Alt-Friendly Chat Channel

[Dynistar]

I feel a little odd posting a suggestion so soon, but someone said I should toss out this idea. So, here goes!

I know some members (such as myself) have a variety of alts scattered amongst a variety of different kins for whatever reasons. In my case, I have many alts on kins with RL friends for social reasons, but those kins aren't very active in game content, and I came to ASF looking for new grouping and cooperative opportunities. (Happily, I seem to have found them!)

It would be very helpful to me to be able to stay easily in touch with the kin when running on one of my alts, whether so I could give help when it's needed or so I could ask a question, or whatever else. I think a channel would be very useful for that.

Would anyone else find this helpful?

[Taisie]

You can join the leithrim channel. Some of us peeps in asf still use it, not sure how many. Its /joinchannel leithrim friend (spelled right?) I always get leithrim spelled a bit off. Its an old alliance channel, not sure how many still use it.

[Feachador]

heh, so THAT'S where that came from! now I remember. Was looking at my chat channels, and saw that one, and couldn't remember for the life of me why I had added it.

Guess I need to add it back.

[Dynistar]

That sounds great! My only wonder is, do people really still use it? If it's a good way to keep in touch with the kin, I will happily add it. (Heck, I'll add it anyway, just in case!)

[Enna AS]

Dynrandir wrote:

I feel a little odd posting a suggestion so soon, but someone said I should toss out this idea. So, here goes! I know some members (such as myself) have a variety of alts scattered amongst a variety of different kins for whatever reasons. In my case, I have many alts on kins with RL friends for social reasons, but those kins aren't very active in game content, and I came to ASF looking for new grouping and cooperative opportunities. (Happily, I seem to have found them!) It would be very helpful to me to be able to stay easily in touch with the kin when running on one of my alts, whether so I could give help when it's needed or so I could ask a question, or whatever else. I think a channel would be very useful for that. Would anyone else find this helpful?

I don't really have a polite way to say this, and as you'll find out I'm pretty direct, so please don't take this personally or directed soley at you....

I am not a fan of an alt channel. I will bring it up again in our next Officer meeting and we will address it again, but I will not be an advocate of it. While I appreciate the offer, I'm opposed to it because I do not like the idea of members of ASF helping an alt in another kin - even if that alt has a toon in ASF. I kinda feel like our members are being used. While I appreciate where you're coming from - alts in a friends kin - I don't appreciate utilizing ASF for the purposes of benefiting a toon that is not in ASF. While this may seem selfish to some, remember, there are many many members in ASF in which they have NO alts in other kins. They've dedicated themselves to ASF and I won't let them be taken advantage of - which is how I see it.

I'm also open minded, so if you think you can change my mind, please... I'm happy to read your responses. Keep in mind that just because I feel this way doesn't mean ALL my officers feel this way. We will have a vote on it. Additionally, I'm no tyrant and what you do on your own I can do nothing about, nor would I try.

Trin

[rolandarcturus]

I'd say I'm pretty much in line with trin here. All my characters are ASF and always will be. I don't mind helping non-ASF people out, but I (like many of the other long term players and members) have certain things I will only do for an in kin toon. I can justify a great deal of help towards kinnies that I would never do for a non-kinnie without some upside for myself. So having a channel like this, if it were consistently used for things like crafting requests, help that takes me far afield of what I am doing, or a begging mechanic, I might get a bit miffed. I am sorry to say this, but I do not have the time or patience to memorize who on the channel is an alt of someone in our kin. So any request coming from said channel would most likely get only a slightly higher priority level than something interesting that I see is the lff or glff channel.

However, if it were to be used strictly as a communication tool, I might be ok with that. That is to say that it would be used strictly for witty banter and to help fill out the last spot or two in a raid, then cool.

[Feachador]

Just playing Devil's advocate for a second, I have 3 characters in the kin (my higher level ones - Volo, Lesti, and Minnel) I have a few that aren't in the kin. Granted, they're not in *any* kin; I don't feel like I play them enough for that. (To be fair, they WERE in ASF, but when Trace and I took a break a few months back, they were dropped for being offline for too long. Since we started playing again, I haven't really bothered to get them back in. I just don't play them enough.)

That being said, I do play them sometimes, if only to shuffle stuff around a bit, or to make some food or something on one of them. If there was a slightly less formal connection to the kin (like an alt channel) I would probably use it on these characters. I mean, I don't want to go through the bother of re-adding 4 or 5 toons I'm on only once every week or two, but if there was some sort of communication with the rest of the kin I'd be happy to have it.

Alternatively, I have a friend in this kin, and I know he's got characters in at least 2 other kins. One is a strict roleplaying kin, the other is a kin that he joined because his RL friends run it, and he's there to support them. Strangely, he's active in all three (As well as maintains active characters in EVE online, WoW, SWTOR, and a healthy life outside of game. I honestly have NO idea how he does it, but that's beside the point.)

My point is, there are reasons to have characters not in the kin, that don't involve taking advantage of the kin. It's ok to NOT have an alt channel, and there's probably lots of reason not to, but I think the idea that non-kinned alts are a leech on the system shouldn't be one of them.

As a final point, I don't even think the alt channel would be used that way. Think about it like this. I'm on my non-kinned alt, and I decide to see if ASFBank has the mats for my class quest. or if someone has some pristine hides I could borrow, or something like that. Most likely, I'm going to log onto Volo or Lesti to ask for them. The way I DO see it working is the opposite direction; say we're trying to fill a raid, and there's not a healer online for some reason (because they're all playing alts!) Then that would be the perfect time for the raid leader to ping the alt channel for anyone listening to see if they'd switch. So, don't think of an alt channel as a tool to drain the kin, think of it as a tool to strengthen it.

[Golbo]

Feachador wrote:

heh, so THAT'S where that came from! now I remember. Was looking at my chat channels, and saw that one, and couldn't remember for the life of me why I had added it. Guess I need to add it back.

If there was so little activity on that channel that you couldn't remember why you had added it, how instrumental could it be to your LOTRO experience? Hee!

[Feachador]

I'm not disagreeing there, and the fact that it would only rarely, if ever, get used is a very strong reason NOT to do an alt channel. My only point was there are valid reasons why people would not have every alt they have in the kin.