Voicing concerns over VOIP
by Robin Torres 
Jul 18th 2007 at 9:00AM
Some people on the forums are voicing concerns over the upcoming VOIP feature being added in Patch 2.2. For example, player Farnsworth is afraid that all he is going to hear is kids playing music. CM Drysc's response is /right click
/ignore
Enjoy the silence.
There are basic features that will be built in to the Integrated Voice feature such as being able to ignore individual players' voices. But the most important thing to remember is that the feature is optional. Just as the quality of online play varies with the people with whom you are playing, so does the quality of online voice vary with the people to whom you choose to listen. We all hope for pleasant voices from informed minds, but what we usually get ranges from the comedic to the downright scary, as illustrated here.
Another forum thread (unfortunately, now deleted) suggested that no one was going to use integrated voice and that it was a waste of development resources. A different player asked "What do you think Blizzard is made up of? One guy named Bill Izzard who has to do everything?" Drysc responded with
Bill's a nice guy, but you're right, we also have Bly Zizzard. So, yeah, two people who do everything. But really I don't think it's important to justify our development pipelines, or explain that a programmer is different from an artist, or UI designer, or web designer. If you don't want to use the voice chat feature you'll be able to disable it.
Yes, voice chat is optional, but will disabling it pose a different problem? Will it become mandatory for grouping? Drysc made some recommendations (in the same deleted thread) for dealing with this situation:
"I don't have a mic"
"I don't want to talk, I can listen if you need"
"I prefer to chat through text"
Now sure, you're going to run into someone that will not allow you in their PUG if you aren't communicating through voice chat but I seriously doubt that will be anywhere near the norm. It's easy now to assume that as a worse case scenario will somehow become common place. Those same people are the ones that have to micro-manage some of easier 5-man runs, and are going to kick you out if you spent one talent point wrong. No real loss there anyway. If it's a real problem, start your own group.
There are many games, particularly on consoles, where VOIP is already included, such as Eve Online. So while this is a change for us now, integrated voice will probably be the norm for all future MMOs. Personally, I am looking forward to not having to deal with a separate program for voice-coordinated groups.
Do you think you'll use the integrated voice feature? Do you think it will become mandatory for PUGs? Are you amused by weirdos like the one pictured above or do they give you nightmares?
[Illustration from Unique Fauna by Penny Arcade]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Arcfire Jul 18th 2007 9:09AM
Sure there are people who are going to abuse the voice chat, but overall I think it will be good to be able to use in-game voice when you are in a group instead of alt-tabbing and fuddling around with vent to find the people you want to communicate with.
Vent will still be used, for sure, but this will probably become the norm.
Thank god for ignore, however.
Lizardking63 Jul 18th 2007 9:13AM
I think it is a great thing. I have used the VOIP in Xbox and it works really well...we can only hope the WoW version works as well. Currently, we have a guild Vent, but if you are in a PUG, you really don't want to give them your vent info. So, this is a way for PUGS to communicate without the hassle of typing.
I am looking forward to using this new tool.
christopher.coke Jul 18th 2007 9:17AM
I think that VOIP will be a good tool for a lot of reasons; however, I think there will be an awful lot of /ignore going on - just going by the player base. I haven't heard anyone mention it, but I think it will also detract from the rp aspect of the game - even though it's not for everyone, some people do enjoy it. It might be funny to hear someone try to talk like a dwarf or an orc but I think it'll also be a detriment.
Overall, I can get over it and welcome it to the game because the pro's outweigh the con's and can be handled with that one little command :-)
debris Jul 19th 2007 1:35PM
I wonder if they will give the capability to split the audio signals i.e. have voice going over my headset and the game sounds going over the speakers. Thats how I have it now with our vent server and my USB headset.
Prauche Jul 18th 2007 9:18AM
I find this to be GREAT. The only reason being: My close-knit group and I have a private vent server; if we run with another group or a guild run, we're all in the same channel on whatever server we're on; now, with in-game voip, we can be using that AND be on our own private vent server to make snide comments about others' playstyle, rolling on loot they shouldn't be, poor spec, etc -- or just talking about personal crap while the group is taking a break -- while they can't hear it -- instead of having to type it all. SWEET!
Safety Dancer Jul 18th 2007 9:19AM
Good Feature, but I have a feeling WoW devs will blow it :P. I love VoIP tho.
Rihahn Jul 18th 2007 9:24AM
I'll take the other side of the argument and point out that while built-in voice comms may well work for other games, WoW seems to have a much larger percentage of freakshow rejects than any other game currently in operation... On my server you *have* to disable general chat and trade chat if you want to have a prayer of catching anything important... And those are just the freaks with enough drive to actually type - imagine the increase when all they have to do is open their mouth...
Now, I do realize that there is an 'ignore' feature - but I don't see there being enough allocated space in the feature to cover say, 2000 entries.
This might work if they have a way of limiting the chat by level - say level 40 - which seems to be the level the hardcore undesireables can't get past.
Overall I'm reserving judgement. There is the guild vent, and it is good, so there's always that to fall back on.
Memzer Jul 18th 2007 9:30AM
I'll wait to see how blizzard implement it before I judge it :)
That being said; can you imagine using VoIP in your typical AV :/
Galipan Jul 18th 2007 9:31AM
I find it to be a fantastic idea to have voip, the only concern I have, is not hearing the squirrelnoobs (as shown above) its the lag. My ping goes as high up as the 700s when I'm running vent and WoW, I'm scared that something will go horribly wrong when this is implemented and green latency will now be in the 500s.
Razhlok Jul 18th 2007 9:34AM
@7 - I believe, to start, voice chat channels are limited to party/raid. Sure Trade/General/Barrens are a wasteland of retards spewing forth whatever drivel appears first in their brain. But, when was the last time you left party/raid chat?
Swiss Jul 18th 2007 9:39AM
What I'd really love to see are a couple different options for VOIP. One would be the standard "walkie-talkie" type channel chat for chatting with party/raid members. Not having to spam Vent/TS info (or give out private info to PUG members) is really nice.
The other would be to have voice communications that are able to be heard from only a certain distance away that didn't require you to be in a group. Sure, busy places like the auction house might be loud- but if you're out grinding somewhere and see someone else nearby, it would be cool to just be able to start talking with them.
This is something that had been talked about being implemented into battlefield 2, but never happened. For those that remember, BF2 had such a terrible VOIP implementation that only allowed players in the same squad to hear each other- and no one else- even if there were 30+ people on your same team.
Just like in any other game with built in VOIP, you're going to get griefers and people spamming music over their mic- but the benefits far outweigh the potential annoyances, in my opinion.
Thijz Jul 18th 2007 9:44AM
I wonder how they're going to deal with the range of the Voice Chat. They said you can only hear people that are in a certain range, but what if you're walking through one of the major cities, you will hear thousands of none-finished sentences (people might be in the middle of a sentence as soon as you move out of range)...
SJPadbury Jul 18th 2007 9:59AM
What I hope they do is have the VOIP ignore seperate from the global ignore. If you group with someone who has music blasting, you don't want to have them drowning everything out, but you still want them to have _some_ option to communicate with you, hopefully to tell you they've corrected the situation.
java Jul 18th 2007 10:54AM
I have a couple concerns with VoIP. First and foremost, I hope you have an option to have it turn on only when you are in a group. Personally I find myself leaving /trade or /general or slash whatever when people want to be rude, disingenuious, lack general courtesy and what not in the regional or standard text chat channels. For me not having this type of option would be highly detrimental to my overall experience.
The other concern is not so much for me but my friends at Blizzard. I certainly hope they have the ability to police this type of connectivity as I'm certain with so many people playing the game some are going to be so immature to say what could be construed as physcial threats, racism or other predjudicial remark that could be considered illegal by some states or federal law (hate crimes). I say this because from a laymens perspective, I see someone in this game trying to head out to the land of jackpot juries (California, where Blizzard is headquartered)and trying to take a chunk out of our friends at blizzard and ruining the entire upgrade for all.
I've always felt that Blizzard knew that using a 3rd party application in the background was quite common and from a laymens perspective, I thought it was a safe play based on the fact that by doing so it removed all liabilty from any said actionable event would be born by the owner of the VoIP server, probably someone not worth suing. I think its a great idea to build it into the game, but I will be keeping my personal vent server none the less and praying for a default ability to shut the whole thing off.
Good luck with all that.
Java
math Jul 18th 2007 10:00AM
@9 I have those same concerns. What about those who are on dailup? Or those who are on a satellite connection(like me). It would suck to add more lag to my already 700ms ping...
Franky Jul 18th 2007 10:29AM
I can only imagine that this will be a colossal technological failure. I'm guessing it will be rolled back in a matter of days. Get ready for LAAAAAAGGGGGGG.
Kire Jul 18th 2007 10:44AM
Im on dial-up as well and im concerned about my latency as well. If this will cause any extra traffic to us dial-up users we will have to quit the game because it will become useless. I hope Blizz really takes a good look at this before implementing. Not everyone in the world has highspeed internet available to them. I would bet they would lose 2 to 3 million of the user base.
Paw Jul 18th 2007 10:47AM
I guess if you desire to talk this is a good thing. So long as I can opt out via a quick check box in the options menu I'll be fine with it. I have no desire to talk to anyone while I am playing. If that keeps me out of some PuGs for not having voice enabled, I didn't want to be in that PuG anyways.
Kyle Jul 18th 2007 10:54AM
When I first heard about the VOIP feature, I presumed it would be limited to groups and raids. It could also be useful for guild or private chat channels.
But I can't imagine they would design it such that you could hear every stranger you passed by as you travelled in the world, or that they would allow chat on common channels like General or Trade where there could be many, many people attempting to talk at the same time.
Avery Jul 18th 2007 11:12AM
@#8
Not only should you think about the typical AV, think about barrens chat :|
Overall I'll just wait and see how it goes. After its implemented I'm sure there will be several tweaks to fine tune it and make it more desirable.
I find ways to skip out of vent in pug groups anyway (usually in there with teenage boys who are shocked that a girl can play WoW) so I'm sure I'll find ways to skip out of the VoIP in pugs too :D