In the area which a square was drawn you could have the status in which the user is (away, busy, online), instead of that blue speech bubble, or even better, make the color of the speech bubble to the status color the person is in.

Due to the fact that whenever I'm gone for a longer period of time or just not available to speak, people still keep messaging me and are asking me why I'm not responding to them. When I come back, they are offline.

All I'm saying is that it would be good to have so that other users know that you are available to speak or not.

EDIT:
It would also be nice not to get an error message that the person is "busy and doesn't want to talk to you" but rather make it send a nicer message as to "This person is not available at this moment."

Another suggestion of the error messages could be, that if the person appears "online" again that they get all the messages that couldn't be sent to them because they set their status to "offline", "busy", or "away".

There can be something else too, that if the above doesn't work, that they person can get a PM saying what the person tried to communicate to them (of course there should be a button was to "send PM" or when the user goes offline).

EDIT 2: 15-01-2011
Another addition to the chat is having some sort of signal or image next to the person's name, indicating whether or not they are in a game. This would let people know whether or not they can private battle and therefore there won't be any confusion as to knowing when someone is in-game or not.

Furthermore, another suggestion could be, in order to stop flooding, to have some sort of repetition sensor. This means that if a person floods the chat, whether in private chat or public, the person will get a message saying that they cannot post anything for a given amount of time.

>.< I don't see how this is going to be of any use.

Thats an awesome suggestion. The status of the user has been suggested before but your idea of changing the bubble to their staus color is really good Also cool, I was used for the screen

>.< I don't see how this is going to be of any use.

She said how... Many ppl usually get annoyed cause they don't know im afk and ill come back with a bunch of chats saying...

1. hey Tsu
2. you there?
3. Tsuuuuu
4. ??
5. u afk???

So yeah, good suggestion.

Nice suggestion, but it's not that important.

@Low: If you open the chat, you can see that the other one is offline/busy/away/online without writing something.

>.< I don't see how this is going to be of any use.

I just explained that. In order to keep away confusion when someone is messaging you and you're not answering them. It's just a nice to know if a person is available to talk or gone. This way you're informed on the person's status without adding them to your buddy list.

(...)I just explained that. In order to keep away confusion when someone is messaging you and you're not answering them. It's just a nice to know if a person is available to talk or gone. This way you're informed on the person's status without adding them to your buddy list.

I was just messing with you.
I like your idea. Since my suggestion was also basically the same. It's quite dark not knowing if the person you are talking to is available for chatting. It would be even cooler if this feature was automatic rather than the player deciding his status.

Edit: Um Tsu: I know how I felt when I messeged you. v.v
I felt like killing you when you finally responded.

Nah... Kidding. Although the being frustrated part is quite true.

a simple, yet great idea
nothing more to add

great idea

Ye its ok idea .

sounds good to me

nice suggestion

It's the little things that add up, not all good suggestions have to be these huge grandiose ideas that require massive time and manpower to implement.

Seems like a decent idea to me.

Well if a user is away busy or offline and you try to talk with them it won't allow you. So this may void the suggestion a little bit.

I like it quite a bit. I mean, I hate leaving up windows waiting for a reply, not even sure if they're still online. This would help greatly.

I like it. It would certainly be useful in numerous situations.

I think it's a good idea. So when you open a chat in middle of the battle, you can see if your enemy set his status to offline, so you don't write to him, and receive the error message.