Should we change rings? Is OOC a problem in Imperian?

Oystir

At the Town Hall it was mentioned that there is a very loose divide between OOC and IC talk, primarily due to the rings being used as a primary means of communication between cities/circles, and a general place for chatting otherwise. And the issue with this, I think, is that it is a natural part of a character's progression to be added to one of these rings. If somebody bashes with you, you are back in the OOC chatterbox. If you join in any fighting events, you are back in the OOC chatterbox, and most people don't see a point to leaving or turning off the ring. I think this is a heavy contributor to the lack of immersion and roleplay in the game.

So I wanted to gauge a feeling on if people feel like this might be a problem. An idea I had for fixing it was to just remove you from a ring when you log off. It leaves rings as a temporary group for team fighting and for bashing, and removes the 'Circle Chatroom' from that element of the game.

Does anyone else have ideas or opinions?

Sumie

I feel like the cutting down on cities will fix this. Since each circle will only have 1 city with everyone in it. Before it rings were the only channel you could talk to everyone on your circle

Aysari

Rings should be like OOC clans: explicitly defined as to whether they're IC or OOC, when the person creates them. Rings aren't the problem.

Veratyr

The problem is that everyone in a circle is in one ring, and thats where all communication takes place. Very little chatter occurs in city tells or in guild tells anymore, everything is in the ring. While in and of itself this shouldn't be a problem, it kind of turns out to be.

I think rings should be limited to say, 7-10 people. This is big enough for a hunting party or raiding party, and yet would keep an entire circle from being in them at the same time...possibly encouraging the use of alternate channels.