At one time I may have thought of this initially to combat gold spaming bots or slow it down at least but I wonder if this would be and acceptable mechnic. As far as I know all MMOs have chat channels with say(nearby), shout(wide area/zone), and a general chat so taking it away initally or making it not easily accessable may be a bit of a shock, especially to casual players. What if you didn't have this mystical chatbox that let you talk to anyone else in the game world/realm? What if loosing the general chat channel was the result to a catastrophic failure or sabotage by the enemy? I imagine (in my scifi universe :p) players needing to use comm. devices to have access to communicate with other players. Aside from needing to get the device and have the uplink codes for other player groups the chat would work the same as it is now.

It would make for a great story-line excuse for not being able to yell for help at lower levels.

It's definitely a viable mechanic, however.

It's been done in a lot of MUDs, but the reason I don't see it done in an MMORPG is because of the demographics you are trying to tailor to. Though it may filter out the gold spammers. Think about how many accounts those (frequently account banned) gold spammers must buy every day. What if you're one of those players that's just absolutely too retarded to figure out where the night elf is hiding near the spider cave?

Personally, I hate those kinds of people, and you can definitely build an MMO without them, just throwing some things out there.

What tools to you have availble to make finding channels easy.   I mean who wants to play in a quite MMO all the time, there's a reason guilds strongly encourage people to use vent even outside of raids.

Even something as simple as a few official forum threads would go a long way.

I like to use communication - or the [lack thereof] - as ways to enforce social mechanics, among other things.

1. I got a craft MMO where NO chat bar exists without a tool that can be made by a player. The device is equipped and then has functions based on it's parts. Microphone allows local to be recorded to the charbox, beyond the standard bubbles. Memory sticks are what limits the amount of text in the chatbox before being pushed out of view. Various chips allow you to access the in-game channels like zone, trade, etc. There is a lot of emphasis on making private channels and a spy game in cracking them and eavesdropping.

2. I got a low fantasy MMO for RPers where there is no major chat lines beyond joining a class-faction (for sake of quicker communication as needed). If you need help from someone outside your sphere you will have to find them out in local, search the inns or hangouts, or ask NPCs for clues as to where they might be (investigation is a big part of this game). Personal /tells exist in the form of a "courier" system that brings up a large window textured as vellum. From here you send mesages for a slight fee back and forth with a 5 second delay... it's just whats needed to organize person to person, while telling you that it's much more efficient to just show up in person - on top of being a bit reminiscent of the time, if not gimmicky.

3. I am working on an game idea that uses the international language barrier as a mechanic... but beyond that pure idea, I don't have much beyond a kind of spy game with translatable messages. Yeah, I'm working on it. >_>