Man, this sounds so awesome. I cant wait to stop my subscription to my vent server. Saves me monies!

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The statement about Blizz not having a problem with using Vent is puzzling since it is totally independent of the game. How COULD they have a problem with it. Same with the statement about compatability. I would think that using both would be confusing.

The idea about piping VOIP to a headset with the other sound going to speakers soulds cool but can this be done? My stero is connected to my PC via USB and since I did that, I haven't been able to get my headset to work at all. Maybe I just don't know how to do it.

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Just one word:

Woot!

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I use Vent everytime I play; if I'm grouped or not. So I can see people still needing vent and such if they aren't in a group... But I look forward to having VOIP to make PUGs a little less like a root canal.

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worst idea ever. ever.

Because the game wasnt laggy enough as it is. I hope I am long gone with wow by the time they impliment this.

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Meh

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I do have a little concern that PUGs will actually become harder to set up. If everyone doesn't have the proper headset etc, people will be kicked.

But anyone who has played with a group knows the voice feature in an instance just makes things much, much easier. Maybe PUGs will actually be more reliable. Typing is actually hard when you are in a fight.

Oh, #2... I currently use a USB mic and pump Skype into the headset while the in game sound comes from my computer speakers. So I know it is possible.

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Believe it or not there are some people who live where high speed internet is not available. I worry about bandwidth, and share #7's concern about pugs.

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As if we didn't have enough lag already... *sigh*

Also, I like my voicechat to be independent of WOW, because when I get disconnected from the WoW server I am still connected to Teampeak or Vent and can tell the other players that I'll be back in a few secs.

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As a female, this is a HORRIBLE idea.

There are way too many folks who freak out when they realize that the female char they're gaming with is a real female. I'd put it at about twice the number of folks who automatically assume a female character is a female player.

If I ever do use it, I fully expect that I'll have to report a crud-ton of folks for profanity and obscenity. The folks who can't stop themselves from shouting the F word in /2 will not be more restrained when all they have to do is touch a button and speak.

I love my guild's vent, and I think it may be interesting to have a better chance at guessing which Alabama male voice just yelled "bubble me, fast!" with the speaker-is-highlighted thing.

Basically? I won't use this in PUGs. For guild, I might, but in the main, no.

I don't even want to think about the battlegrounds.....

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Oh, #8 is quite right.

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I have several concerns with this.

1. While with groups and raids this might be fine, but it could lead to discrimination to those who may not have a microphone or those who do not like to talk. Perhaps the person is unable to talk since they are playing at a time when others in the house are asleep. In my guild we don't really care about if a person talks or not just so long as they can listen to instructions.

2. If this ever is implemented outside of groups, can you imagine what barrens chat or Goldshire chat will be like? It would be almost impossible to be moderated and most certainly could not be proven what a person said. The potential for abuse would be way to pervasive for some to ignore. Not only that, could you imagine how hard it would be to make any sense of a conversation when over a thousand people are all talking at once? I have been on high population vent servers and even with under a hundred on, it is almost impossible to have a conversation unless you go into a seperate room.

3. Obviously, bandwith and lag are serious concerns especially on the high population servers. Capital cities are always laggy. Throw in VoIP and you may as well go fix a sandwich after you hearth to give your computer time to catch up. (and that is on high speed internet with a fairly updated computer).

Outside of that, I give kudos to Blizzard for taking the step forward and attempting to integrate the one feature that MMO's are notorious for being lacking. This is no small undertaking and I really hope it works for the masses.

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If Blizz is smart, the voice servers will be separate from the game server, so a game dc won't result in a voip dc.

Further, I doubt Blizz is stupid enough to turn Barrens General into a voip channel. Granted, they suggested the possibility of player created channels later on, so it's possible players could set up an OPT IN Barrens General - Don't opt in.

I imagine at most besides the party/raid/guild/custom channels there will be a /say channel, so you hear people in actual speaking range.

So, how is this any different than current voicechat options? Realistically, I'd be more worried about folks that speak English as a second language than folks freaking on Females. Female gamers face a threshold, sorta like women in the workplace in the 50's and 60's. Only through exposure will the trolls get used to women being.. women. But ESL folks thru VOIP are bloody difficult to understand..

I do wonder how this will impact hearing impaired users, though. If the majority of folks use voip default, it'll kill the 'connectedness' everyone using text brings.

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While this sounds wonderful, the only problem I see with it is the same problem I see with all voice-chat programs (TeamSpeak, Ventrillo, XFire, etc). 80% of people out there can't set up their system properly worth a damn. I have one person who we all can barely hear and another person who drowns us in feedback, and yet another who bursts all of our eardrums everytime he speaks. Then there are the "voice changers" that are used by people and not tweaked so they sound like bad robot immitaters.

On top of it we have the little kids (I'm talking like 10-14) and the folks who have four-letter vocabularies. While I can appreciate the usage of our languages expletives when it is merited, hearing it every other word grates on my nerves almost as much as people using "lol" as punctuation.

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@14 A good feature of Ventrilo is that you can adjust other peoples volume. Right click on their name, select miscellaneous and you get a window for special effects that includes adjusting their volume up or down. I hope Blizz includes this ability in their implementation of VOIP.

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I know that /s etc on WoW are logged, but I can't see them do that for voip. What will their policy on voip abuse be?

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I hope they restrict it to parties and raids, imagine IF, Shattrath or Orgrimmar with VoIP!!!

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In regards to that guy with the lag thing. I'm sure they won't use the same server to run the voip services.
1) it would bog the server down
2) game servers are for games not voip
3) it would be easier to just incorporate a voip server into the game than to make the existing server a voip/game server imo.

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Are you kidding? With the way that people report people for the stupidest things imaginable in game, and knowing the kind of talk that happens on vent, I am not about to use a Blizzard-controlled voice chat system and have them monitoring my conversations. No way.

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