Talking to Yourself

For people familiar with MMO's the chat interface in Allods is pretty standard. There are a few quirks that might throw new players (and even some old hands), so I thought I'd run down the basics here.

Talking

To start talking, hit the Enter / Return key. This opens a chat box on the lower left side of your screen. Type your message, hit the Enter / Return again, and voila, you've said something. The question is, did anyone hear it? The chat defaults to Say-mode, which is only heard by people nearby. If you type one of a number of "/" commands at the beginning of your message, you can change the channel you talk in. For example typing: /z Anyone seen Briarstank? in chat will send Anyone seen Briarstank? to the entire local zone. Different channels have different purposes. The chat modes are listed below, along with the commands to use them, and the color of the text:

• Say (command: default mode) - Say text shows in white text, and is the default chat mode. It's not super useful unless you're trying to get someone's attention who's standing right next to you.
• Zone - (command: /z) - Zone chat is seen by everyone on the same Allod as you. It appears in tan text. Zone chat is a good way to find people to help with group quests, ask general questions, or just chat with others in the area.
• Party - (command: /p) - If you join a party, this is the chat of choice. Party chat appears in blue text, and can be seen by anyone in your party.
• Raid - (command: /r) - If you're in a raid group, this chat goes to everyone else in the raid. It is colored orange. Note that if you use Party chat in a raid, only your party in the raid will see what you say!
• Guild - (command: /g) - This chat mode sends your message to everyone in your guild. Guild text is green.
• Shout - (command: /shout) Light blue text. Shout works like Zone chat, but I think it crosses zone boundaries. Can anyone confirm or deny how it works?
• Whisper - (command: /w Name) Whisper sends a private message to another character. Note that Name must be exact, including upper/lower case letters. You can also click on the character name displayed in brackets at the beginning of a chat message to whisper to them.

 When you type the chat command above, hit a space after the command to 'switch' to the proper mode. If you don't, you may end up doing an emote instead.

A few gotchas with the chat system:

• Some modes, Party, Shout, and Guild at least, seem to 'stick'. Once you type something in that channel the next messages you type go to the same channel. You can tell which mode you're typing in by prompt in the chat window. Note that this stickiness is a little flaky, so it pays to double-check where you're typing.
• If you're talking in Zone chat you'll see your own messages, at least most of the time. Sometimes what you type just vanishes. I suspect the spam filter is working overtime, so if you really need to say what you typed, rephrase it and send it again. If you don't see what you typed, no one else did either.
• There is a language filter in place on the chat channels. Note that you will see your own chat unfiltered, but curse words from others will be replaced with %&@* style strings.
• There is no 'reply' command for Whispers, though recent news indicates this feature will be implemented with the next update (defaulting to the backspace key).

So there you have it, a quick intro to chatting and communication in Allods. Hope this was useful!