A simple way to improve Quest Text

[Kooja]

A very large portion of us are guilty of it, many people even go into the next expansions saying, "I'm going to actually read the quest text this time!" but then an hour or so into the new zones, it again becomes a race to gather the quests as fast as possible with no regard to the quest text itself.

What if we could have the quest text read to us as we went out into the open world to complete the quests? Personally, when I'm playing, I either have my own background music playing or just have the game's music and sound, so I wouldn't be losing anything from hearing the quest text read like an audio book. It won't slow down the play of the game because I can get in and out of towns just as fast, but the 30-60 seconds it takes to travel to the quest area can be spent listening to the reasons why I'm headed there in the first place.

Whadya guys think? Sure it takes resources and game file size etc, but it could totally add to the leveling experience. Make it optional and I think everyone will stay happy.

[Reyvah]

File this under "Nice thought, but unlikely to happen".

A lot of time, money, and resources would have to be channeled to find a diverse variety of voice actors and record the huge amount of quest text. Then you have to localize for each additional supported language (Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, etc.).

Draenor found a compromise by fully voicing major storylines, but keeping the "fetch 20 bear asses" quests to text.

[Soulwind]

File this under "Nice thought, but unlikely to happen".

A lot of time, money, and resources would have to be channeled to find a diverse variety of voice actors and record the huge amount of quest text. Then you have to localize for each additional supported language (Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, etc.).

Draenor found a compromise by fully voicing major storylines, but keeping the "fetch 20 bear asses" quests to text.

They're actually pushing voice-acting a lot in Legion. Even the world quests, which are pretty much the new dailies, have some.

[Calfredd]

The Lich King says the quest text for the DK leveling zones and from the looks of it, there'll be a few talking heads reading off the quest text (though I think only for important quests).

[Luckx]

There is deaf people, people who understand foreign language only in the text but not via voice, and ppl who prefer listen music loudly, so i guess Quest log/text should have subtitles in case if its going to be voiced

[Soulwind]

There is deaf people, people who understand foreign language only in the text but not via voice, and ppl who prefer listen music loudly, so i guess Quest log/text should have subtitles in case if its going to be voiced

WoW is dubbed to every language it's translated.

And yes, the voiced quests have subs, a window appears with an animated avatar and all, very similar to Warcraft 3.

[shoc]

So if you're proposing that Blizzard retroactively voice-over all the quest text in the game, here's some numbers to chew on:

According to a WoW Infographic from 2013, there were 6 million words of in-game text. By Legion, we can probably estimate that it will have grown to ~10 million words.

According to http://www.speechinminutes.com, 10 million words at an average words-per-minute (130) translates to 76923.1 minutes, or 1282 hours of dialogue.

Treating this dialogue as if it were an e-book, http://www.voicetalentrates.com/ defines a cost of $280 USD per hour of finished audio.

Therefore, to retroactively voice-over every word of text in the game, it would cost Blizzard $358,960 USD in voice-over costs.

But considering the rates are from online voice-actors, using professional voice actors probably costs much more. Not to mention the quality control, taxes, and implementation of all those voice files.

Also, one minute of MP3 music encoded at 128Kbps takes up 0.9375MB of disk space. 76,923 minutes of MP3 voice files would take up 72.1 gigabytes.

A full install of WoW:WoD recommends 35 gigs of storage space, so just by adding 72.1 gigs of voice files would over double the storage demands for WoW.

[Vocah]

I rather read the quests myself and I absolutely do it the first time around.

Honestly, my SAN would probably reduce if I had to listen to voice-overs all the damn time.

[soulzek]

File this under "Nice thought, but unlikely to happen".

A lot of time, money, and resources would have to be channeled to find a diverse variety of voice actors and record the huge amount of quest text. Then you have to localize for each additional supported language (Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, etc.).

Draenor found a compromise by fully voicing major storylines, but keeping the "fetch 20 bear asses" quests to text.

they did it with diablo 3. the lore books and just about everything

[Vaelorian]

What happens when your suggestion would be implemented:
1. player picks up quest at a questgiver
2. questtext is being read outloud to you
3. but wait... there is another quest at that same questgiver or the npc next to him
4. current questtext is canceled 10% into the text and starts reading the next one instead
5. but wait... there is another quest at that same questgiver or the npc next to him.....

You see? And while this is obviously fixable ofcourse by just having a queue of questtext that can only start one after the other unless canceled by the player ofc. Still after a good hour or so, you will click those quests readouts away aswell.

I mean sure I wouldn't mind having an audio quest text being read out loud. Sure the more options the better.
But would it in general be a waste? I think so.

[Hammerzeit]

I would greatly appreciate it if maybe you could have quest text read to you.

[Sansnom]

Therefore, to retroactively voice-over every word of text in the game, it would cost Blizzard $358,960 USD in voice-over costs.

But considering the rates are from online voice-actors, using professional voice actors probably costs much more. Not to mention the quality control, taxes, and implementation of all those voice files.

300k is relative low considering the development cost of the game over the entire period. I agree, if it was that low, I am surprise it has not been done already.

I am going to ask a guildmate who does voice acting what the general rates are.

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Therefore, to retroactively voice-over every word of text in the game, it would cost Blizzard $358,960 USD in voice-over costs.

But considering the rates are from online voice-actors, using professional voice actors probably costs much more. Not to mention the quality control, taxes, and implementation of all those voice files.

300k is relative low considering the development cost of the game over the entire period. I agree, if it was that low, I am surprise it has not been done already.

I am going to ask a guildmate who does voice acting what the general rates are.