To pass the time to ESO is released, I am playing a F2P MMO and there is public channel that has a bad rep (and it well earn too) because the channel talk about "bad" topics -- Like rated XXX topics, being rude and unhelpful to questions that people / noobs ask. There are a lot of people me included never used that chat channel for those reasons. (I used my guild chat channel instead)

With that background info in mind, here are my questions:

1) How Moderators on other MMO's work?

2) Do they do a good job of chat clean up?

3) How do they handle XXX rated topics in a public chat?

4) Any theories how ESO will handle the chat?

5) Any theories how ESO will handle the topics in chat that are really XXX rated?

I am not talking about Moderators on this forum so they can breathe easy again ~waves to them and offers a Moon Sugar sweetroll~

Most games don't have active chat moderators. Chat is usually quite a rough place at times, though you can turn the tide by injecting your own topics into chat if it starts looking nasty.

1) If you are talkign about in game chat then unless someone is being overly abusive or racist, the games masters dont take any action.

2)They dont get involved unless someone complains

3)Thats normal in MMOs these days.

4) Probably the same as other games.

5)See above.

Games masters cannot take action against people who are being horrible to each other in MMOs. Unless someone gets reported for abuse by multiple people or its a serious offence such as ninja looting or botting with screenshot proof , GMs mind their own business and attend to tickets opened by players.

Yeah, if somebody says something that clearly violates the rules, report them. It behooves you of course to know what the rules are; it's not enough to be bothered or offended by it. You gotta read the fine print in the Terms of Service to make a plausible case.

In my experience even one report may result in a warning. It's in the company's interest to keep things somewhat under control, or they lose customers and/or get a bad rep.

Typically, since here are numerous chat channels and they're usually zone specific, there aren't chat moderators.

If there's a problem with what people are saying in a chat channel you have to submit a ticket which GMs can then read. I'd assume all chat channel activity is logged so they easily verify what was said.

How GMs respond to such activity is something that I find varies widely by MMO. Some deal with it really well. Others not so much.

I played Darkfall at launch and from memory their TOS included all the normal stuff but their chat channels were super feral. Possibly had something to do with the crowd they wanted the game to appeal to - hard core PvP'er. I never bothered ticketing anything so I can't fault their response. But given how bad it was it would have taken a lot of work to police those channels. Similar problem with Horizons. Their trade channel was particularly bad and the 'help' you'd get in some channels could be a bit on the rude side.

Yup, that's what I try to do if I notice chats turning ugly. Change the topic and one person will reply, then another, then the topic is changed completely but it doesn't always work.

Yeah sometimes you get drowned out by the spam because chat is moving so fast. And they're all in rude mode (no stopping it then).

I find if you say something particularly shocking but hilarious, you can sometimes actually cause chat to briefly freeze (and that's your opportunity to start controlling the chat).

Zone chat is usually the first chat to turn off in an MMO after you've used it to find a guild if you are playing solo.

I don't really know any MMO's that have moderators for zone chat.

Most other chats are usually created by others and depending on the mmo can have player moderators or not (private vs public channels)

XXX rated topics, either go with the flow (if it's an 18+ mmo and you don't mind) or report the players using it. Reporting them usually also means they go onto your ignore list.

As for how ESO is going to handle it, no idea, but I am guessing it's up to the players themselves to handle it decently.

I know that I will be turning off zonechat as soon as I find a guild or two to join. Though it's sometimes amusing to watch. During beta I will keep zonechat always active as I like to try to help out people as much as I can.

I imagine that I'll often not have /zone active as I level or maybe even in PvP (though there it serves a functional purpose.)