Blizzard Voice Chat

[Serissa]

Yes, they tried this before, but not 5 years ago. Has been a little while longer since they tried the whole WoW Voice Chat thing and it turned out horrible, hence why it isn't in the Game anymore. Let's hope this thing will be better, if they actually think about putting those ingame.

Nope. Esc -> System -> Voice

It was never removed even if no one uses it.

[barial]

ITT: "Hopefully it wont be as bad as last time"

[Frozen Death Knight]

If the system performs the same as the current voice chat system in Overwatch, I could see this new feature work out quite well. It will probably not replace the established programs out there, but it can help improve the social aspect.

[Brightbrown]

It is well known that Blizz uses Torrent to deliver files to their customers, I have no issue with that. Because I have software that strictly monitors every outgoing connection attempt, I can see the bnet launcher constantly doing this, even while the game is running. We all have very asymmetric connections, so while most have a pretty much robust down stream, often the up stream is pathetically slow. So I do NOT want this to be eating up my upstream while I'm trying to play the game. Low & behold, there is an option to NOT do this, so I set it that way.

EXCEPT that setting is bogus, the launcher continues to send data to a host of IP addresses. So I went to the forums to see what was up. An MVP acknowledged that this is a KNOWN issue. Fortunately, there IS an option to quit the launcher when the game gets launched so I set it that way. THAT has stopped upstream data transfer that is NOT part of actually playing the game live.

Fast forward to a few days ago. One of our heals was having a considerable issue staying connected... we were working Heroic HFC progression, and he was absent for most of the fights (on and off). Thanks GOODNESS our GM is a mythic geared healer, so she was doing an awful lot of solo healing on progression bosses (upper HFC btw). Anyway, the next day he was working on the issue and somehow seemed to feel it was the launcher... he didn't know there was an option to quit it when the game is launched. BINGO, so far it looks like that issue is put to bed... he's not disconnecting every few mins in raids now that the launcher is NOT running while we raid.

Maybe this chat thing is their way of making sure said evil-launcher is always running? MUCH LATER to that, vent works just fine!

[Ol Scratch]

Blizzard has their finger on the pulse as always.

[Kaydian]

I thought they "Introduced" voice chat years ago. I remember this because it was horrible and nobody chose it over any 3rd party voice chat software even though Blizzard's was free.

[MatadorMedia]

Will this be enabled by default in like bgs and pug raids? Cause I can't wait to converse with 14 yo brats.

My thoughts as well. God, I hope not. I remember the original voice chat took me about 10 seconds of having a loud child yelling before I learned how to mute it and never turn it on again. The only way this will be useful is if it's a bug-free high-quality system that's a free way to talk to your raid members, because then you won't have to pay for Vent / TS / Mumble servers.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Good to see Lone Wolf becoming a talent again. Hopefully it will be an actual CHOICE this time around though and not become mandatory.

[TaintedOne]

WoW voice chat 2.0... Nooooooooooo

It should be pointed out that unlike WoW voice chat 1.0 they paid somebody else to make 2.0.

Doesnt mean it will be usable but it at least has a chance this time

[Kolvarg]

Can you imagine tradechat with voice chat?

[-Etna-]

The real question is... how many raid tiers with this cost?

[Rotted]

oh fuck no,

Didn't we have this option ages ago or am I thinking of another game?

Either way fucking no. This is another feature we don't fucking need ingame. Granted its not bad as twitter integration (God fucking dam it makes me salty just thinking about that abomination of a feature ) but please, something new and completely original.

[hulkgor]

why Blizzard, why...

This is not required\useful, at all... there are several high quality services for this aswell (mumble, ts, ventriolo, discord, skype, rogerfuckingwilco...). What's the point?

[Brewhan]

the same voice chat technology they use in overwatch most likely will be able to transition to all their games besides hearthstone probably. I like the voice chat in overwatch I've met some salty as fuark trolls in there cussing out the team and all I had to do was give them a real talk in voice chat back and at the end of it they were apologizing lol. While I've talked and chilled with dozen of people in Overwatch voice chat I haven't made any new bnet friends from it so it might just be a casual hi /bye thing in WoW too. I think it will be turned off for LFR but might be on for dungeons and pvp matches for sure. Then raid groups and guilds can manually start the voice group to invite their members.

I remember trying out the WoW voice chat in 2007 it was like potato quality you couldnt even understand the people talking. Good times..

[Deleted]

I'm sure they can implement it in a good way technically across all games/b.net, but especially in WoW the community has become so toxic that people will outright refuse to use it.

[TheLimonTree]

I wonder if this will be more of a failure than twitter integration . . .

meanwhile on moonguard....

[Super Kami Dende]

pretty happy with this. Sick of joining groups that can't settle on a Voice chat since 30% use Curse, 30% use Vent, 10% use Teamspeak, 10%use Mumble and the rest want Skype.

Having everyone all under one roof is great.

[Kolvarg]

oh fuck no,

Didn't we have this option ages ago or am I thinking of another game?

Either way fucking no. This is another feature we don't fucking need ingame. Granted its not bad as twitter integration (God fucking dam it makes me salty just thinking about that abomination of a feature ) but please, something new and completely original.

It's not a feature specific to the game, but rather to the whole battle.net system, which dearly needed improvements like the grouping at the very least

The fact that WoW did have a system like that will probably make integration easier.

But I doubt in WoW you'll ever be "forced" to use voice chat (should be able to at least "auto-mute" everyone).

[Midnitte]

Pretty interesting - seems like they're really moving forward making B.net viable against Steam. Though I question how success this will be if people are still using Ventrilo when there's programs like Discord available.

[Risale]

Dear god I thought I had a bad acid flashback reading Blizz is introducing voice chat.
Well unless it has the same features and stuff as Mumble, TS, Discord I am not touching this unless they put a gun to my head.