Voice chat activated for EU realms
by Elizabeth Harper 
Oct 10th 2007 at 9:30AM
With the arrival of patch 2.2.3 on the EU realms today, European players should finally be getting voice chat functionality on all realms. Here's to hoping they've taken the time between the US rollout and the EU rollout to work all of the kinks out of the system -- though initial reports aren't promising. At present, voice chat seems to be working on a very limited number of realms, though Blizzard is working on the issue.However, voice chat is working on at least some European realms -- so now I'm going to ask the European players the same thing I asked US players last week: how's the voice chat feature working for you? How's the rollout going?Tell us all about it in the comments!
Filed under: Patches, Realm Status
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
zeem Oct 10th 2007 9:41AM
Just tried it in my guild, it'll probably replace our vent server - I thought it was brilliant. 3 months in development but well worth the time.
Thank you Blizzard.
graxlos Oct 10th 2007 9:49AM
Seems to work fine on dunemaul(EU).
But the server seems quite laggy today
Malacia Oct 10th 2007 9:57AM
Admittedly I'm quite ignorant about the way voice chat works but to me, it just seems like such a pointless feature that is bound to end up being abused and will see most people turning it off or restricting it to friends only - in which case, use ventrillo?
Lios Oct 10th 2007 10:05AM
@Malacia: You do know Ventrillo and Teamspeak are not free? This is. Why use a third party program that you have to pay for and that can be a heavy burden on your system (mine freezes often when i use TS), while you can use the ingame free option? It also enables you to automatically turn down other sounds when someone speaks and it shows you who speaks (no more 2nd third party software to run).
I don't see the downside really, and i do think a lot of people will use it.
evestraw Oct 10th 2007 10:10AM
Teamspeak is free if you host it yourself
server software free
client software free
ventrilo
free with 8 slots
Delphyne Oct 10th 2007 10:23AM
What would be awesome... is if they'd fix it so it works with bluetooth headsets. As it stands right now, it was confirm on release (2.2) that bluetooth headsets can hear, but not talk.
Here's the Blue post about it: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=1778014932&postId=21501931328&sid=1#14
zeem Oct 10th 2007 10:56AM
1. The quality is not much worse then TS (in fact I think its better then TS), and almost as good as vent.
2. This is not appealing to big raiding guilds, its more geared towards those people who only started raiding. I think Blizzard have realised that voice chat is essential to take down some encounters, and like any good company they dont want to "force" their customers into downloading 3rd party clients.
Moondancer Oct 10th 2007 11:04AM
Voice chat is a fine addition to any MMO. Its a leap ahead. It shows, that developers do pay attention to what is happening in their game and constantly try to bring us more and more.
Anyone playing in an instance knows that stopping in the middle of action just to type in: "/rw Add" can cause a lot of unnecessary havoc, resulting in deaths or even wipes.
Not everyone can have Vent or TS, for various reasons. Mostly because they are lazy. Blizzard brought voice chatting to the masses.
Yeay for them.
Arato Oct 10th 2007 11:17AM
Our guild will stick to Ventrilo since the quality of sound in-game was rather bad in comparison... otherwise it worked like a charm on Shattered Hand
Addie Oct 10th 2007 11:28AM
Not EU but, I can't hear a darn thing. Worse, I can *almost* hear, I can tell they're talking but it's not loud enough to understand. I would think it's on my end but there's one person that I can hear just fine. Very annoying.
hpavc Oct 10th 2007 11:43AM
The voice stuff is neat, but I like the 'lobby' aspect of vent and will continue to use it with the other folks for that reason.
Jason Oct 10th 2007 12:21PM
Blizzard should have used Vivox. They supply voice chat for MMO's. It's integrated however the developers want it. Excellent voice quality with very little bandwidth. Both EVE Online and Second Life use it.
Kanio Oct 10th 2007 5:52PM
Works like a charm on Argent Dawn, changed from TS to this right away for last nights raid! The only think that seams to be a problem is the low volume of the mic even though you max it to 250% in WoW. Guess you have to tweak it under your OS some more.
mike_rochannel Oct 11th 2007 4:29AM
People do miss 2 important points here:
* TS/Vent you can use when a CritError killed WOW, you can use it when you logged of to save the flask from running ...
* TS/Vent you can also use to listen in into a running raid. I was often just the backup for someone that was in front of kael and listen to the raid in TS prepared me for what to expect when jumping in ...
Mike
Socordia Oct 11th 2007 5:14AM
Voice chat is nice for PUGs, but since a WoW-disconnect/hang also disconnects you from voicechat, it's no option for raids. In raids one of the most useful purposes for TS is the ability to say "XY have disconnect", especially if XY is your MT or MT-healer ;)