A couple of thoughts about enhancing on-line play, that I realise may be tricky to implement, but should be feasible.

1. Allow a player to log in or even sign up during play. Probably best accomplished by asking the player to open a new tab in the browser (perhaps an in-game link that does that). After signing in, the game that is open in the original tab can then be saved.

2. Save game state if the player leaes the page. I think it was a review of Signos when the player complained he hit the backspace and was taken to the previous page, rather than deleting the last character typed. All progress to that point was then lost. This is probably true of all online players, if the input box has the focus, backspace deletes a character, other it takes you to the previous page. However, it is more apparent in Quest because you have the right hand panes, and if some of them are clicked, and then backspace, you go back a page (this is true of the item lists, but not compass buttons). I guess this would involve maintaining a cookie with connection details so when the player returns to the page, the game connection is reestablished, and the place in the game kept.

3. Set all right pane controls to silently consume the backspace, rather than passing to the browser.

With respect to the backspace character, I think that can be solved in a way that solves other problems as well - always force the focus back to the type-in field after a turn or when looking for input. I will often times be in an online game and click something in the inventory or an arrow button, and then wishing to examine some new object, I'll start typing "x " intending to continue typing without realizing yet it's not typing in the type-in field... and when I hit space, it selects the last button again. And then there is the momentary confusion and then irritation. I find myself in the online games having to click back into the type-in field all the time, which is annoying and error-prone.

The offline player does a much better job of that.