Before anyone goes on about how this is unfair or unnecessary, please be a bit more open minded and considerate towards your fellow members as well as your staff team.
The primary use of General chat is to be able to roleplay without having to concern yourselves and your roleplay group with the confines of the local area limit. Since General can be read as one from any point in the map, it's good to be able to see what everyone is saying from any point. However, given that it's initially best for roleplay, that would tend to render it useless in public maps, as roleplay is not permitted in public maps in General, is it not?
I personally think this is a wonderful choice for a few reasons, along with what I stated above. Being limited to local chat only would encourage users to be more social throughout the game and encourage them to do more than just sit in one place and spout any sort of chat within General and just pick up any conversations that they can join. It helps give users something to do while being a lot more interactive all the while. It can give the feeling of being more "involved" with the game and community. Almost more "realistic" if you want to put it in a cheesy way.
The random bouts of conversation, most of which would turn up unnecessary, sometimes hurtful and upsetting, and just plain annoying, that would spam everywhere in General chat were significant enough for us to want to make a change. Most users can probably use the excuse, "just turn off General chat using the ingame check box, problem solved". While that, yes, is always a solution, it isn't always preferred. Some users could be wanting to advertise through General chat or look for advertisements in order to join roleplays. Having users tell them to just leave General chat would never really be considered a win-win solution.
Yes, having General chat gone can rid of the most effective method of advertising in the game, but it also introduces so many more key points that can no doubt be adjusted in due time. However keeping General, while some of us may have thought it to, also, adjust in due time, did not happen. It just would get worse.
I hope you guys understand the reasoning behind removing General chat and I look forward to any feedback.