The Daily Grind: In-game or private VOIP?
by Krystalle Voecks 
Jun 2nd 2008 at 8:10AM
Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind
One of the best things for many gamers who play in team settings (in PvP, in raids, etc.) is voice over IP (VOIP) software. Need to give out raid instructions? No longer do you need to waste time typing things out or boring people with long macros full of information. Now you can toss on a headset and away you go. Of course, you have your pick -- games like EVE Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and even World of Warcraft have introduced VOIP. However, the interesting thing we keep finding is how few people actually use it. This morning we thought we'd do something of an unscientific poll amongst the readers just to see where the unofficial Massively reader thoughts lie on this. Some of us are figuring it will be against public in-game VOIP, others are warning them that it's generally cheaper than running a server, so they may be in for a surprise. You let us know -- do you use public VOIP, or private servers? If you don't use the in-game systems, why? If you hate private servers, what turned you off from them?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tiran Kenja said on 9:11AM 6-02-2008
I choose 'other' because there is no 'both'.
Right now I play LotRO and it has in-game VoiP for fellowships(/groups/parties). And that's great for PUGs - except it is pretty hard to get the volumes right.
But for kinship(/guild/clan) stuff it is more viable to use something external. The tools are better for more consistent volume. And it is easier to get people organized as it don't even require everyone to be in-game, much less being in one fellowship.
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Riggs said on 3:43PM 6-02-2008
I also use both...can't believe that wasn't an option???
Same reasons...in-game for PUFs in LOTRO or PUSs in TR, etc...and private Vent server for friends chat, etc...
Also, use the in-game in DDO for weekly dedicated group...
Poxus said on 9:16AM 6-02-2008
The problem I see, is that people are just too used to thw other types of voice systems. I tried out Blizzards in-game system and it works for me, but others I know didn't have great experiences.
Maybe as the technology for games to have a better set up on how they can "tweak" the in game version gets better, we might see a decline on the usage of out of game servers.
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Mark said on 9:21AM 6-02-2008
I'm sure that part of it, at least with World of Warcraft, is that the game was out for three years before in-game voice chat was available. So anyone who wanted to use voice chat already had an outside solution.
For my guild, I know that people just weren't happy with the in-game voice client. The sound quality was lower than our Ventrilo server, so we kept using Ventrilo.
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Anon said on 11:12AM 6-02-2008
If you lose your connection to the game, Vent usually keeps running. That way you can let your teammates know what happened and maybe they can recover before a wipe.
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Trashman said on 1:37PM 6-02-2008
Well... just like Tiran... we use the built in voice chat in EVE (Vivox) and its better than the Vent server we used to use. We still use Teamspeak for LOTRO though because the sound quality of their built VOIP is pretty bad. We'd use built in voice if it was decent tho
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Squatch said on 3:18PM 6-02-2008
I play WoW and have used both. For serious raiding, I lean towards Vent for the reason "Anon" above mentioned. But for PuGs I use the in-game option. I don't like it, I can NEVER get the volumes right (I have to turn the in-game sounds WAAAAAAAAY down and leave the voice up all the way, and then crank my PC speakers to make things audible, and then any time anything outside of the game happens, my ears bleed XD), but I'd rather deal with that than giving out private Vent server info.
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