Team speak, what do you think about it?

[Fritz]

I used team speak in EQ2 , its great in raiding and big grps you seem to accomplish alot more. But I am more of a Roleplying 35%/Adventure 35%/crafting-20% /10% raids. I go on raids but once I was listening to eveyerone it totally took out the imagiation of what I saw a char was been played and turned into mainly powergame type thing.
When join a guild I am going to ask guild feelings on this Because it take alot of Roleplaying. MY last guild Paid Dearly for using team speak the fun we had disappeared pretty fast and ending up causing me to loose interest in the game.
So I would just like to hear some opoins on using teamspeak.

[Greymain]

I am in trouble on this one. I find typing hard work but loath the use of voice in MMORPG's.

I want to play my character, I want other characters to interact with my character not my real life persona. I don't want to have my judgement colored by the fact that a player has a speech impediment or their accent, sex, class, age etc.

Part of the magic of MMORPGS is that I am anonymous. I maybe a 60 year old, 7 foot, one legged, gay Eskimo, astrophysics lecturer but I am only known as and treated as Hiphop the zany Hobbit cleric.

I like that typed speech can be monitored for inappropriate comment. speech cannot. There are those who can be brutal when upset and the game has it share of vulnerable players.

Voice for FPS games makes sense but I would prefer if it could be kept out of games like Vanguard.

[Sho Pi]

Voice chat can be pretty good if you play with friends you know in real life. Other than that, I rather not have anything to do with voice chat at all as it really breaks immersion.

Imagine a level 50 barbarian warrior who is supposed to be very battle hardened and is spearheading the group, then he starts talking in voice chat and then you realize that person must be about 14 years old and that doesn’t go well with immersion if the character appears to be more like 40 years old.

It shouldn’t be too big a problem on the normal servers, just check out with the guild or group you want to join whatever they use voice chat and if it is ok that you use it. As for the role-play preferred server (hopefully it will be more like role-play enforced), I really do not see voice chat taking hold on that server.

Anyway I still reckon that voice chat will be the way for the future, even if there is resistance to it as there is a saying; “adapt or be left behind”. Some people may not like it but that is a fact.

[Aredhel]

I've done both. If I know the ppl and they know me and my expectations, then, ok. However, I've found out more in TS2 than I cared to and had no way to censor it or play like I hadn't heard it.

On the other hand, yes, it's great for raids and stuff! You just have to remember to have someone tell the others w/o TS2 what's going on!

[Pirotess]

My guild survived without Teamspeak/Ventrillo for 6 years. We recently picked it in WoW for our PVP matches and it does help quite a bit to organize ourselves and attack in synch. The caveat however is that you really need everyone using it so you dont have to type directions out as well. Otherwise you waste too much time trying to give directions twice and could have been more efficient just typing them.

We use it on raid for Boss fights but its hard to keep people on it consistantly since we dont use it for much else otherwise. Really nothing to say while clearing zone trash and we prefer not to chatter in it as 40 people all talking at once would be too distracting. If people abuse it, I mute them. If they further abuse it I ban them from the server. Its pretty easy to keep things we dont want heard out of TS but then again my guild has been together for many years and in general is made up of a fairly mature bunch of individuals with jobs, families, etc.

What would be cool is if you could get overlays for the chat programs that morphed your voice in real time to sound more like your character. So just like you customize how your character looks, you can also customize how they sound.

[Fritz]

Now thats an Idea Being able to sound like a dwarf or a wood elf or even an org!. I wouldn't be surprised with Technology they why its going that somethig like that will be possible not to far off in the future.

[Arctic_Slicer]

Honestly I am not too fond of voicechat myself and mostly for the causes that greymain has stated. Until they can make a good voice masking system or a voice to text system I would rather see voice chat left out of roleplaying games.

[Morgore]

I am like a few others here. I'm on the edge... I have played FPS and EQ2/ DAoC lately. Voice chat in the FPS is almost a must, makes the game that much fun and you can organize attacks.. do a little trash talking. Now in EQ2 voice is good, especially in a raid situation, unless you are a pro at macros and or can type exetremely fast ad well.
Now when I am not doing a large group hunt with my guild, I'll stay off Teamspeak and enjoy the game. Type to everyone, although this late in the game, there's not much extra "talking" going on unless you already know someone. So I guess unless you totally want to sumerge yourself into the game, voice chat wouldn't be that bad... Now.. like someone mentioned.. if they could get our voices to change to match our characters.. then hell yea.. bring it on!

[Vade]

When playing WoW i was on Skype with 2 of my real life friends who also played
this didn't affect the role playing aspect of the game for me because i'd probably have found it harder believing them to be Taurens or Orcs.

Personally i'd rather not use Teamspeak in groups/raids if it was a necessity it would be included in the client.

[Amoonsinas]

I personally love Teamspeak. My guildies and I frequently use it, even just to jabber about the day we had.

It gives a bit more life to a game, in my opinion.