I wonder why everything gets unloaded and then obviously has to be re-loaded, when in fact merely the map itself would need to be loaded.
However, in the end there should be no loading times, zone transitions should be seamless, but that has been discussed on other threads.
I agree, however: if your computer isn\'t high-end, then your chat experience while loading would likely be just like now: nonexistant.

What I\'d find more interesting is to have ooc commands, such as using /help or /advice, usable while waiting for the transition to the DR. It wouldn\'t hurt realism, since these are OOC anyway, but might make things more fluent occasionally. Even /tell could be included, since it\'s OOC as well and in the few occasions where it isn\'t, the player will be fully aware of that and refrain from using it, anyway.