Quote Originally Posted by Bearded View Post
I have played more MMORPGs that do not have chat bubbles than those who do. Some of the games suffered really badly from displaying the chat bubbles in busy areas and (no surprise) many abused the chat bubbles to make spam even more obvious.

Sure if they were optional and did not divert dev attention from other work but honestly I'd not hold out any hope - I'm sure spaghetti code will be to blame.
Some of the best chat bubble option I have seen were "Friends/Guild only". This meant that even in a busy city, where the chat log was flooding anyway, I could ALWAYS see the important texts.