ugh I had this whole thing typed out and lost my connection so I'm going to see if I remember everything again.
First off I have to say that I love this game. I started playing a few days ago and upgraded to a paid subscription last night (and even bought some crowns too) because of how much I liked what I saw during the trial period. The game is a cross between Yu-Gi-Oh! and Harry Potter which is a very unique combo. It reminded me a little bit of what I saw when my nieces would play Toon Town but it wasn't focused to the well under 18 crowd like that was. The thing that reminded me the most of Toon Town was the chat system. You have the simplistic preform phrases that everyone can use and read that is good enough communication for the most part for all players. Then you have the full chat system available to paid members. I like that because you're able to (mostly) communicate more freely with other paying members so your thoughts are crystal clear instead of robotic and "mostly-correct".
There was something that kinda irritated me about the chatting system though...well two things. First thing was that eventhough paying players are allowed to freely type what they want (within the approved words) the non-paying members only see "..." when a paying member doesn't use the preform phrases. If a non-paying member asks if someone wants to do say a dungeon or quest together and a paying member replys back without using the preform phrases all the non-paying member will see is "..." even if the paying member typed out "yes".
Ok the second thing that irritated me about the chatting system was the fact that numbers are banned. Not just the 1234etc numbers but one, two, three, four, etc are banned. I found this out when I was asked if I had any other toons and I went to reply "yeah I have a level 13, 7, and a couple under 5" only to notice what I had actually said was "yeah I have a level ..., ..., and a couple under ..." so I figured that typed numbers were on the ban list and typed "level thirteen, seven, and couple under five" only to see "level ..., ..., and couple under ..." again. First I laughed (I honestly laughed out loud when I saw that the spelled out numbers were banned) then I got really irriatated that I couldn't even communicate something about the game within the game because of restrictions on talking. Then it dawned on me why I would occasionally see people typing stuff like "tree" when they were meaning to say something out. I thought they were just type oh's but now I understand why they did it. I've seen others bypass the filter when they tried to say something was "GArY" and chuckled at it.
I understand that this is a family oriented game marketed towards the under 18, young adult, casual player, housewifes, soccer mom/dad, older players that want to play with the family, and as an alternative to the typical MMO's out there (World of Warcraft, Aion, Warhammer, Guild Wars, etc) for those people who want time away from those typical MMO's (that is what category I fall within).
My suggestion is to remove numbers from the banned list (or add them to the dictionary of pre-approved words) and allow non-paying members to see what the paying members type out. It would make the game a lot more enjoyable for all involved.
Because I've already compared Wizards101 to Toon Town I'll make this other comparison, the chat system for Toon Town was designed as a safeguard because the game was marketed to the well under 18 crowd (more along the lines of ages 5-14) and they wanted a way of safe chatting for its minor players. They found that those safeguards were easily bypassed (passing phone numbers to other players was a huge offence and there was a piece done by a network news show about it) and they still didn't change their chat system because it still prevented younger players from reading stuff they shouldn't be reading. Again I point out that Toon Town and even Wizards101 has chat systems with safeguards in place that are easily bypassed. Both systems protect its minor players from most stuff but overall isn't 100% failsafe.
There are different types of chat. Depending on your account, and how it is setup, one or several of the chat types below may be available to you. The types of chat available to Wizards are:
1. Menu Chat: This is also referred to as "bubble chat". It is completely safe and all players may use the Menu Chat.
To use Menu Chat, simply select the Chat icon from the upper left corner of your screen. A list of categories and words will appear that you can select from that looks like this: 2. Text Chat: This is a form of chat that allows you to communicate with other players by pressing the Enter key and typing words from our dictionary. When you press Enter on your keyboard, you can type words from our Wizard Dictionary, and then hit Enter to say your sentence.
Chat can be seen in two different ways:
1. “Say” – is a kind of chat that anyone in your area can see. These appear as bubbles above your character's head as well as sentences in the Chat Window.
2. “Text” – is person to person chat regardless of where they are in the game (remember: you can only Text to your level of approved chat). You can use this chat with characters that are on your Friends List .
3. 18+ Open Chat 18+ Open Chat allows players a more open communication environment with other 18+ players.
This chat will be filtered for profanity. In this channel, when players type their text they will see 3 colors in the chat window: white means 13+ can see it, yellow means only 18+ can see it, and red is completely filtered.
This chat feature is in response to our community's requests. To ensure the highest level of safety, we have chosen to provide this for our active Subscriber community only.
Please note that this option is off by default, and you must actively select this option under Account Management.
Our terms for in-game communication with other players will remain the same. Violent and abusive behavior, as well as the exchange of personal information is still not acceptable.
Accounts must be verified as 18+ through a valid credit card on file with Wizard101.
If you want the prize, you have to build the ladder rung by rung. There are no shortcuts.
I understand how the different types of chatting work. What my suggestion was is to simply allow the paid member chat (enter chat/text chat/etc) to be available to the free accounts because of how frustrating/annoying it is to constantly see "..." above the heads of people who are in battle with you or walking around the various worlds of Spiral. That suggestion is coming from the perspective of someone who had a free account and constantly saw "..." above people's heads when we were in combat and walking around the Commons and such. I'm sure that while we were in combat they were telling me to attack a certain monster or making some other comment about the fight to me but I was unable to see what they said. And the other suggestion either add typed out numbers (one, two, three, etc) or numerals (12345) in the dictionary of allowed things to say for the reasons I stated in my first post.
i get what you're saying. I also have a suggestion: If you get a gift card or something like that, you can freely turn on chat and keep it as long as you want, even when the card's membership is over. And if you turn it off while the card is worn off, it stays like that until a new card is activted. I mean, I don't want to buy it for typing. I can only get the gift cards.
I've also got a qustion. When you're old enough, (say a 12-year-old started playing, then they were old enough to get chat autuomaticly,) would it just turn on and then you get an e-mail or something??
