Guild Wars 2

Q. Can anyone think of a reason not add an additional chat channel for commanders of a world, usable from any zone on the server?

Ultimately, WvW is about the coordination of very large groups of people, across as many as four borderland areas, and throughout multiple time zones twenty-four seven.

A fair number of people in the online gaming community use some form of voice chat, since it aids in organization and coordination. Unfortunately, while voice chat is extremely effective for groups of 2 to 25 or so, the nature of audio communication isn’t conducive to scaling on a massive level. 300+ people in the same voice chat would be complete chaos.

It’s very impractical (and often difficult or even impossible) for most people to be on two voice chats at the same time. And since most gaming/guild groups each have their own unique voice chat, (some on vent, some on TS, some on Mumble, others on Google+ Hangouts, etc), it creates a silo effect with multiple groups segregated into their own sphere of communication.

The addition of /wvw chat for commanders would allow server wide organization and cross communication, mitigating the need for an out-of-game communication and coordination solution for the people focused on WvW.

As it stands now, the only in-game means for commanders in different borderlands to communicate with each other is through the /whisper system. Otherwise, commanders have to join a “command” voice channel someplace, which in most cases is mutually exclusive from them being in their normal guild or group voice chat.

An additional problem with the /whisper system, and the chat system over all, is that unlike most other MMOs where you can set a default chat channel, GW2 defaults to whatever chat you used last.

This is compounded by the fact that many voice chat programs default to the left control key for push-to-talk, and GW2 uses left control and mouse click to send a link into the last chat channel you used, regardless of whether you had hit enter to start typing or not.

The end result is usually something ugly like:
To Thor: <Healing Signet>
To Thor: <Healing Signet>
To Thor: <Healing Signet>

Bottom line, I think having an optional server-wide channel for commanders to coordinate would benefit both the game and community. And while they’re at it, I’d love to also see them add a default chat option as well as the ability to unbind left Cont + Mouse Click from automatically dumping what you click on into chat.

-Lensar