (and sanctuaries, if distinguishable?) at the same time, so that’s the one people use almost exclusively in those areas.
Fair point! I was lumping it into the Trade chats cause those were mentioned but you are definitely correct.
That and I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than a handful of posts in general chat when not tied to a current expansion/main city hah.