do we even want voice?

I'm not belittling or patronizing anyone. I'm an actor, expressing to the public what true role play is...am I wrong?

Just because you have a southern accent does not mean you can't role play. You can either work on eliminating that accent, or you can create a blend of your accent with a new one. Do any of us in the real-world know what a Norrathian Fae sounds like? Have you met one? The fantasy is up to you...if you can't get into your mates character because it doesn't sound right, then maybe you need to get "lost" in the fantasy a little more.

Lastly, role play is role play Morwen...anytime you are not "acting" as yourself, and you are being another character, it is considered role play--regardless whether you have a script or not.

True. And I choose not to have my expectations dashed.

k was soo not going to respond here but seeing as it's you asking the question...... i'm not anti-voice but will not be using it, and i do have concerns about the social implications. i've commented in various other voice threads around on the forums so will not bore everyone with a repeat of what i've already said, but that's the short version .

You should have seen me in high school! I had a stiff cloak, then, too!

Definitely! Especially because we can't buy any right now

I'll ask again, if any of you had been given the decision of which third party program that SL residents use to replace, would *any* of you have picked Ventrilo? Does anyone really believe that the amount of time and resources will bring about an equitable improvement in the quality of the SL experience?

Yeah, I do anyways. Voice is fun after a few gin and tonics and a great way to finally be able to hear the dulcet tones of your friends farts.

A few other things i'm still waiting for:

1. web on a prim
2. windlight (better skies)
3. speedtree, which the LL content guys were talking about 2 years ago (better trees, you can google this and see the sort of trees I'm talking about)

Yes but theres a little bit of a difference.

Becuase those agaisnt voice are the ones who are going to be the ones negatively impacted by this.

The ones who want to voice wont be.

Thus seeking some acceptance and maybe even dilligence with reguards to some of their concerns is important to many non-voicers.



-----------------------------------------------------
---- for example the welcome area----------

Someone -
(Im sure volunteers would apply )

Could stand in the welcome area to help out new residents being cajoled and berated for not using voice.

Give them the ability to blanket mute the whole area till people settle down perhaps.

The welcome area harassment is probably the single trickiest spot since the users are new and dont know whats going on, and they really dont have anywhere else to go.

I think this would be more help then including a

"How to speed Mute groups of people" in the new user tutorial.

Just FYI - I bothered to DL and load the newest Voice client, to check out the state of the Chatterbox UI. Can't do much else with TP and other critical SL features still hosed...

The Chatterbox UI still defaults to twice as high as the old Chat History or IM windows did. That means by default, the Chatterbox UI still eats up twice as much screen area as before. At the size I normally run SL in on my system, that means half my screen area is eaten up bu the Chatterbox. I am effectively blind to what is going on near me while using it.

To their credit, I can FINALLY tear the Chat History window off the Chatterbox and make it resize back fown to its former small size. But now I have to take an extra step to do that.

IM windows have the same issue - and worse problems. Yes, after you use a couple different panes of the Chatterbox to open an IM with someone, you can tear off that IM conversation and downsize it. Close the Chatterbox and that Im window is no worse than the old one for size, though it took several screen-eating steps to get there. However, if you want to have more than one IM conversation going, you either have to tear off a seperate IM window for each one, OR you have to use the larger Chatterbox UI. I would imagien that whenever a new IM comes in, it will still be the huge Chatterbox that I must open before I can get to it...

In my present use, it is not at all uncommon for me to have an inch-high Chat History at the bottom of my screen, and an inch-high IM window at the top, and to have 5 to 7 IM conversations going on at the same time as the in-person text-chatting. I can't se how that will be possible with the new Voice Client, without either covering my whole screen with windows, and blinding myself, or getting a major hardware upgrade so I can run SL in a mega-huge cinema display.

Personally, IF my own user experience (IM's and text chat UI) was unaffected by the coming of Voice, I would just disable it personally and on my land, and not give a fig whether others use Voice or not. It will be banned on my land, and anyone who uses it in an unfriuendly way near me will get Muted.

But they won't allow that, will they? They screw with the text UI when there is no reason to, other than to make it harder to use anything but Voice. And if that is the price to pay for others to have Voice, I would just as soon not pay it, thank you.

To me, Voice Chat means that when I try to communicate, I end up blind, and may as well be in a text-only forum. Fortunately, I hope to soon upgrade to a far better computer, and I guess part of that will have to be a huge display, so I can continue to use these out-sized Text Communication tools and still see what I am doing in SL.

Voice - generally good for meetings, chatting, socializing.

Voice - generally bad for RP.

Text-enhanced graphical RP allows myriad participants to interact with one another in an environment that fosters *thought* before reaction (generally speaking, of course). Hesitation in making a post in an RP environment is seen as something *normal* as a participant crafts a reply, or handles a situation. It encourages descriptive narration, and perhaps most importantly, provides a "log" of sorts for reference in regard to context.

I simply won't use voice all that much for my entertainment, and actually I'll use it rather sparingly, in other situations, too.

As an educator, I stand with a throng of my fellows in bemoaning the general collapse of writing and composition skills among students. In my field, that's a terrible shame, and I'll do whatever I can to encourage my students to actually *think* before they act. Forcing them to use a text-based environment in our SL-based classroom interactions is a great way for doing that.

Yes, there is a VAST increase in the quality of the SL experience that voice brings. I've previously listed many examples...the time and resources being put into SL are extremely reasonable...

* I can speak with clients much more efficiently
* Teachers can teach to a classroom
* Musicians can play to an audience without streaming software
* role play can be vocalized now
* friends and I can talk more freely and clearly
* emotion, satire, humor, and sarcasm is much more easily understood

Those are just a FEW reasons why voice is a good thing.

I think the ones so adamantly anti-voice have trouble with these IRL and are nervously anticipating more awkward social situations...which is what they came here to get away from in the first place.

Otherwise the "I have a speech impediment", "I don't have a mic", "I just don't want to talk to just anyone on the phone or in SL" people seem to be okay with it existing yet not using it.

To each there own...which I think is the basis of this arguement to begin with!

Taking your advice and putting you back on ignore.

You can have whatever opinions you want, dont care.

Problem solved!

As a newly emerged SL RolePlayer, I can see where voicing would detract from my performance. Verbally sometimes I say the first thought that pops into my head, where in writing I think, re read and edit before sending, enhancing my performance. it must be working as I am getting compliments when revealing that i have been at it less tha 2 weeks. It's all about choice, and unfortunately possibly one group is possibly going to be ostracized for their choice. And that isn't right.

well, our sim has voice since day one.
We use teamspeak for voice and the advantage is that we can use it grid wide and even offline from Sl to chat with staff members, residents, friends etc etc. multi-channels allow us to give residents their own private channels or we can jump inot a admin channel to talk about recent events, changes etc and keep some privacy.

Now the only problem I see in SL voice is that some people might not be what they pretend they are and of course do not want to be faced with the fact that they can't hide any more.

for example.. you meet this really hot Sl escort, you take her back to your place and your place got voice.. and then this bloke tells you "get down and...". well, I guess you get the point.

We will stick with teamspeak no matter what, and the people who dont want to come to our TS server, well they miss a lot and still have to type all day...

awwww huggers

I think you were complimenting me LOL

and well said, no judgment on others

It's going to -kill- roleplay. It's already banned on all the RP sims I know of.

The reason so many people wanted voice to not be implemented at all was the simple fact that if it's there then people are going to use it. That means unless you've got voice enabled everywhere you go, you're going to miss conversations, etc.

Using improvisational skills to role play increases brain activity and quick thinking skills just as much (if not more) than thinking and then writing a response.

I know it's harder to do...but it's what real role play has always been. Text based role play is actually quite a new thing compared to centuries of story telling, theatre, and general role play. In fact, I find it funny that role players aren't embracing voice.

god forbid you have to push one button

(after that it stays torn off unless you put it back on)

as for the rest of your post, no comment

I don't want to roll up on a big, husky, dark figure in a cloak, speak to him and hear the comic book guy's voice come out of him...or her.

I am with the anti-voice RP crowd. I'm pro-voice for combat, though. It's just a lot more efficient to talk than to type in the heat of battle!

It's going to kill role play? If you'll excuse me from saying this, but voice STARTED role play. Centuries ago. It's only recently that text-based role play has come into existence.

Why don't you just try it? I think you guys need to stop being so insecure, and give your dragon a cool voice--I don't care if it's a southern dragon, or a German dragon...just give it a voice...and have fun. Confidence is the key to all you do. Believe in yourself, and so will I.

I would debate the efficiency in speaking with clients. If you are misheard, misunderstood, there's nothing for them to scroll up and reread. There are no logs for them to keep as notes.

Musicians will need more than a headset to perform live with voice. I see little difference between serving audio through SL and serving it through something like shoutcast. I'm interested in seeing the quality of performances recorded with the average consumer microphones through SL.

Role play, as has been pointed out isn't as akin to acting as you are pretending. Most people aren't actors, have no wish to be an actor, and *gasp* still enjoy roleplay. They choose a venue that fits them for roleplay. Add voice and your choices become limited to what you can voice. You're pretending that roleplayers should be happy about being more limited.

Freely and clearly is also, again subjective. I find text to be far more clear than voice a good portion of the time. My mind wanders, I don't have to wonder what you just said. If I need to get up to answer the phone, I come back and there is text to read of what I missed. If it is night time and my family is asleep, I don't have to wear headphones to read.

You can't have one, and not the other Squeeze.

It's not so much that (I do not think that there are many men roleplaying as escorts), but the soccer mom who does RP as an escort or a dancer and doesn't want to do it in voice because of background noise or shoving her escape in her husband's face or the college student who is doing it, but won't do it in voice because she doesn't want her roommates to hear her. It inserts limits into what is possible because it is much more invasive in real life than typing on a keyboard is -- any way you look at it.



Graphically-enhanced text-based roleplay (which is a summary of what SL is for many people, whether they are involved in "traditional roleplay or not) is much more immersive than what has been previously available precisely because it is much more segregated from real life. It's that segregation -- and the immersion it fosters -- that people enjoy and which is downgraded by the addition of voice -- it's a step backwards for many people.