World of Warcraft is an MMO. To date, probably the greatest MMO. But sometimes I really don’t feel like playing in the Massive Multi-player aspect of the game. Sometimes I want to simply log in, do a project or two and then log out. I don’t want to see guild chat, I don’t want my friend to ask me what I did last night (raided….duh), and I don’t want some random guy I might have run a horrible heroic instance with months ago to ask if I want to go do it again (you sucked dude…my boot costs more to repair then your entire set). Blizzard, give us a REAL DND mode.
There is currently a Do not Disturb mode (DND) but all it is is simply another status move like /AFK. It might reply back to a /whisper with some /DND message but I’m pretty sure it simply just tacks on the <DND> status to your name. I want not to be disturbed…I want no whispers…I want no chat. DON’T BOTHER ME. I don’t want to be even SEEN. Don’t even let people know I’m on. If I want to log in and check my mail or browse the Auction House…I should be able to do that under the radar. Seriously…why don’t we have a DND check box on the character selection screen which logs us into the game in some sort of “ghost mode”.
This mode should obviously have its limits.
- No chat. This is a true DND mode. Both ways, You can’t chat with me and I can’t chat with you. NPC interaction only.
- No travel outside of cities. I don’t want to complicate things by allowing questing. People would think its weird seeing a mob keel over dead because a DND ghost killed it.
- I suppose its possible to make this happen but I doubt Blizzard wants to create a “personal instanced zone” for every player in the game. That’s too much against the MMO aspect
- No avatar. I want to be invisible. If I’m skipping out on a raid and I’m caught hanging around the mailbox….fail. Simply create a instance for every major city and make every player invisible to each other in that instance.
On the flip side…this will empty out alot of the cities…much like when you walked through the Org ghost town the first couple days after TBC or WotLK released. There is a lot of loitering around and they do add a bit of ambiance to the cities much like NPCs that do nothing but walk around and spout out canned messages. That’s not to say you can’t still go there in the live mode and stand around…but I would suspect that if you added a DND mode….probably 30% of those people would use it all the time. Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing…I’m not sure. Other then that…I don’t really see a down side.
I’d like to see something like this put in place but sadly I’m sure Blizzard has already done the calculations on it. Player complaint’s equal X. Level of programming effort equals Y. If X<Y then do nothing and mention “it is being considered but no news yet on when it might find its way into a patch”. Anyways…its What Blizzard Should Do.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I second, third, and fourth this idea.
I would love the ability to log in as "invisible" like you can on different instant messengers. There are times where I'd like to log in and NOT have to fiddle with guild stuff immediately or when I'm really cranky, I don't want to type nice "hi!" messages to people.
Then again, Blizz might consider this against the spirit of the game and hence forth ban any players involved in such discussions . . . you know, I'm just sayin . . .
Personally I find the chat stuff easy to ignore and you can easily put up an /afk flag if you don't want to be disturbed. As for being invisible… strange request
I can't say I've ever had that my urge myself. I usually find that I'm bored of soloing alone and I want to find people to play with!
Well I wouldn't want to extend this out for questing. I don't think WoW should be single player…
Sometimes I just want some privacy though.
EQ (showing my age I am) had an /anon status, which would remove you from all of the status and search functions.
NO /tells, no /who, didn't trigger "Bob has come online" messages and you wouldn't appear on any of the client side stuff as online or in zone. Really nice for lunchtime or short sessions…I always flagged /anon before I camped so I could CHOOSE to be social when next I logged in.
I often miss it in WoW…
Never played more then 2-3h of EQ but thats pretty much what I'm going for here. Times when I want to pop on and pop off. I don't want to be social and I don't want to have to explain "I don't plan on being on very long" to anyone.
It's sad because i've made alts just to play on a toon where no one knows me. the problem is you end up with too many alts avoding people on all of your multiple personalities,
sometimes i wish there wasa DND mode that just would allow me to play in peace – something that WOULD allow me to quest or run an instance, but would block out either all people or at least those that are not in my party. Because sometimes – all I'm trying to do is run a quick heroic or finish a couple of dailies, and I get whispers from friends or acquaintances and they just cannot seem to understand that I'm trying to do something and take a hint to leave me alone for a bit. I'd I've discovered that I just don't have it in me to be rude to them and tell them – would you leave me the f alone for the next half an hour? I'm trying to play and you splitting up my concentration is turning a quick enjoyable run/quest into a never ending drag, because I have to not only actually read what you're typing, I have to stop and type back. which means that because my play time is limited, what you just did is remove an opportunity to do what I wanted to do in the game when I logged in in a first place.
/deep breath
I'm somewhat in a situation that howard described. Unfortunately – I actually enjoy playing all my alts and being unable to log in on some of them at certain times because I know I will get sucked into a conversation instead of having an opportunity to, for example, finish that interesting quest chain I've been following, is very frustrating.