EA Mythic have stated they will not support in-game voice chat due to moderation and server strain concerns, so that leaves us with the traditional 3rd-party options of Ventrillo, TeamSpeak, and Skype.

Will you use these programs in Warhammer Online? Why or why not?

I’m a strong advocate for using voice chat in MMORPGs because they can give an edge in hairy RvR situations and help build stronger relationships with guild mates. In my experience, they also bring an entertainment value you just can’t experience through scrolling text. Meltdowns in guild chat are one thing but an extended rant over voice chat ups the hilarity by a factor of ten!

Voice chat was non-existent back in 1996 when I first started online gaming in the form of MUDs. All forms of action, reaction, and conversation were a result of keyboard and ASCII text interaction. If there’s one good thing I can say about mudding it’s that your reading and typing WPM are much improved as a result playing these kinds of games! The lack of voice chat wasn’t really a burden because your eyes were already focused on the screen text and your fingers were in a natural state, always ready to type out the proper command words.

Graphical MMORPGs made the task of keyboard chat much more cumbersome because your eyes began to focus on your avatar rather than the chat box. Also, your hands weren’t in a natural typing position anymore. Instead of using your left hand for normal typing purposes, it was now focused on ASDW and the number row (1, 2, 3, …). Your right hand became solely dedicated to the mouse. These are VERY poor hand positions for trying to communicate effectively with a keyboard.

Enter the aforementioned voice chat programs. They help us by compensating for the increased complexity of MMORPGs. Aside from the odd server latency glitch, communicating with your voice is much faster than with your hands because our brains allow us to multi-task. We can easily be typing, clicking, listening, thinking, and responding all at the same time. These programs give us additional input and output mechanisms (hearing and voice).

So I urge you to give voice chat a try! You’re just a headset away from competitive advantage!

What are your experiences? For me, the group-play difference was like night and day.