The Queue: Shoo fly, don't bother me

To kick things off today, I actually wanted to add something to one of Adam's responses yesterday. Spiraea was looking for a title that would fit their Priest. Adam suggested The Immortal, but me? I'm all about the Hallowed. You can't get it until October, which makes getting your hands on it tough... but it'll be worth the wait! It's my favorite title on my Priest. When I get a new raid title I switch to that for awhile, but always go back to Hallowed.
realt asked...
I have a question regarding in-game voice chat (or Ventrilo). Our guild has never used voice-chat when raiding. So far we have done pretty well with clearing all 10man content, including Sartharion+1D, without it. Now we are progressing into 25man. At which point do we really need starting using voice chat you think or isn't required at all? I haven't been in many other raiding guilds besides this one so I am curious how others are handling their communication.
My raid alliance didn't use Ventrilo or other voice chat for a very, very long time. It was kind of a running joke on our server, we were one of the only groups that ran the 40 man raids regularly without using voice chat. It was never really an issue until we were deep into AQ40 and midway through Naxx-40. That's when just typing and using macros to call out important details simply wasn't enough.
In the Burning Crusade, we didn't need it for Karazhan. We didn't need it for most of SSC and TK, but we used it anyway because we had the server already. I'm glad we had it for Kael'thas and Vashj, and I'm glad we had it for the latter half of Black Temple and I think we would've failed horribly if we didn't have it for Sunwell Plateau.
In Wrath of the Lich King, I don't think anything really needs it yet except for Sartharion 3D. It's all fairly easy, and even the slightly more challenging fights aren't so tight that you need to call everything out vocally. Sartharion 3D is the only thing that comes close to that right now. You might want to look into getting a Ventrilo server for Ulduar, though we don't really know the difficulty of it yet.
Personally, I'm glad my raid uses voice chat. The key to making it fun was training everyone on when it was a good time to joke, and when it's time to buckle down. We goof around and make fun of each other and yap about the news all we want in between bosses, but when we're getting ready to pull the boss it's time to quiet down. It's a good system and pretty laid back, so don't be afraid of using it. Just make sure everyone is on the same page with it.
Amethyst asked...
Has there been any news on the Warcraft movie?
Nope.
Medros asked...
If they got rid of the quake causing exotic beasts, why does Dalaran shake like it's being attacked every so often?
I believe that this is from players getting the No Fly Zone debuff within Dalaran. It plays the Fel Reaver noise and shakes a bit to alert the flier that they're about to get tossed out of their mount, and it seems to be an area effect rather than a client-side screen shake like it probably should be. Generally, the people that get the No Fly Zone debuff are out of range of people on the ground in the city, so it's not an issue.
Oftentimes when the entire city sees it it's due to someone picking up an Underbelly Elixir, getting the Wasp debuff, then going up to the surface with it. The wasp form gets gibbed by the No Fly Zone deal, too.
It's either that or the Kirin Tor's float spell is failing and Dalaran is going to fall out of the sky and kill us all. You know, either/or.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Raymondo Feb 6th 2009 1:09PM
since mages can slow fall it may be an elaborate scheme to kill everyone except mages...
Kakistocracy Feb 6th 2009 1:33PM
Exactly, mage spells don't fail, they find creative ways to succeed. It's entirely possible that Dalaran, the burning legion, and the scourge invasion were each fabricated with this purpose, a class war, if you will.
Tish Feb 6th 2009 3:24PM
The Priest will be saved too with levitate. :D
Dave Feb 6th 2009 3:27PM
@Andostre:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=112501444&sid=1
DragonFireKai Feb 6th 2009 4:12PM
Paladins do not fear the fall, so long as the bubble isn't on cooldown.
G Feb 6th 2009 4:15PM
And the druids can instant shift into flight form. I'm liking this plan more and more.
Cathaoir Feb 6th 2009 7:45PM
And I have my Flexweave Underlay! Wonderful engineers with their useless little doodads.
Chris M Feb 6th 2009 7:47PM
Basically the only people this would kill are Death Knights.
I don't think anyone sees a problem with this. Continue.
jared.daniels Feb 6th 2009 1:10PM
Why do some groups INSIST on using ventrilo when the in-game voice chat does the same thing? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Tinwhisker Feb 6th 2009 1:16PM
The ingame system has very little in the way of customization. It's very easy to set Ventilo so that everyone's voice is "normalized" and you don't have to turn people up or down; even if you do it's got a lot of granular control.
The in-game system is very basic and if the person on the other end has any problems at all (such as a poor mic) it's very frustrating. Often times to the point that no matter what you do you can't get everyone in the group to an acceptable or uniform level.
rosencratz Feb 6th 2009 1:20PM
In my experience the in game voice chat either doesn't work or anyone you need to use it can't get it to work.
It would've been a good idea but it's been a bit slow out of the gate and i think these days people don't use it out of habit. There was quite a bit of controversy when it came out because people were desperate for another patch and a lot of sound/sound-card issues cropped up around the same time. Bitterness can last a long time.
Solariel Feb 6th 2009 1:23PM
Mainly it's because the in-game voice chat sucks. It's hard to understand what folks are saying, and it puts very bad lag in in-game NOT voice chat.
It's not very helpful when your group wipes because the dps telling her to heal them in voice chat puts a severe lag spike on her system while she's trying to heal them.
Solariel Feb 6th 2009 1:25PM
Her being the healer, of course.*
Thomas Feb 6th 2009 1:58PM
Ingame voice is annoying. Its easier to perform functions like muting, etc, with Ventrilo. Ventrilo also has better voice quality, whereas ingame voice has a much poorer quality.
BillDoor Feb 6th 2009 1:37PM
In addition to what everyone else said, the in-game chat doesn't keep chat sessions open while you're on alts, or more importantly, logged off. We've had people report that htey've been disconnected from WoW while still on Vent, which is helpful.
Andostre Feb 6th 2009 1:44PM
Tinwhisker, how do you automatically normalize everyone's voice in Vent? I usually end up adjusting individual users' volumes manually.
(By the way, to do it manually: right click --> Miscellaneous --> Special Effects --> Volume and then adjust the slider.)
Demgar Feb 6th 2009 7:09PM
Once you've used vent, you will know why. In-game sound is horrible, and especially in Europe with a plethora of different accents to parse it's nice to be able to hear people clearly.
Danca Feb 6th 2009 2:19PM
Our guild also uses vent comments to link things like WSS reports at the end of the night (Since there's no way to send clickable links in-game)
Athinah Feb 6th 2009 2:35PM
I agree, the only thing that is cool about vent is that if your talking to people just for the sake of talking and your swiching charcters, you don't have to be constintly turning it on and off and crap like that
Mageftw? Feb 6th 2009 5:08PM
Because Morse code and Smoke signals are better than in-game voice chat...