Howdy all and welcome to my guide on how to make your eq chat a little less cluttered :) If you are like I was at one point, you would often be missing out on sometimes crucial guild chat, tells, private channels, and hell - even /ooc Train messages! Everyone learns in time, and I, like some, have managed to tinker enough to come up with my own chat box setup so that NONE of these are an issue anymore.
By the time you're done, your screen should look like (or similar to, depending on your preferences) like this:
Firstly - You need to be ingame. You may not want to do this while in a group, as it may take some time to tinker with... then again if you're reading this site while your group is in dire need of your aid, you're probably going to have some problems anyways.
Let's start by making a new chat window. Right click on the bottom bar of your main chat menu. Click "New Chat Window"
This will bring you a brand New chat window. Now, let's put that new chat window to work.
Right click the same bottom bar, but on the New chat window. Then Select Filters, and then Guild.
Viola! your chat box that you have created should now display any incoming chat from the Guild. As you can see the list under filters, you can put many things to go into this chat window. Some may prefer Guild and Tells to go into the same, some may not. You can decide on your own for how Many chat windows you'd like, and what type of chat you would like to go to which one. Now some may think "Well that's great and all, but with 107934 Chat boxes everywhere, how do I even play the game?!"
Worry not, for there is another helpful step in this process to make these chatboxes a little less clunky.
Right click, once again, on the bottom bar of your New chat window(s). Then Select Window. From here, Select Alpha and then Faded level. This will make your chat boxes transparent to an extent, depending on what level you set the fade to (I usually leave mine around 30% or so). If something important goes on in chat, and it's somewhat difficult to read, simply put your mouse over it and it will become solid, like a normal chat window for the time.
Well there you have the main points. With this, filtering your Guild and Tells to another window tends to make your life a lot easier. No longer will you need to spend three minutes at a time scrolling up to see what so-and-so wanted because you had to go afk in pok for a minute.
Just some other quick notes that will also make your life a bit easier! : )
I'm going to assume that most of you are usually more comfortable when you're able to see what you're typing. I know I am.. sometimes crazy typos can make you sound like a real fool : ). With multiple chat boxes, it's not unheard of for the text that you're inputting to change around from box to box, sometimes your text is coming up in a hidden box and you have No clue how to edit it. So for this, I do this quick step to make your text that you're typing always show up in the main chat window.
First, right click on your main chat window (or whichever one you'd like your text to go to). Then, simply click 'Always Chat Here' Simple enough, I know, but if you do not, sometimes you'll be one confused chatter when your text magically disappears :)
Don't be afraid to fool around with your chat filters. They can be your friend :) For most any pet class that hasn't already, you should try and filter out your pet's hits, spell casts, and other such spammings. For things like these, I put them in a chat window and then minimize it, so if I'm ever wondering how well my pet is beating things up, I can maximize it and check it quickly. If you look at the original picture on the site, you can see it, in the very top left corner. Also just one last note, the higher the resolution your EQ is running at, the overall larger your screen is. Make your resolution larger and you can see a lot more comfortably and chat windows and menus in the game will grow much smaller, fitting a lot more in at once.
Well, I hope this has helped someone out there, I know I wish I would have thought of it a long time before I actually did. If you have any questions, Just look me up in the game (Pype) or drop me a line at rpger00@yahoo.com.