Any ETA on SOE Chat functionality?

#10400014527 09/06/2005 08:18 Re: Any ETA on SOE Chat functionality?

I had never heard that there was a Jabber->SOE gateway out there...
if that's the case, then AWESOME. That might solve a lot of my gripes
arising from the removal of AIM. (Jabber > AIM anywayz :robottongue:)

#10400014561 09/06/2005 10:42 Re: Any ETA on SOE Chat functionality?

zorya wrote:
What's even better is that
Google Talk is out now; and since its a pure Jabber client, we should
be able to use it as our chat client out of game (instead of paying for
Trillian Pro).

That is about a million times better than AIM (if Station chat really is Jabber based.)

It's
a teensy bit of a stretch to say that Google Talk is a pure Jabber
client, for one main reason: it doesn't support server-to-server
communications right now, which is arguably the single best feature of
Jabber.

For those of you who don't know, Jabber works sort of like e-mail in
that anybody can run a Jabber server, and your Jabber id is in the form
of [email protected]. So you and I can both be running our own Jabber
servers (a-la an office intranet... or using public servers, or
whatever) and I'm [email protected] and you're [email protected], when I
send you a message, I send it to my server (first.com), my server looks
for a jabber server at second.com, and then the second.com server
handles routing the message to you (alice). This is handy for all sorts
of reasons I won't go into here, but if you're interested, check out
the tech overview at Jabber's site.

Google Talk, however, doesn't presently do server-to-server
communications; it only communicates with users on the GTalk server,
which means I can't use it to talk to other Jabber users unless they
specifically go sign up for a GTalk account. Google has made some comments
that make it sound like this may only be a temporary situation, but for
the time being Google Talk wouldn't be able to work with this gateway.

(If I'm completely wrong and overlooking/misunderstanding something here, let me know)

#10400014902 09/07/2005 08:58 Re: Any ETA on SOE Chat functionality?

Just in case there's any confusion here, Jabber is an open protocol, and isn't in any way "part" of Trillian.

Trillian has a plugin that's able to talk the Jabber protocol, but
there's plenty of other (FREE) clients you can choose from, which is part of
the strength of the protocol. Personally, I use Gaim (for Windows and Linux) and AdiumX (for Mac... my old roommate's one of the lead developers on Adium, so I'm biased).

If you guys like Trillian and want to use it to connect, that's
perfectly fine. I just never have liked Trillian much and wanted to
make sure everyone understands that this isn't something for which you
specifically *need* Trillian.

Update: Oh, and almost forgot... if you don't like Trillian *OR* Gaim, Jabber has a big list of other compatible clients here.

Message Edited by Friar on 09-07-2005 01:00 PM

Message Edited by Friar on 09-07-2005 01:01 PM

#10400017266 09/13/2005 20:20 Re: Any ETA on SOE Chat functionality?

OK -- I've been out of the loop for about a week, and in the
intervening time it looks like this thread has gotten turned into the
"yay walrus" and "let's discuss random aspects of the patch" thread. I
realize I ain't the boss of anybody, but is there any way we can get
the thread back on-topic? There seems to be a lot of confusion
revolving around the new chat system and (more importantly to me) how
it ties in with Jabber.

I think people understanding how SOE ties in with Jabber and what
Jabber *IS* will go a long way to giving people back what they lost
when AIM was removed from the game, so I respectfully request that we focus the
thread back on the chat system.

That rant out of the way, the following comment tells me that there's
probably a lot of people who don't understand what Jabber's about:

minuend wrote:
I
miss AIM. It let me chat with my friends while in game. I could be
jacked in MXO and chat with my friend two states away on her cell
phone. Jabber offers what? The ability to chat with my brother and
mother while they are in EQ? Wow, if only I didnt live with them that
would be a neat feature. I don't know anyone that uses Jabber at all.
AIM is the only IM people use anymore. It's intergrated into so many
devices(fones!) that no one else can compete anymore, in my opinion.
Yahoo has a bit of exposure still, but ICQ(the one time standard) is
basically dead. MSN? Who ever used that? Ever? I think the switch to
Jabber is a mistake for MXO. One of the features that got me to pay for
this boring game was the AIM client. It offered better real world to
MXO uses.

Of course, I'll settle for any messenger service in game at this point. BAH FIX THIS GAME ITS MAKING ME DEPRESSED!

followed by...

cloudwol wrote:
*CENSORED*! soooo many people use msn, near enough every person i know has an msn account

Putting the squabbles about "my IM service is the best" aside, here's the deal:

Jabber is designed with exactly your complaint in mind. Jabber supports
what are called "gateways", which basically act as a compatibility
layer between normal Jabber servers and proprietary chat servers like
AIM, MSN, Yahoo, etc. Anyone who's worried about "switching" to Jabber
because you have a huge coterie of friends on IM Service X, I strongly
suggest you read this bit of the user guide at Jabber's site.

Many of the clients that support Jabber
support other protocols as well (AIM, etc). This sort of eliminates the
"but my friends don't use Jabber" problem in and of itself. What many
people don't seem to realize, though, is that the Jabber system ITSELF can talk to
these other protocols anyway, thus removing the NEED for a
multi-protocol client. (Although, to be fair, I'm a big fan of gaim, Adium, and many of the other multi-protocol clients, and there's no particular reason *not* to use them... but you don't *have* to.)

If you're one of these people who's afraid to use Jabber
because you have a big base of friends on another service, try out
Jabber's ability to talk to your service via a gateway... or use a
multi-protocol client like the ones listed
above. The alternative methods of chatting with your friends (yes,
including the ones on AIM/MSN) may not have all the fun extraneous
bells
and whistles of the "official" clients, but they also tend to lack the
annoyances that come with the official package as well (noisy video
ads, pop-ups, stock tickers you don't care about, etc.)

As usual, if I'm overlooking anything here or have misrepresented things, please post a reply and correct me.

Update: Oh, and by the way, forgot to put this in the original post...
"YAY WALRUS." You da man, and it's nice havin' ya back on the boards.
Yeah, I know I said this shouldn't be a yay walrus thread. I'm a
hypocrite. Sue me. :robotvery-happy:

Message Edited by Friar on 09-14-2005 12:25 AM

#10400017680 09/14/2005 18:38 Re: Any ETA on SOE Chat functionality?

Thanks for the info, Walrus. Much appreciated.

rorist wrote:
you came back with this idea
hope we are going to see real improvement, i would like to see
something different with the hotbars in particular

I
know that when SWG got its combat upgrade, they completely overhauled
the toolbar icons, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if SOE tries to do a
similar thing here; the Galaxies combat upgrade was pretty
well-received (except for the Jedi flood it caused.)