Break out chat and battle spam into separate windows. The reason I play these kinds of games is for the social element. But when half the dialogue people send me gets lost in a barrage combat messages, I find it difficult to carry on even a simple conversation. Take a look at DAoC’s chat interface. It’s great, chat and emotes are neatly divided from combat and system messages in scalable, independently scrolling windows. It’s just too convenient to not want.

Now before anyone says, “That’d be nice, but it might be too hard to code,” (Someone always seems to say that about my ideas <shrug>) let me say I’ve been doing database design and coding for well over a decade. Unless they did something REALLY stupid in their design it should not be difficult. So, don’t bother nay-saying it on those grounds. (Well, if you’re a Funcom rep you can. Then I’ll point, laugh, and send you my resume.)

So, anyone else think this would be a good idea?