by Gundreda » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:25 pm
First post to this community *warm wave*, and thankfully on the topic I came to address.
I just recently made a re-appearance in the classic community scene, and became aware of Nostalgius for the first time.
Noting the activity upon logging in, was indeed a very nice experience !
/global and /world channels had plentiful requests and quips going around, and throughout my first session I saw absolutely zero non-english use of those two channels.
Towards a group quest I met a Chinese player (I asked them) and the language barrier was starkly obvious to say the least. But a couple of notes to make of the experience, was that this player made an effort to use very basic English -clearly this was a person who wanted to be in the group and achieve the goal, even assisting me grab a quest item which they didn't need themselves. Overall, that one player ticked all the neccessary boxes and more for being a strong party member. It may not always be that way, owing to some of the more demanding group dynamics in later content. But never the less it's this sort of player interraction which is the very fabric of the game WE ALL have a passion for.
One of the many comments I note about this server, is the sheer awe over the player activity -and popularity attracts more popularity is often the case (as the old saying sorta goes). Deviding the global playerbase, is a valid consideration as that is the staple of how game developers approach the issues of language and system resource.
But the classic scene isn't out to develope a game, it's sole aim is to re-create an experience as accurately as possible. Back in the golden age, encountering European players with very little English command was common place (I loved the Sweeee??? Spam back then) on the EU server Al'Akir, and that never proved to be of major issue. We even had a select group of Chinese students form a notorious PvP guild "East Dragon" which had second to none raid progression (judged on all the epics I saw being used on me).
The point I am getting at, is that I would love to see first considerations falling on how to support our global community in it's infamy, rather than deviding it. The community, from my current perspective, is largely supported by it's sheer size. Tampering with something that seems to be working, seems a poor initiative to take when considering what we love about the current play experience.
One idea, although probably nothing simple to accomplish, is to look at some of the methods of tackling the language barrier. Final Fantasy Online had a "tag" system, where you had a drop-down menu system in the game chat that had basic words which would be automaticly translated to the language of the client receiving it (I've probably butchered that description). It's not practicle (as far as I know) to create an in-game mod for that function. But are there any simple stand-alone programs which can be used alongside your game client, as it is often the case that most (I think) play in windowed mode and have other stuff going on (music, forums or game databases) -the point being that it's not a stretch to entertain a communication system that is housed outside of the game.
This is, of course, my initial thoughts on the topic. Thanks for reading (if you did) and I hope to be on some one's friend list at some time or another *warm smile*
