That's a very good suggestion!

We have plans to change how the chat looks a bit, let me explain the changes and we would love to hear comments about it: (this will be released soon)

• All the players that are not in "General", and never were there, will join that room automatically after they get to the real world the first time.

• The chat will have 2 possible modes now, that you can switch between in the chat panel: - Hidden mode (the default mode) - in this mode, you will not see chat messages on the screen like you do now, but instead, the chat icon will flash every time someone writes something; opening the chat panel will obviously show everything like it used to. Private messages and local area messages will bypass this hidden mode and show normally. - Show mode - this mode is basically just like the chat looks now, when anybody writes anything in one of the rooms you are in, you will see it on screen immediately.

This way, more players will join general, but the chat will still not interrupt the normal gameplay and annoy them (if they get annoyed by such things).
That's about it.