Blizzard posts a Voice Chat FAQ
by Mike Schramm 
Sep 14th 2007 at 1:30PM
European CM Salthem has posted a Frequently Asked Questions about the new voice chat feature coming in the next patch (which has got to be just around the corner, right?). There's not much new here, but there is a lot of Blizzard confirming what players have already discovered about the voice chat system. People will be one-click mute-able, and voice chat will be able to be disabled by Parental Controls. Blizzard also makes a few interesting points about bandwidth-- while they say voice chat won't have a big effect on those with high bandwidth connections, they say people who currently experience high latency will likely have bigger problems.
And perhaps most disappointingly, they almost sound apologetic about the quality of the sound. They recommend multi-thread processors (as if that's something someone can really upgrade to without getting a whole new computer), and they acknowledge that third party applications will likely have much better quality.
Not that their voice chat system is bad-- as I've said before (and as we found out in the voice chat survey), lots of players will definitely use it. But third party applications aren't going away anytime soon either.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tridus Sep 14th 2007 1:56PM
This looks vaugely familar to what Drysic posted in the US over a month ago: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=942815291&sid=1
And then updated two weeks ago: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1272012664&sid=1
Better late then never I suppose. :)
Ryan Sep 14th 2007 1:59PM
"When taking all of these factors into consideration, we feel that our voice chat feature offers an overall superior experience to third party applications."
Somewhat confirms my suspicion that Blizz is just trying to put the Ventrillo services out of business. A shame really, considering how much they contribute to community sites & podcasts (I don't think I've ever seen Blizz donate a single dime to community activities).
dekulink Sep 14th 2007 2:09PM
You crazy Europeans, we've had this FAQ all along ;)
Mike Sep 14th 2007 8:35PM
I have been on the PTR for a couple of days and the voice chat system doesn't work. Or maybe I just don't get how to get it to work. Either way...hopefully they work some stuff out.
Tridus Sep 14th 2007 2:16PM
@2
Thats just silly. If they really wanted to put Ventrillo hosts out of business, they could do something silly like take exclusive access to the sound output while WoW is running. That'd screw things up nicely for Vent.
Not that they can put Vent out of business anyway, its used in lots of other games. Nor do they want to.
Lets be honest, do you really expect them to say "yeah we spent a lot of time on this voice chat thing, but it sucks and you should use Vent"? Of course they're going to say their own product is useful.
People using vent now aren't going to switch, but the internal voice chat is a boon for PUGs and really small guilds who can't justify spending the money on it. Its a good addition to the game, not a conspiracy.
Dave Sep 14th 2007 2:19PM
It sounds to me like you interpreted this all wrong. I don't get an apologetic tone from it at all. To me it just sounds like they are explaining that if you have a better computer it's going to work better, something that is ESPECIALLY true with third party-applications also since a third party application not only runs in a separate thread but also in a separate process altogether. And as far as saying the voice chat may not be as high quality, that's just them using CYA to make sure that any complaints can be dealt with by simply saying: "It's free and easy, don't expect perfection." All corporations use CYA tactics like that, i should know I work at comcast.
Dave Sep 14th 2007 2:20PM
I don't think Blizzard is going after Ventrillo/TS, as much as they're trying to give you the appropriate amount of value for your account without you having to pay more than $15/mo for the complete WoW experience. It's really aimed at guilds and guild leadership more than anything I think.
Guild banks are the same idea. Lots of guilds have to purchase a second account to have a bank (just so they can get multiple characters to be banks if they're a large enough guild), so rather than a guild having to shell out $$/mo and another full copy of the game, they're responding to demands that they could add guild banks and everyone saves money.
Same goes for chat. The main people who use it, are guilds obviously. That's an extra amount of $$/mo that guilds have to pay just to have a complete experience in the game. Blizzard realizes that their raids are impossible without voice coordination for the most part (debateable, but I don't think many serious guilds aren't using vent/ts for raids). So, to alleviate the problem they're adding voice chat.
After all, the newer games out there are coming with it built-in... and that's yet another compelling reason to play a different game. Like the article the other day, people tend to migrate from game to game as a pack, and if you've got a guild that's tired of paying $50+/mo for a large enough vent server and an account for your guild bank on top of the $15/mo for their individual accounts... it creates a pretty decent motivation to bail on WoW at the next big gear reset.
So, it's not necessarily a move to put Vent out of business, but at the same time Blizzard realizes that they have to add stupid crap like this to the game to keep certain groups of people happy. Clearly Blizzard designs the game for the raiding crowd, this is nothing different.
Slayblaze Sep 14th 2007 2:47PM
@5 - he did say they "almost sound" apologetic, not that they "do sound" etc...
And I would agree that the tone is not quite apologetic - but almost!
Actually its a good sign if their code is optimized for multi-threading, as there are more and more multicore processors being used and the numbers increase every day. I just hope it really does make a difference.
Armath Sep 14th 2007 4:15PM
The more I hear about how voice chat works, the more I come to believe that this was developed primarily by a separate group at Blizzard, not the core WoW developers. This is something that will be in Starcraft II, using essentially the same server code and client code. I suspect that a relatively small amount of effort went into the WoW side of this, so while it is a substantial enhancement, I don't think it took much away from other WoW development.
In response to 6, I think this is targeted more at the casual players and smaller guilds, rather than the big ones. I pay for the vent server for my guild, but I don't think it gets much use. As soon as this goes live, I'll drop the vent server.
Another nice thing about this is that it's all in-game, versus requireing an external app that needs to be configured, and external servers that need to be set up with passwords and other configuration. Definitely oriented toward the more casual players and guilds.
Andrew Sep 14th 2007 4:18PM
@4 "Thats just silly. If they really wanted to put Ventrillo hosts out of business, they could do something silly like take exclusive access to the sound output while WoW is running. That'd screw things up nicely for Vent."
And probably result in an antitrust lawsuit!
Anomis Sep 14th 2007 5:38PM
30/08 Voice Chat FAQ
Its old only new thing is
Q: How does the World of Warcraft voice chat compare to third party voice chat services?
A: In the course of developing our voice chat technology, our goal has been to strike a balance between audio quality and system performance. As our voice chat technology is integrated directly into the World of Warcraft game client, there are many technical considerations we’ve had to account for that are not a factor for third party voice applications. As a result, we are fully aware that there may be external voice applications that will offer improved voice quality over our own in-game feature. The key point to keep in mind is that our voice chat technology is tied directly into our user interface, making it extremely easy to set up and use. It also operates with minimal impact to game performance, and the bandwidth usage for voice communication is offered at no additional cost to the player. When taking all of these factors into consideration, we feel that our voice chat feature offers an overall superior experience to third party applications.
Which was posted today