I was playing a few MMOs from 90s-when FFXI was released and I can safely say "chat notifications" for MMOs wasn't standard, at all, especially since the ones that did have them get lost in the flood of chat/battle spam because they were just a simple line of text usually in the system font color that's shared with engaging/disengaging/killing an enemy.

When someone disconnects you can see not only in search but next to their character (unless for whatever reason SE removed the tomato icon from search lists in recent years.) So tell me, what purpose does one need to be hassled the second they get online? What if some people honestly just want to kick back and relax and not be bombarded by tells as they get on?

That is what Camate most likely was referring to, it's a nice feature, but it's also an intrusive feature at the same time. Time is indeed of the essence, but not to the point the very second I log onto FFXI as a leader/officer/important person I get bombarded by 28+ tells and not even time to breathe.