70% of WoW Insider readers will be on Voice Chat
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 7th 2007 at 3:00PM
But clearly Blizzard was right to put the time in-- there is a good majority of players ready to plug a mic in and start speaking to each other. Very interesting.
Update: You're right, commenters. Title updated from "players" to "WoW Insider readers," since that's who we actually polled. I only got a B in Stats class in college.
Filed under: Patches, Polls, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Todd Sep 7th 2007 3:15PM
Vent works fine for me. However, I'll be willing to give the new voice chat a chance. Unless everyone is willing to convert over, though, some people might be stuck using this or that before everyone converts.
Slayblaze Sep 7th 2007 3:18PM
Its not that surprising when you consider all the online games that come with voice communication built-in from the start, both Console and PC games. I think the first game I bought with voice chat hard-coded into the game from the beginning was Unreal Tournament 2004, and that was quite some time ago.
I'm more surprised that in this day and age that WoW was ever released without voice chat when so many other games have it built-in. It remains to be seen whether the quality will be good enough that those 70% actually keep using it, in my mind thats the kicker. Hopefully there will be a extra high-quality setting for those of us with speedy connections.
Dotixi Sep 7th 2007 3:22PM
I probably won't use it much but I'll try it out just to see how it works...I mean, why wouldn't I? Seems moronic to not try out new features.
Argall Sep 7th 2007 3:25PM
It won't be an instant conversion but I guarantee by the next expansion at least 90%+ of players will use it. Why? It's just convient and as Blizzard works the bugs out of it, it'll be more useful.
Brian Sep 7th 2007 3:27PM
I shall be trying Blizzard's voice chat but I want to know how it works and what the limits are. Can channels be passworded for example. I suspect I will treat it as an experiment in using voicechat and then if successful go over to Ventrillo or similar.
r.a-c.r. Sep 7th 2007 3:27PM
Stats:
Your survey only concludes that if you readers who are likely to vote in such a pole hold that position. The title of your article is quite misleading.
Also I voted that I would, however, I am going to wait until raid and guild chat is implemented and fully tested/debugged.
So my vote doesn't count. pthbbbbbt :P
Ghen Sep 7th 2007 3:29PM
I predict guilds creating raids just for talking since voice chat won't work over /gu channels.
LanceG33 Sep 7th 2007 8:20PM
I think it's worth distinguishing between 70% of the playerbase and 70% of the people that voted on WoWInsider.
I would expect the 70% to go down sharply when looking at the silent majority of all players.
Dracula Jones Sep 7th 2007 3:33PM
Definitely will be using it, but part of me thinks voicechat is an organizational crutch, anyway. We didn't need voicechat to pull off highly successful 6 hour, 100 man raids in EQ, damn it. All with zonewide /shout spam about who's camping what cluttering up chat. L`Malla ftw
Tinwhisker Sep 7th 2007 3:35PM
@7 Ghen
Yes, but you can't complete quests inside a raid, not to mention group with anyone else.
Ryan Sep 7th 2007 3:41PM
Yea I'll use it for pugs and guild chat and such. But I'm going to be weary of the short ignore list and am dreading what the gold-spammers will be able to do with it.
Raids will still be done in vent, as it's separate from wow and people will still be able to talk when they can't log in (which happens quite frequently).
Thijz Sep 7th 2007 4:14PM
There's one big flaw in this whole article. Myself and (I'm pretty sure) a lot of the other voters voted 'Yes' but it has to work good and I won't be using it all the time.
Brian Sep 7th 2007 4:48PM
I would also like to add that my interest in voice chat comes from listening to American podcasts and hearing how it effects their game and guilds etc. I would initially only use it with good friends as my language can be quite rude but I'm interested in it because if I get a Vet server We will be able to talk across factions and then if my brother needs some help from me with my 70 Dwarf I can come help him. I am trying to teach him to play the game properly and being able to talk to him via a headset beats yelling down the hall.
Rook Sep 7th 2007 5:10PM
Although I appreciate the advantages of voice chat and have used it in Quake and Tribes 2 to great effect, I just shudder to think of some of the awful accents and squeaky voices that will be coming out of these more story based Warcraft characters.
I have a suspicion that it will also further segregate players on English speaking EU servers into groups based on nationality that happens to some extent already.
Berethrix Sep 8th 2007 2:09PM
Ahhh well this will further alienate some of those players who are deaf or hard of hearing and cannot utilize voice chat based combat. I luckily have found an awesome guild that merits my gameplay rather than my ability to hear and use voice based communications. My only concern is that they will add voice enabled NPCs and would further alienate those of us who cannot decipher speech... If that happens, guess myself and several of my other buddies in my shoes will have to find a different MMO...
theremover Sep 8th 2007 4:11PM
I hate vent, voicechat and anything like that in World of Warcraft. Why?
It completely ruins the experience. No i'm not an RPer. But I enjoy being immersed in the beautiful world, complete with ambient sounds and whatnot.
Hearing people's voices all the time is distracting in this sense and also in game play.
Sure, I can see having a conversation right before a boss or something if it requires a complicated strategy, but you can do that with party chat anyway.
Juliah Sep 10th 2007 4:51PM
I didn't get a chance to vote before you posted this article, so here's one more "no". I'm a roleplayer, and while I play a character of my own gender (female), I know there are an awful lot of guys who play opposite, so it would be very disjunctive for me to hear a male voice coming out of a female avatar, and vice-versa.