Lexicon Chat disabled in WQ 2.5
As of noon CST today, lexicon chat in WQ 2.5 is disabled, and no longer be an option in multiplayer games.
Why would we do this? Here's some history: WolfQuest was originally conceived as a multiplayer game, with text chat as an integral component. However, over the years, some players persisted on role-playing in ways that were not appropriate for our audience. That prompted us to add layers of filtering that ultimately made lexicon chat a frustrating experience for everyone. At its heart, the problem was the broad age range of our audience, from nine-year-olds to teenagers and beyond, who want and expect different things from in-game chat.
WolfQuest was originally a grant-funded project, and grants always run out. So since funding ran out in 2011, we have planned to disable lexicon chat at some point in the near- or mid-future and publicized that plan here on the forum. Initially we expected to disable lexicon chat in about a year, but we kept extending it due to ongoing interest in the game. Then, once we started work on WQ 2.7, Eduweb and the Minnesota Zoo agreed to keep lexicon chat available until the new version was released. It took far longer to develop 2.7 than we imagined, and so lexicon chat remained active for far longer than we expected. But now that that 2.7 is available, we must shut down lexicon chat in 2.5.
WQ 2.7 has new and improved options for chatting in Private Games (voice chat and nearly unrestricted text chat), but Public Games are now limited to Phrase Chat. We understand that this is disappointing and frustrating to many players. We have thought a great deal about adding text chat to Public Games, but at the moment, in our judgment, given the broad age range of our audience, the risks and effort outweigh the benefits. We may revisit the question in the future, but for the time being, we encourage players to take advantage of the improved chat options in Private Games, and the options to make friends and form packs in the game. We are also accepting suggestions to improve the utility of Phrase Chat, and have some ideas to enhance realistic role-playing as well.
We hope everyone understands this decision, even if you don't like it. Thanks for reading. If you're interested in getting WQ 2.7, please take a look and download the free trial.
Source: Lexicon Chat disabled in WQ 2.5
Reposting this here and tagging the Multiplayer (2.5) article.
So, as of December 3rd 2015, it has finally happened. Lexicon chat has been unplugged and is no longer available in 2.5, and for very good reasons! 2.7 has plenty of improvements - both to gameplay and communications - to make up for this "loss", and at $10, it's worth the upgrade. 2.7 multiplayer re-introduces text chat with few limitations in place to prevent profanity, but otherwise it's less restrictive and far less complex than the blacklist offered by the outdated lexicon chat. Phrase chat has some additional strings added and doubles up for disabling chat ... somewhat.
