Voice chat being rolled out to all US realms
by Elizabeth Harper 
Oct 1st 2007 at 4:50PM
Rolling restarts are happening this afternoon on all US realms that do not yet have voice chat enabled in order to enable voice chat. I can only presume that voice chat is working well on the 42 realms it's currently enabled on, because Blizzard is adding the remaining 183 realms to the service en masse. I can't personally comment on the quality of the service, as it has not yet been implemented on any of the realms I play -- but if this round of restarts goes well, we'll all know by tomorrow. Drysc's original thread about voice chat has been updated with the list of realms that will have voice chat enabled today and Nethaera chimes in to clarify that, yes, this is all remaining realms. Restarts are expected to be finished and all realms back online by 2:00 PM PDT (that's 5:00 PM EST for you on the opposite coast). So if all goes well, expect your realm to be back up soon.Filed under: Realm Status, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Poxus Oct 1st 2007 5:13PM
Already getting the team mates ready to check it out tonight while we grind and quest some, should be interesting.
MonkeySlayer Oct 1st 2007 5:26PM
I'm on Mal'ganis so voice chat was enabled on the weekend. It works alright, but for some the sound might be extremely low regardless of how ur settings are. My mic settings are at max and myfriends can't hear me, maybe it has something to do with my Creative soundcard. I'll be sticking to Vent.
Doc X Oct 1st 2007 5:26PM
I just wish it was enabled for guild chat as well as ad hoc channels. Sadly, that was something that was not implemented. Maybe in 2.3 or 2.4 I'll be able to chat in guild chat and not have to create a separate channel just to use voice chat with guildies.
Epiny Oct 1st 2007 5:33PM
Great now I get to hear barrens chat instead of read it!
Paul Oct 1st 2007 5:56PM
I play on Turalyon, and it did NOT roll out well. We had it a day after the patch for about a day, and then it was taken away, and as of Saturday, hasn't returned.
del Oct 1st 2007 6:03PM
This is one of the biggest epic failurs I have ever seen blizzard commit in my almost 2 year career of wow. Generally, I welcome such changes as this as it will only take them a couple trys at max before its better than almost anything out their.
But their failure does not lie in the producing of this new feature(it does alright, at best). Its that all voice chat programs such as ventrillo and teamspeak are now picked up by warden and are considered third party programs. So... now we have to use the "alright" voice chat no matter what if we want to continue to do cordinated pvp or pve.
What this means is that... ventrilo is now held in blizzards mind, on the same level as programs like wowglider and other things like this. But something so simple as voice chat being held a third party program that can and will get you banned... i fail to understand the logic.
Under that... blizzard could effectively destory ui addons and anything else we use to make our wow experience better. Who knows, maybe in the future they will let you listen to their music through one of their music players and if you try to play with something WMP you get a giant ban slap.
THIS IS TRUELY, A STEP IN THE WRONG DIRECTION!
Mike H Oct 1st 2007 6:09PM
vent does not equal wowglider....seriously
Kuipo Oct 1st 2007 6:13PM
@ #6
Can you site your source on that? I haven't heard anything stating that they are changing their stance on voice chat programs. Right now you are simply spouting false claims.
And seriously... Could you pay a little more attention in English class please?
Addie Oct 1st 2007 6:44PM
O.o http://gwally.com/news/000778.php
naranjar Oct 1st 2007 8:11PM
is there any way to remove the new minimap button? i think that'd be a good addition to a future article about the voicechat function of the game.
i've found that it, like most voicechat programs, are very subject to the hardware of the other people using the service. if the quality of their hardware is not that great, it's gonna be hard to hear them on the other end.
VegasHorde Oct 1st 2007 8:16PM
6-FUD factor
9- CT MOD has an option to hide the mini map button
Khallah Oct 1st 2007 10:23PM
@6 Ventrilo continues to function for my guild as it always has. FUD is right :/
Liel Oct 1st 2007 11:39PM
@6 lol he said "career in wow", Life goes evade bugged on you.
Dahkeus Oct 2nd 2007 12:35AM
Personally I'm rather impressed with the chat. The voice quality is better than what I expected (even if it's not par with Vent). It is a bit of a dissapointment that you can't set up voice chat with guild chat, but then again, all you have to do is create a new channel and give the name to your guildies.
Warrior_Tess Oct 2nd 2007 7:30AM
@6 Um, Bliz has no say in what programs you choose to run in the background that don't directly modify WoW. Vent or Teamspeak is holey apart from WoW. The only commonality is that you happen to use these programs to talk about WoW. Seriously, they can't ban the use of those programs.
Warrior_Tess Oct 2nd 2007 7:35AM
Wow, apparently I can't spell this early in the morning. It should be "wholly"...
clamps Oct 5th 2007 10:21AM
I think they will have some upgrading to do before I start to use the built in voice chat full time. As it stands, when I use vent and talk to people everything is crystal clear. When I chat with the same people using Blizzards voice chat it's muffled and very difficult to hear people. And that's with my settings maxed.
It's nice that they added something like this, and we don't have to pay extra for it. But more work is needed.
Sylythn Oct 2nd 2007 10:17AM
It's really, really soft and low quality...either that or everyone in my guild can't figure out how to set it up properly. We'll be sticking with Vent.