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Perfect World end XMPP Support

Connection to ingame chat via an XMPP client will no longer be available later this month.

By Three of Seven Sun 01 Sep, 2019 3:11 PM - Last Updated: Sun 01 Sep, 2019 3:32 PM
Around two weeks ago, news came out from PWE that players will no longer be able to connect to chat servers via XMPP after September 19th. We had our own discussion thread about this news as well. This change will affect three games, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and Champions Online, which adds to features removed, with nothing planned to come in to replace it, as stated on the news thread about this "At this time, we don’t have any plans to replace this with a different service.", which may pose problems to those who used it.

From an administrative point of view, the removal is problematic, as connecting to the chat via an XMPP client was a great way to moderate channels. This made reviewing evidence of any complaint which occured in a chat channel so much easier, as there was no need to be logged into the game to see what was going on, it was also a good way to keep in touch with members.

The reason given for removing the feature was that "it also unfortunately makes it easier for gold spammers and others to reach our chat system.", however in two of the three games, a lifetime subscription was needed to use XMPP, so adding that requirement to the third game would have theoretically solved this problem. If a lifetime account abused the system, a ban would put a stop to it, and there will only be a finite about of compromised lifetime accounts, any new ones would require money.

Perhaps, making the change to the one game where it was a problem was not possible, because those who worked on the system may no longer work for the company, and code documentation was poor, as with the foundry, which may have led to removal being the only option.

So while the removal of another feature won't bring about the death of the game, it has not filled the community with much positivity, as the official announcement thread ended up locked for constant derailment, as players did not appear to support the decision. Ideally, one would hope that the future will bring some community focused changes that will bring some positivity back into the old Cryptic games.

WRITTEN & EDITED BY Three of Seven - rena.hobden@ufplanets.com
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