Wake up! Join the Telegram Shadow Era chat group!!!
Spoiler Alert: This is a frenzied advertisement for Telegram, and how it will benefit you and the SE community at large if you'll get it and join the SE group there. There are currently 60-70 members in the general SE chat group we set up not even two weeks ago and more are added, daily. Be the next one to join the conversation!
So, here we go:
If you haven't yet signed up for Telegram, or gotten the app (100% free, by the way), read my ensuing rant for it, and you'll see why you probably should get Telegram and get connected to the next generation of live communication and interplayer networking in Shadow Era.
For real peoples, Telegram is booming, all the time. I go to IRC and there are like 15 bot-people there, and nothing is said for hours on end. In Telegram, there's almost always active conversation going on, from chit chat, to finding someone to playtest against or, or to discuss game theory/strategy. It's available on pretty much every platform, from Android and iOS mobile and tablet devices, as well as from a PC or Mac.
Now, to preemptively address the two whiny gorillas in the room:
1.) Yes, you have to register a mobile number when you register for an account. HOWEVER -YOU DO NOT NEED TO SHARE YOUR NUMBER WITH ANYONE BEYOND THE INITIAL REGISTRATION WITH TELEGRAM. And you know, the telephone number thing, with the registration needing your number, this helps to keep Telegram to "one user, one account." After you have your account registered, you can be looked up and added to groups via your chosen "@username".
2.) Yes, IRC is the standard by which Wulven tournaments go down, and for this sole purpose I'm not suggesting Telegram supplant IRC. I'm sure we can all manage to find our way into the 8-bit NES of chat protocols for big, official tourney organization. But hell, Telegram's impact on even just Slugfest so far and the communication between all the participants in it has been huge, and is currently quite a growing asset to the community. So, okay, I guess IRC still matters for the WC? . For everything else, however...
Basically, Telegram is now, in 2015, what IRC was back in 1995: *Good* IRC, on the other hand, is now poop. Twenty year old technology that has been completely outmoded by new software and messaging network architectural design.
In Telegram, you can create multiple rooms/groups of people for more private or focused conversation, hot, steamy one on one messaging <--- easter egg for anyone who actually reads this all, and these groups or private rooms can be kept in your list of conversations, with the full history of everything you've ever seen and said in that particular room, and regardless from which device you access Telegram; you see the same list of convos/groups, with that convo's full history on every device.
With Telegram, you're never out of the loop, but neither is it a nuisance. Any room you belong to has a record of all chatting ever in that room, so long as you remain in the room, and it remains there for later reference even if you log out of your account or change devices. When you look at the app and see you've got 200 missed messages in such-and-such room, you can look at them and peruse and scroll down, or simply tap the skip arrow and jump to the current spot in the chat. The custom group/room design is absolutely perfect for guilds to set up their own chatrooms, also.
In Telegram, when you send a message to a room or individuals, it shows you when the message has been seen. It also notifies you across the top of the app whoever is typing at any given moment. So when you jump onto the room and say what's up, you'll know immediately if the room is alive or not (and the General SE Community chatroom is usually alive.)
In Telegram you can have multiple devices simultaneously connected to your sole Telegram account, from tablets, to mobile phones, to PCs, netbooks, iPads, and all are directly linked and mirrored with each other and your account. Meaning, what see on device 1 is what you will see on device 2. And you can pick between them and chat from either, on the fly, and the inbounds in the chat rooms you belong to stay fully updated and "fed" on all of your devices, simultaneously, whether you're accessing it right then or not.
Practical benefit of this feature? For instance, I do most of my Telegram chatting via my phone, but maybe 10% of my typing or so comes from my iPad when I'm actually playing the game, as I prefer to play the game on my iPad. (and a great deal more of screenshots uploaded from my iPad than from my phone, since the iPad is where I'm in-game) a reasonable amount of Telegram activity comes from both devices from me, and when I look in the chatroom from either device, I see everything I've typed previously from other devices, pics I've sent, etc.
On the other hand, IRC and multiple devices, using clients across multiple platforms? Server errors, "nick not registered", having to rejoin room with an altered nick because there's a ghost of my previous chatself that IRC's archaic server design doesn't seem equipped to deal with in a timely and intuitive manner. Also, when I log back in, after having been disconnected from the IRC server, or I'm changing devices and logging in from a new one, I have no record of what's been being said in the room while I'm gone.
Yeah, instead, in Telegram, you're always just seamlessly plugged into every group you're a part of, and regardless of how many devices you use, and even chatting with both devices simultaneously, under the same screen name, in the same chat groups.
Speaking of posting screenshots into the chat from my iPad, did I mention you can post screenshots from your device straight into the chat conversations, as easily as you tap and share photos on Facebook, you can right in the chat feed
Seriously though, this is a tremendous advantage over IRC. You can use this functionality to illustrate a talking point, or ask for advice, on the fly, about a game you're in by taking a screenshot of your board/hand and post it in the chatroom so people can immediately see what you see, without needing to watch your game.
Or, how about snapping a screenshot when you're at the deck viewer in the deckbuilder tool, and then you can send that shot straight to the Telegram chatroom and everyone can pull up the pic and see whatever it is your build looks like, nice and laid out the way most players can most effectively mentally associate and process the way a deck "looks" to them. This is way more functional and practical than than the options presented to IRC users: Having to post a browser link to the deckbuilder viewer that someone then has to click/tap on, open a browser window, wait for the slowass deck builder tool to load up in their browser (this can be really slow on mobile) and then see the deck. (Any of the above factors immediately puts like 80% of would be room participants out of the conversation, because they're not going to causally go click that link and go perusing your deck unless they were already specifically a part of the conversation with you, paying attention to it. Or, equally low in efficacy, you can take 2-3 minutes and type the whole deck list out by hand, which then sometimes formats correctly, where the deck comes out in a column. But many times, especially when C/P'd, a decklist in text format comes out completely unformatted, and it's every card listed without and spaces or line breaks. This is, I mean to say, what happens with IRC.
Or, oh wait, you could just tap the thumbnail of the screenshot I uploaded and view it right there, in Telegram. Smooth as butter.
And then just little things, like everyone has custom avatars, for instance.
Yeah, sorry, I know this was long, but the case for getting your asses on Telegram really just outweighs the reasons not to, and I'm here with my guildmates trying to push the use of Telegram forward, as it is an advancement for the community of Shadow Era, and therefore a benefit and improvement for the game of Shadow Era.
TL;DR?
Get Telegram. Works on all devices and computers. You don't have to share your phone number with other people. It's functionality and design interface/experience are simply light years beyond IRC.
Come to the Shadow Era chatroom where everyone is actually talking.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Peithoson
Bookmarks