There's so much wrong with Trade Chat it's hard to know where to start.

Trade Chat has deteriorated over the last several months.

At peak hour it’s so full of six-liner PuG advertisements that it’s near impossible to read guild chat: the green text flies past so fast. And the more crowded the channel gets, the more players repeat their own macros over and over again just to try and get some exposure and screen time.

Of all the chat channels, [Trade] is the only one that is broadcast to all the major cities. If you’re standing in Dalaran, and decide to put together a 10 man group for Icecrown Citadel, what’s the best way to advertise and find additional group members?

The answer is not the Raid Finder. It’s Trade chat.

[General] Will only broadcast to other players in Dalaran. The raid members you’re looking for might be visiting the Auction House in Ironforge or Stormwind. Or they might be on bank alts, or other characters in those other cities.

[LookingForGroup] Is a strange one. Theoretically this is where you should advertise your open PuG raid spots. It’s also the channel that players should join when they’re looking for a PuG to join. In the past you would join the Looking For Group tool and automatically gain access to this chat channel. Now, almost nobody does – and I don’t know anyone who uses the Raid Finder. You’re also not going to reach potential players who are logged onto their alts.

[Trade] Will broadcast across all of your faction’s major cities. Surely this channel was designed to allow sellers and buyers to find each other and exchange goods. This is the channel that you could use to find a Mage to teleport you (you could also use General), or where you could find a Tailor, Scribe, Enchanter etc.

[Guild Recruitment] There is actually an additional channel that exists solely for guild leaders and players to find each other. Unfortunately, the only time most players see this channel is when they are not part of a guild at all (the game puts you in there automatically). The reality is that most players don’t leave their guild until they have secured a position in a new guild.

It’s really no surprise that [Trade] is actually used for:

1. PuG leaders seeking additional raid members
2. Guild recruitment
3. Legitimate trade opportunities (professions, want-to-trade, want-to-buy)
4. Conversation

If [General] were changed so that (if you are standing in a major city) it broadcasts to all major cities I think half of the messages currently posted in [Trade] would instead find their way into [General].

But in the meantime we need to deal with [Trade] chat. And the spam. Oh… the spam! Here are some ideas:

1. Turn it off

Consider, for each of your characters, whether you really need to see Trade chat. Are you totally happy in your current guild? When was the last time you joined a PuG raid? Do you respond to players who are seeking someone with your crafting professions? Do you really read the WTT or WTB messages? Or do you ignore them?

Why don’t you turn it off and see if you miss it.

To hide Trade chat right click on your Settings tab above your Chat panel, navigate into your Global Chat Channels and uncheck Trade.

2. Tone it down

For Cassandri, I really don’t need to see anything posted in Trade chat. Curiosity leads me to watch the trade related messages: I like to see what the going rate is for Frostweave Cloth and which players are trying to buy up the same items that I’m trying to buy up – Snowfall Ink, Eternal Life, herbs etc.

You can trick your eyes into treating Trade chat with less attention. Change the colour to something difficult to read, or difficult to see. I like to go with a mid, dull grey and this tends to turn Trade chat into something that blends somewhat with the tiles in Dalaran and Stormwind. The great thing about this method is that linked [achievements] and [items] will still colour up properly and jump out at you but the rest of it will fade away. Less reading and more meaningful information ftw!

3. Don’t yell at me

One of the things that I’ve noticed standing around Dalaran (particularly the crafting section near the Horde bank) is that the Horde on Barthilas also use /yell to spam their macros. I have no idea what they’re advertising, but it’s seeing the same three red lines of Orcish nonsense gets really annoying really fast.

So I switched off the setting which displays Yells in my chat window. Finally! Peace and quiet. You can do the same: right click on the General tab, go to settings, and uncheck the Yell box.

4. Police it

Ok, now we’re getting into more serious coping methods. These are the ones that really will only ever work if many many players on the server take the same route.

Report Spam.

Everytime you see a gold seller, right click their name and Report Spam. Do it many times if you like. Encourage other players in your guild to report them. Gold selling and buying is the reason why players are still getting their accounts hacked, so do your bit to make their life difficult! And never, ever, ever buy gold.

Gold Sellers in Trade chat? Report them.

If a player decides that they just need a little bit of attention and posts the same stupid sentence more than 3 times in a row, Report Spam.

Repeat one line offenders? Report them.

If a player has a LFW or LF macro and repeats it multiple times – even when they are the last person to have posted in Trade chat! – Report Spam.

5. Get Personal

Unfortunately, not matter how many times you Report Spam, Blizzard are slow to catch up and ban the worst spam offenders. The next thing to do is to identify the players who contribute to Trade chat that personally offend or annoy you.

Part of Trade chat is pure chat. Conversational, it probably has absolutely nothing to do with the game at all. There are at least 2 players on Barthilas Alliance who routinely spam the same stupid joke once every few minutes. How they have nothing better to do than stand in a city seeking attention, I don’t know.

Racist, sexist or downright ignorant trolls in Trade chat? Ignore them.

Put these individuals on Ignore! Now!

Anyone who posts offensive, sexists or racist remarks quickly joins my Ignore list.

One player constantly wasting space in Trade chat? Ignore them.

It makes Trade chat much more bearable.

6. Don’t Let Them Win

Now you should be left with a Trade chat that doesn’t make you angry, but still one that is full of 6 line guild recruitment and PuG messages – often typed up in UPPERCASE of course.

You can use the Report Spam for the worst offenders:

1. the PuG Raid Leaders who repeat their advertisement too often
2. the PuG Raid Leaders and Guild Recruiters who consume additional lines or repeat characters to border their message
3. the PuG Raid Leaders and Guild Recruiters who have messages 5 or 6 lines long
4. the PuG Raid Leaders who post their message all in CAPS (uppercase).

PuG Raid Leaders wasting lines and space? Report them.

If you’re not interested in PuGs at all, add the most annoying Raid Leaders to your Ignore List and be spared their terrible advertisements for ever after.

And if you do PuG, you can simply refuse to join PuGs who spam Trade chat. Why don’t you apply a bit of social pressure and whisper the Raid Leaders spamming Trade chat in order to tell them why you didn’t respond to their ad? Perhaps once they realise that they receive a greater response when they post concise and meaningful advertisements they’ll change their ways.

***

We must stay vigilant.

Report Spam whenever you have a free moment or are scanning the Auction House.

Don’t join PuGs that spam or abuse Trade chat.

/Ignore the players that fill Trade chat with useless, meaningless comments and questions day after day.

Enjoy your new, meaningful, Trade chat.

When the silence gets to you...

I once wrote that one of The 15 things You Should Know About the Dungeon Finder was

the less said, the more successful the run will be

Little did I know that would turn out to be the norm, not the exception. I hate that people are too afraid or too lazy to speak up and chat during instance runs these days. I hate that people only talk when something has gone wrong, someone has died, or someone is doing something seriously wrong.

When you run the same dungeons over and over again for a year (and counting) the only things that differentiates one run from the next is the group that you’re with. Some kind of chat also alleviates the boredom of healing. Well it does for me, anyway. I could sit here and complain that nobody talks during my dungeon runs and do nothing to change things. Fortunately, I’m not that kind of girl. There’s really only two ways to start a conversation in my experience. Do something so socially embarrassing that people can’t not say something. Or say something yourself. For the last few weeks I’ve been making a more concerted effort to start a conversation in my dungeon runs. Most of the time I’ll just keep talking (and typing) to myself. But sometimes… it works.

In business networking circles I’m sure they’d say that I was using “icebreakers”. But the word gives me bad vibes so I try not to think of it like that. Here are some things you can say in your next PuG to either:

• (a) Start a conversation
• (b) Change the topic when the conversation goes south
  Note: Any discussion about how bad someone’s gear is or how cool someone’s main is probably bad.

There’s really only the one way to measure success or failure. If you can get just one other person to respond to you in Party chat it’s a success. An Emoted reply does not count as success. Even one response other than “go go go” or “shut up” counts.

Conversation Starters and Rates of Success

1. What are you listening to on iTunes?

I would have thought this would open up all kinds of friendly chat. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy some music to liven up their daily heroic? I consider it mandatory, and even included it as part of my buffing/readycheck mental check list. Prayer of Fortitude? check. Music? check.

However I’ve yet to receive anything but silence to this question. I’ve tried it out about 5 times. In hindsight, I think it might be a bit broad and people are always hesitant to name their favourite band only to find out that other people have never heard of them. I also think a heck of a lot of people like Britney Spears and are too scared to admit it. I’m sure she didn’t sell millions of albums all to one person, but whatever.

Or, perhaps, nobody but me uses iTunes.

*Update* Ooooh I just remembered running into a Rogue by the name of “Octavarium”. I asked him if he chose his name because he likes the Dream Theatre album, and then asked the party to wait while I switched my iTunes playlist. I guess some people have built in conversation starters

2. Poking fun at NPCs or complaining

If you said “Brann is a fuckwit” you might not get a response. But I almost always make some remark about how short Brann is, how he talks too much and how he ought to learn how to run* when I’m in Halls of Stone (ie. every second day). And I always get some kind of reply.

So that one counts as a success. The quality of the reply might be pretty poor and it might not really start an actual conversation. But it’s better than silence, right?

3. Ragging on the 1 DPS that’s outperforming everyone else

See that Warrior in your party pulling 8k DPS? Don’t kiss their feet. Don’t suck up or /bow (that’s plain creepy). Instead try:

“Gee I don’t know. I think we should kick Bladez since they can’t reach 10k. It’s just not good enough for a heroic.”

Even though you might only get a few chuckles and “LOL”s out of your other party members, I like this one because it combines conversation with a compliment cleverly woven right in. So this one counts as a success in my book.

4. Greeting your fellow players with “Morning” or “Afternoon” instead of “hi”

Perhaps this only really works on the Bloodlust battlegroup since we’re a mix of American and Oceanic servers but at any given time chances are someone in your party is actually playing at the complete +12hour opposite time of day to you.

Opening with “Good morning” at 11am in the morning can net you some surprising results. If you’re lucky it can lead into other players disclosing what country they’re playing from. You might even be able to compare latencies (although, as an Aussie I believe you’re generally better off just not knowing).

This one is a bit hit or miss. But it definitely pays off when you come across that rare individual that doesn’t realise the world is round.

5. How much are Dream Shards selling for on your server?

This is my favourite conversation opener. And I’ll ask it the moment someone chooses to “Disenchant” a rare Axe that vendors for 15g. Based on what the 10 or 15 people who have replied so far… nobody has any clue. Most people give reasons like “I use the Shards” or “I give them to my mates” and most common “I dunno”.

Wake up people! Dream Shards on the Barthilas Auction House are 3g 50s. Some of the prices quoted from other servers have put them at 5 to 8 gold. Most blues in dungeons vendor more than 5g and weapons in particular can vendor for over 20g.

Check the vendor price and choose Greed and vendor the valuable drops. Bracers and Gloves are usually the only armor pieces that vendor for 3-5g and should be converted into Dream Shards. If you still want more Dream Shards, just buy them cheap from the Auction House.

This has been my most successful conversation starter because it generally leads to a proper conversation of up to about 6 lines of chat (oh my god!). And its always gotten me some kind of response.

* Apparently, Brann has learned how to run which should speed up the escort part of the Tribunal of Ages in the next patch. Shame that it’s not going to speed up the actual Tribunal of Ages event. When you have to drop totems twice in one instance boss fight – it’s too long.