Voice Chat Can Really Kill the Mood on WoW

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/06/games_frontiers_0617

World of Warcraft is a different animal, though. A role playing one.

Interesting nevertheless.

Meh

All this worry about voicechat when it's something you don't have to use.

Really don't want to know? Turn it off every time you log.

Personally I am looking forward to it, cos it saves me from having to run a Skype too.

i have started a scripting project in another game, well i have to say the voice broke a bit the mood, i discovered that my 3 recruits where 15 and 16 years old, makes me feel pretty old from my 25 :/

I don't think i am an ageist but i would prefers working with peoples that are in my age slice...

Voice will totally change the way we currently see each other. There is a big difference in the way we imagine a persons voice and personality, and they way it really is in real life. In text it's not as easy to instantly see our ages, origin, sex, race, and so on. You can't hear each others surroundings (kids pets ect in the backround) I just think it will be a huge change in the way we do things and see each other on second life.

Same animal to me. SL is roleplaying to me, more intense in specific sims but roleplaying nontheless. It doesn't help that I can't voice my characters..

I have no intention of using voice and for all those reasons outlined in WoW as I ahve a picture in my head of people already and dont really want to have it ruined. I roleplay this game even as a "businessman" I project a certain image which is nothing like the "real me" in the real world and I am sure others hear me a certain way.

What killed it for me with voice was hearing an orc with a bostonian accent and a couple of elves who sounded like southerners and a dark elf with an aussie accent and then there was the nose breathing kid ..

I plugged ventrillo in two or three times because others insisted on it and had similar experiences and truly hate it with a passion. I see no reason why I will suddenly like voice here. Maybe if i was giving a class or something okay maybe I Might consider it for teaching purposes but not for everday use. Also I think all this in the WoW article has been said on these boards already.

People who hate voice from any other game will hate voice here and for all the same reasons. I dont think its going to be such a hit as all that. In fact when I had the voice firstlook viewer thingy on I already disabled it on my land hehe

It will ruin some people's experiences and images and they will turn voice off then those who are left with liking that experience will leave it on and life will continue. Come to "my place" though and expect to type

I think Sarah has a point actually. But then, for me, the people I talk to on here have already become something outside SL if I actually am to speak to them. For people in SL itself - and this includes people I consider close friends - adding voice doesn't actually add anything for me.

The other thing to bear in mind is that often a guy speaking to a girl is going to form deeper feelings for her (if for no other reason than knowing she IS a girl) and if that's not something you want to happen then you need to really think about it ...

I don't actually care about people hearing what I sound like per se. I do the voice announcements for the phone systems for all our clients so my voice is pretty well distributed in the UK However, within SL, I think I'll just keep that for special people.

Having the voice option in WoW could be useful in some circumstances.

For example last night I was trying to get to Lights Hope Chapel (an Alliance Flight point) in the Eastern Plague lands. It is a level 53-60 zone and the nastiest zone I have visited yet.

I travelled up from Chillwind Point, easy enough to get to as I am a level 42 Night Elf Druid with a mount (as well as Druid shape change), but had I not encountered a high level group heading for an Instance, I would have been doomed. We agreed I would join the party and use my health channel abilities to support the group (despite my repeated deaths) in return for an escorted journey to Lights Hope Chapel.

The point I am making here is that the negotiations to achieve this task would have been far easier with voice, text talk in these circumstances is too slow, especially while trying simultaneously not to panic when being harassed by a co-operative group of high level humanoid monsters......

Also in organised raids I can also see the advantages of voice......

In SL I can see similar circumstances, which is a voice option may have its uses from time to time. I think in these circumstances it should be enabled across the Grid, with individual users having the automatic option not to purchase the necessary equipment and/or disconnecting their voice equipment. After all 99% of all virtual land in SL is user owned and if I am standing on open access land and wish to voice talk to somebody why should the land owner prevent me.

Finally a question, is there a voice option in WoW??

Interested to know, thanks in advance

Regards

John

I tried DDO, voice totally ruined it. SL will be some different since we are all supposed to be adults. As for the RP, my main is me, yes he is richer and better looking.......hehe, but still me. So he has a slow soft draw, just like me.

I am one of many many SL Mommies. I have an SL daughter who is going on 4 (for the 2nd time) this month and more SL nieces and nephews than I can keep track of. I also help my niece run a kids mall. Who wants to listen to 4 - 8 year old SL kids talk like adults?

I had a jarring experience with the Brief Period I had the Beta. I don't have a microphone, but was listening. Besids the insipid chattering, I ran into a friend. She presents, at least to me, a certain way, and I have a voice imagined for her. Well, her real voice is NOTHING like what I imagined, and actually could be considered annoying. (Coming from me, whose own voice isn't exactly a croon, it's been described by people who like me as a cross between Roseanne and Fran Drescher. I can only imagine how people who don't like me describe it.) Nope. No Voice Chat for me. I am not conerned about it being implemented, I don't think it will be the end of SL. Everyone knows Windlight is the bringer of Doom....

I have a female alt. Suffice to say that I will not be using voice chat with her.

And no, she doesn't cyber before you ask. I'm not overly concerned that not using voice will make people suspect that she's really a guy in RL, since she's not for cybering. She's a poper lady.

Really she exists because I plan on at some pointing starting a clothing boutique, and I figured womens clothes designed by a "woman" would have more marketting potential. I may not be the case, but I still wasn't overly keen on the idea of my butch manly male avatar making dresses and women's knickers.

Conan, most of the truly great Fashion Designers (With some exceptions) are Men. Albeit Gay Men. Maybe it's not your Alt's image you should worry about...

Ummm

I am one of the many people who don't especially like kids and don't hang around where there are people roleplaying as SL kids. So, not QUITE so bluntly as it might sound ... who wants to hear adults talking like kids? Typing is bad enough IM(not even a little bit H) O

I think voice for SL is an excellent idea.

I've tested it quite a bit in Beta and it
works very well. So convenient to just
chat without typing. There's little to no
lag added...in fact the sim you're in can
completely crash and you can still talk
and be heard as it is operating on its
own channel.

And for those who don't want to use it,
it's simple to turn it off. Just disable
it in Preferences! =) (In Beta it's disabled
by default.)

I have a feeling once Voice is
released in the production client, those
who chose to turn it off will be missing
quite a bit.

- Infrared

Most notably, Headaches......

I know, just look at the late Gianni Versace. Still, I can't see "Conan's Dress Emporium" attracting too many refined ladies.

Voice really won't make a difference. My RL fiance for example has been using TeamSpeak with her SL friends for over a year now, and Skype for one-on-one conversations.

I can't use it though, because I accidentally dropped my headset into a bowl of soup though, so the mic is broken.

I'm in charge of security in a sim. In order to ensure no one is being harassed in the sim, I will have to have voice turned on, but I won't be speaking. I won't even have a mike hooked up. But I'm sure that's going to get me all sorts of weird accusations for having the voice symbol on but not speaking.

C'est la vie.

I'll be having voice switched on, just to hear what's being said about me.

What kind of soup was it? I hope it didn't have mutton in it.......

I shall probably use voice with my few RL/SL chums but for everyone else, Bilbo and my alt, are roleplayers. We like to think carefully our phrasing and our timing.
One of my RL/SL chums is a Dekadance DJ who just SL married a Deka colleague. Having met her in SL and drawn my own picture it was quite literally broken when I heard her voice on the radio stream.
With voice the illusion dies a little.

Cream of Tomato. With croutons.

Yuck, even worse.

The voice option in wow is ventrillo or teamspeak servers. Raid guilds use them etc on RP servers it was not used often, but its a big thing with the raid guilds.

Not really, except as someone pointed out, headache. OH EM GEE I might miss someone insulting me on voice, oh noes, whatever will I do?