WHAT THE...

Freedom of Speech

The Development Team has decided to add a Chat Filter Toggle to AQ3D so that you will be able to chat freely and openly with no restriction on the language that you use. Unless you want to.

There are many reason for this choice:

It's something that a lot of you have been asking for, for quite a while.
AQ3D is a more mature game than many of our previous games, having our first T for Teen rating (As opposed to AQW's E for Everyone) and the more mature rating gives is some more freedom to allow players to express themselves more openly.
The chat filter has always been Iffy-at-best with many players getting accidentally muted for just trying to say something as simple as the name of a quest and getting tagged by the auto-mute system.

How Will It Work?

The game will begin with the Chat Filter toggled ON, meaning you'll see things as they are now.

If you want to disable the Chat Filter and speak freely, you can simply open your settings and toggle the Chat Filter to OFF. This will allow you to see what you and others are typing with no "mature language" being hashed out by the filter.

If you don't want to see this language, you can keep the Chat Filter ON.

If you decide to keep the filter turned on, you will still not get muted or banned for use of mature speech, accidental or otherwise.

NOTE: Character names are not filterable and so are subject to the same rules as always.

So I Can Do Whatever I Want Now?! TOTAL MAYHEM!

Nope. You can still be reported for chat spamming and harassment or abuse of other players. If you act like a toolbag, you will still get muted or banned for being a toolbag. It just means that you won't get muted or warned for saying something like: "This boss is damned hard!".

This NOT a free ticket for anyone.

You can still be banned for trying to avoid the chat filter. The people who keep the filter on, do so for a reason. Trying to get around it to ruin their day gets you locked out of your account.

Harassment is never OK and racist / sexist / homophobic slurs and attacks will not be tolerated. If you're that person, we don't want you in this game. If you're the kind of person who can't tell the difference between profanity and abuse, learn it now or GTFO.

This isn't a new concept. Most (if not all) other T rated games have this functionality. Keep being respectful and everything will be fine. It's not hard.

When Is It Coming?!

Soon! Sora To Hoshi and her team of moderators have to retrain themselves a little bit, Nythera and her Player Support team have to go over the Terms of Service and make the necessary changes and (of course) we have to make a few changes to how the game works... but you can expect to see this change in the next few weeks.

Nervous?

We're not. We believe that most of the AQ3D community will welcome this change and have the maturity to handle it without falling to pieces. It will even make things a littler easier on us in some areas.

All the same, we'd like to know what you think of this change. Let us know in the comments.