EverQuest II Voice Chat!

Xalmat wrote:

To the colored text, Voice Chat was actually originally announced as being part of the new Launchpad, not only that but at press releases they where saying that you did not even have to be a SoE game subscriber to use the Voice Chat... Also I believe SWG's Test server has already been testing it for a bit as well. So the question is will Cross Game chat be available?

Xalmat wrote:

If you're booted to Character Select, you will disconnect. The voice chat is character based. However, that being said, voice chat is available while you're zoning. If you do turn on the 'auto-join guild channel' option then you will be able to chat with your guild while you're still logging into the game.

Since voice chat is character based, switching characters will briefly prevent you from chatting after the first is logged out and before the second has logged in. Custom channels are stored and automatically become available when you log in a character, so you could probably have both characters using the same custom channel.

Building chat functionality into Station Launcher is the plan, but I have no idea when that will come.

Other SOE games will be supporting voice chat around the same time we go live with it, but the initial launch will not allow cross-game communication (cross-server communication will be allowed however).

*squeals like a girl* Wait..I AM a girl! BUT.
Ok..this rocks.
I like the idea of modulating voices, the voice font as you call it. I'm female, but I can have a fairly deep voice at times, especially when I'm all stuffy. Sorry...I have never pictured Dej as having a deep voice!
I like the fact it's tied to the char.
I'm seriously tempted to check out test again and check it out.

Autenil wrote:

It's very, very sad news.

brammator wrote:

QFE

One of the most spoken things during a raid from non leaders is: "crash 2 desktop" / "Char ld" as saying this is faster and clearer then reading any text. Loosing the abbility to do this, would be a huge drawback.

Perhaps you would get a message saying the person left chat, though?

Granted, not as good.

The only way to avoid that would be to have voice chat be completely external to the EQ2 application. Even if you could still chat while at character select (though how would the server know which character name to display to your chatmates?), a crash to desktop removes everything needed to interface with the voice servers.



On another note, I doubt I'll be using this feature, because voice chatting strongly interferes with immersion. I don't want to hear incongruous accents and voice pitches associated with the characters I've come to know, and it becomes that much harder to treat alts as separate characters when they sound the same in voice chat.

In addition, voice chat tends to be more idle and "talking just for the sake of talking" than text chat, and thus more distracting during gameplay. Although I admit it might be nice while crafting to speak instead of trying to type. =) That doesn't outweigh the disadvantages, though.

I strongly hope that all or most chat in this game doesn't become voice-based as a result of this new feature. I have my concerns.


Powers &8^]

Actually I do have another question I would like to get answered. With people who pay the $32 fee for all access station pass thing we get some perks such as 2-4 extra character slots, various advanced features to eq2players, etc... .
Will there be any kind of "perks" for people that own the station all access pass or will it be equal opportunity for everyone?
Also with the voice communication vivox idea being implemented will we see a raise in the price of subscription fees for the all access pass or even the base subscription cost?

The advantage Vent and Teamspeak have is you can run the client from a seperate computer and have ACT use TTS for raid timers. Unless the new SoE voice chat has an external client that can do the same thing, I don't see raid guilds switching.

Autenil wrote:

*faints of happyness by the thought of having proximity chat*
PREEEECIOUUSSSSSS !!! Meeeee waaaaantsssssssss it, my precccciousssssss.....
Regards, theriatis

I have a question regarding hardware support -

Currently, with both TeamSpeak and Ventrilo, I have the capability to select a specific sound device for voice comms. This works great for me as I can then use my USB headset for voice only, while keeping the game audio routed through the computer's sound card and speakers.

With the in-game client, will we be able to specify audio devices for voice?

Zobek@Guk wrote:

That's what I would like to know.

This is great news both my husband and I really missed this when we came back to EQ2 from DDO being able to have group members hear the tank and the calls even if they can't respond is a GREAT advantage.
I set the test server to download onto my computer while I am at work today so I can help test it out, I have a feeling that if it goes live buggy people will never give it a second chance and it really can be a very usefull tool on PUG's where no everyone knows how eachother plays.

Really nice feature being launched. Will this new feature run only on the "primary core" or will it take use of "multiple core's"? I'm hoping that those with dual/quad cores will see the 2nd core utilized for this new feature, as the primary core is usually running at 100% when EQ2 is running.

thanks

I'm looking forward to this.
My guild doesn't require vent or teamspeak for our raids, though most commands are given in there (we have some awesome fast translators for instruction & coordination set up for things that need to go instantly, like aoe calls. In game chat will be great for those that are new & don't have the vent or teamspeak running or have constant problems with them.
It also should be great for those of us who don't play in windowed mode, since you can't see the ts/vent window if you aren't windowed. Hard sometimes to learn who's who when you toss in a bunch of new voices and some people just sound so much alike sometimes...

And to the poor fellow who said voice chat would be used for talk just for the sake of talking moreso that typed chat =) good thing you aren't in my guild lol, you'd probably quit or just die of overload. Some people chatter a lot whether it's type or voice with no real difference in quantity (or quality) between the two heh.
My only concern is that it is character based so drops if you switch characters/go linkdead etc. That could be a real problem in a raid. For example in my household there are 3 of us that are fairly important in our raiding, a MT healer, one of the primary DPS (and on occassion another MT healer) as well as the raidleader/offtank/occassional MT goes LD and won't be able to tell anyone because we went LD & chat disconnected. That's a big drawback for raid use. In normal everyday play I can't see that being much of a problem.

Finora@Everfrost wrote:

lol My guild is the same way and well lets just say that there is non stop chatter except during raids then it gets pretty quiet unless the RL says take 5 then it gets going again, we have a lot of fun.

How much extra load will this be placing on the game engine/cpu by implementing this system. You have finally started making some headway into alot of the performance issues, will this set us back to the performance we had a couple of months ago?
What about people who use dialup, will they game still be playable for them with the added data being transfered?

Brook wrote:

This is likely to be a problem. There will definitely needs to be an optional switch that prevents connection to the chat server altogether for folks using dialup connections. I know I was never able to run both the EQ2 game client and a chat client successfully on dialup. Yeah, they would work, sort of, but the game suffered badly from stutter and most of any conversation was dropped. Outside of raiding, EQ2 runs fairly well on dialup but not with a voice client going also.

That's freaking awesome! I'll log on and test it myself... if I can find a group or raid.

Zobek@Guk wrote:

Yessiree.

There are drop down boxes in the options window for both input and output devices. It will remember your settings too, so as long as all devices are present when you start the client you're golden. There's also a handy little button that opens the Windows Volume Control for whichever device you have selected.