So I was exploring the game menu a bit and ran across this Global Chat Server and thought, WOW, that sounds cool, but it says it can't connect. So I start up a google search to find out some information about it, maybe there is something wrong on my end, but nope. It seems Larian disabled this feature because some people were being rude and "hurting other people's feelings".
Well at first I thought, well I can understand that, there are a lot of rude people out there and we certainly don't want to "hurt anyone's feelings". But when I heard myself thinking this I also heard my long dead father's voice in my head saying "What the heck are you saying?" (that is the much cleaner version, it was really more like R. Lee Ermey's unfiltered version from the movie Full Metal Jacket). I have to agree here.
We are getting too soft about this in my opinion. I think people need to get their feelings hurt now and then so they can learn how to deal with it. It makes for a thicker skinned person that doesn't cry about everything. We have become a nation of overprotective mothers trying to protect everyone from life at the expense of life itself. So what if someone says something you don't like? It's just words on a screen and if you aren't strong enough to ignore them (and I would assume that an ignore button would be implemented), then you should take at least some responsibility for how you let the troll get to you.
If you want to really make the troll suffer, don't respond, it's that simple. And if Larian really is worried about it they would keep a monitor in the channel instead of just giving up and shutting the whole thing down and ruining the best part of the game, people being able to interact and find other players. Yeah, it's just really easy to ignore the problem and get rid of it, I hope that isn't how you treat your children though.
If you believe in the exchange of ideas, diplomacy, growth, freedom of information, and just plain conversation then you would work at getting this feature back up and running. These things are not an easy task, but they are worth the effort.
