Throughout the skill of planar, there are skills that allow you to communicate with players on planes differing from your own. I myself am up to "Astrowave" which claims to allow me to communicate with players five planes away from me (and as far as I know, this would basically allow me to communicate with any given player).

However, I find that I am unable to send a tell to any player not on the exact same plane as me, excepting the use of the "REPLY" command.

Is this intentional? Am I misunderstanding the purpose of Astrowave and like skills?

That sounds weird. Not at all right. Did you try BUGing it?

Or am I just crazy and imagining it's always worked differently for me?

I'm pretty sure if you're doing it from a plane away, you have to put TELL in front of the person's name, to send the tell, rather than just doing "NAME ". Unless you're already doing that, then I'm not sure.

To be honest, I always assumed that I was wrong about it's interpretation, and that it was supposed to work as it does for me. However, I read a help file for novices that happened to state that shortwave allowed you to send tells to players one plane away, and got curious.

Now that I'm thinking harder about it, maybe it has something to do with my syntax. I don't actually type in "TELL", i just use the players name. ie: noola something to say.

Think that could be the problem?

Heh, posted while I was still posting myself.

All right, here's another related question:

Is it possible to -see- players that are on other planes? BW gives you a notices that there are x players on other planes. Is there a way to see who those other players are?

Ah! Then yeah, that's prolly the problem!

I never thought of that cause I always type Tell (person) and I always use their full name. The only time I mistell is when I do happen to use reply. And it happens almost everytime I use reply too!

There's a skill that lets you, I think, but I can't remember what.

Cool. I'd be interested to know what that skill is, in which skillset (i'd assume planar), and how far up.

Edit: I've always found it frustrating not knowing when friends or enemies are actually around.

Nametells don't work on different planes. I assumed this was intentional and laughed about it on another IRE forum - one of the furies contacted me here in Lusty telling me to bug it, so I assume it's slated to be fixed.

Here is the ghetto way for us newbs to see who is online: http://www.lusternia.com/players.php?search=who

>_>

edit - courtesy of the scrying pool:

HA! They don't want you to know who's online..... IC.

Yeah, I find it a bit odd that it's a skill that high up, but there's a very easy OOC way to check...

Cool, but not really what I was looking for (especially as I haven't gotten around to getting enchantments yet). It'd be nice to simply be able to BW and see everyone, more desirable since they included ally/enemy coloring right in the system.

New related question (via Scrying Pool information):

What's the difference between Broadcast and Astrowave? There are only five planes, right?

I think aetherbubbles and the undervault count too.

Ah, I see.

Can't do it across aetherbubbles, but you can do it to unknown planes (such as Muud). And keep in mind that it counts the plane you're on as the 'first' plane, e.g. Prime(1)->Ethereal(2)->Elemental(4)->Cosmic(5)->Astral(6) won't be covered by Astrowave - at least, that's how I think it works...

EDIT: Ignore this, I apparently forgot (3). So Astrowave probably does reach to Astral. But it still won't reach to Muud. I hope.

I'll have to test that. I assume they named it "astrowave" because it goes to the "Astral" plane. Otherwise, it's a silly name.

The Nexus worlds are also (apparently) Several planes away, since Aerotan couldn't hear people on prime from the Nexus world. Although this may have since changed.

The Nexus Worlds are aetherbubbles.