How About An "Incognito" Player Status?

[Niwashi]

While it has its merits, if OP's idea gets off the ground, for some of us it would do more harm than good in terms of reducing new rapport-formation. I assume that most people make most of their in-game friends in the game (in my case, all), occasionally by looking up someone you were friendly with earlier and /tell-ing them ... if a new behavior arises that jeopardizes this it would be quite a magnificent loss. ;_;

But if you'd met them earlier, you could /tell them regardless of whether they were incognito or not. Of course, if they're withholding their search info you wouldn't know if they were online or not until you tried, but a "/tell <Friend's Name> Hey, you around?" would get you that information as easily as a search would. You just wouldn't know where they're at unless they tell you.

And if it was somebody you didn't know, you wouldn't be able to find out about them by searching for everyone of a certain class in a certain region, or whatever.

most likely never happen

Perhaps not, since SE leaves a lot of pretty basic features out, yet just about every other game has it.