I've often wondered, is having an ooc return message acceptable? You know, when someone messages you, what they see. Mine have always been "I'll get back to you" but I wanted something like "Sorry I'm not here right now, I'm on from 9-12 pst" or maybe even as far as "if you need to reach me during the day on a weekday, you can msg me on the forums".

Is the entire messaging system ooc anyway?

Thoughts?

Messaging system is OOC. You have letters for IC things like that. (Otherwise messages wouldn't reach you until you came back from off-plane, etc. etc.)

I lost Rolepoints for shouting something about 'clearing my Messages'. when I asked about it I was told its borderline.

Messages can be OOC or IC depending on the message itself.

People use messages IC. I think that there should be some incentive to use letters rather than messages... Cause people just use messages rather than letters as it is.

You can do letters anonymously, and you can mail stuff w/letters.

People use messages when they can't broadcast, heh.

I'm leaning more towards ooc so far.

But how often do you use letters? Other than contests, or sending items?

Letters cost money, letters decay, they can be stolen, they can be lost, they can stop becoming private. Frankly I believe that messages is a private media to relay whatever type of information you want, without a cost and safeguard their privacy. In fact, the only real upper a letter has is what you said, that letters can be mailed with cargo and the sender can be anoymous. But me, I believe because the usage of the message system is used plenty by people thanks to it's convinience, while still keeping their "role" and therefore whatever sense of fantasy world there is, returnmessages should be IC.

Edit: Yet another convinience of the message system, and one that is the reasons messages is used over mail, is that you can message someone from anywhere. Why send letters, unless you are sending something or wish to remain anonymous? So anyway, imo, having blatant OOC returnmessages on a medium that people constantly us to communicate isn't very good.

Personally, I think we should just abolish messages entirely. I only ever use them if someone starts a conversation across planes with them, and otherwise use letters.

So you want the system to send you a letter everytimes your item decay? Or when you got a guild/city favor?

that would be really scary...

Oh, well not for that crap. I just dislike messages because they are so OOC. Normally not something I complain about, but with an easy alternative, it irks me a bit. And it would make talking off-plane harder, which is a good thing.

I hate sorting through my messages now. If they were all pieces of paper, I'd go nuts.

You see:
letter23423
letter23464
letter46346
letter23534

etc

That too. Messages are just so CLEAN. (I wish I could like, "MESSAGES LATEST" and get the last 20 though. Although I'm sure someone is going to tell me that you can and I'm just being stupid now.)

That said I wish the system would make its mind up as to whether it wants to number the latest one after the first number after the last one, or if it wants to keep track and add new messages onto the number I HAVE had even if I deleted the last one.

Pretend that made sense.

Ohh yeah I totally get what you're saying Shiri

Richter if you actually have a schdule, aI think its a good idea to put that in your return message

Well, it would cut down on frivolous messages if you had to actually mail them.

Overall, I'd rather communication was harder, especially given how easy travel is. The world feels very small, even with other planes.

On topic though, I do believe that messages are OOC, and a returnmessage a great place to post your schedule.

Yeah, same time every day.

And Shiri, RM does the same thing RN does for news.

Oh, does it? I take the easy way, and store any messages I need in a text file, and clear them every time I finish reading the current batch.