Poll: Does WoW need a language barrier anymore?

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  1. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by b0sanac View Post
    My first question is why are you looking for logic in a game, a fantasy game no less..
    Things can easily make logical sense in fantasy. The issue is you can't look at it from a non-fantasy viewpoint and you can't look at it without understanding what you're actually looking at.

  2. #22
    In swtor it worked well
    only cross faction channel was /say
    be chaotic if yell/trade where cross by just /say would work alright all n all it doesnt really matter anyways

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by Ranorack View Post
    Pretty sure they can, I mean, the tauren and orcs back in WC3 could start communicating RIGHT AWAY. There was no fiddling with trying to find a language they both knew, just "Hi." "Hi. Sathp centaur?" "Sure!" and they were off. I always imagined common was just that, common. Or at the very least, the equivalent of english whereby most countries at least have it as a second language if not first.

    I do note though it is a fiddly thing, we keep seeing inconsistencies about it. But even so, how would organisations like the cenarion circle or the Argent Crusade work properly if the races did not have a universal language between them? Most of them are from Horde or Alliance races, yet they came together, again, right off the bat.

    Again though, it is a tricky thing. But I would enjoy maybe a quest or something to learn common or orcish, dependent on what faction my current character is on.



    Exactly xD



    No worse than any other MMORPG or, well, ANY multiplayer PvP game. And even then, I shrug it all off myself and toxic behaviour is reportable. Look at LoL for example, both teams can openly communicate with /all. While yes a lot of the time it's used to hurl abuse at the other team, such things are reportable and in many cases laughable. And lets not forget, LoL has the single biggest playerbase for any multiplayer PC game. More so than WoW I believe. ^^
    How many people play LoL? I'm sure there are many people who bought it, played it, and don't anymore. If you take those figures into WoW's all-time membership it puts WoW well in the range of 30-50 million (Blizzard stated roughly two years ago that more people played WoW and no longer do, than currently do). On a side note, Farmville is played by more people than either.

    The language barrier is fine. There is no need to communicate with the opposing faction. The last thing we need are little alliances breaking out that hinder world PvP or skew it drastically one way or the other. If you can talk to the other side it will remove that "Hmmm there's a horde over there doing dailies, should I attack him?" feeling. This promotes a dangerous world and helps perpetuate combat.

    Removing the language barrier will enable EVERYONE, instead of the top few who already circumvent it, to communicate.

    And fuck I meant to vote YES and not NO

    ---------- Post added 2013-02-06 at 02:22 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by b0sanac View Post
    My first question is why are you looking for logic in a game, a fantasy game no less..
    Logic is one of the reasons WoW is awesome. For the most part the game makes sense.

  4. #24
    Deleted
    I'm mostly up for removing the language barrier for -roleplay purposes- when players want to communicate more easily with the opposing faction as opposed to the entire game in general. I suppose keeping it to neutral cities or a roleplay mode or something would ensure that outside RP, the game is untouched.

    So if there was some form of on/off cross-faction communication, either by a switch UI or restricted to certain zones/not enabled in arenas and battlegrounds:

    PvPers can avoid smack talk. Tension between general players is maintained. Neutral roleplayers can actually roleplay without relying on Real ID and battletag when all they want to do is say hello or know what an entire crowd is talking about in real time. Everyone would win, no?

    EDIT: And to make an 'alliance' with another faction is doable already, Real ID and even forum posts can already do this.

  5. #25
    I am Murloc! Terahertz's Avatar
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    Would WoW still need it? No. Would I want it to be gone? No. Why? Because I play on a PvP server. And I know from myself I'll be shittalking the opposite factions A LOT if I could communicate to them. Perhaps if the language barrier stays on PvP servers then I'd vote for it ;P

  6. #26
    Deleted
    Heh, good point. But if it were sever limited, then trolls and douchebags would re-roll RP or PvE realms just to mess with people. :L

  7. #27
    No I don't find it necessary anywhere but BGs. As a RPer, the language barrier sucks. As a gamer it is redundant due to the ignore function. Time to do away with it.
    "You hurt me long ago; my wounds bled for years. Now you are back, but I am not the same."

  8. #28
    Deleted
    I'd say don't remove it.

    I think it's about dehumanizing the enemy. Killing a dwarvish enemy somehow feels more compelling if he doesn't say "hi, sup yo"

  9. #29
    Deleted
    Mmrn.

    Just a little tired of having to keep my chat tab on a RID conversation because in the main tab all I get is garbled common from everyone but a pal of mine and endless repetitions of: <name> makes some strange gestures. It looks stupid. :L And I keep having to make IC excuses why I can only understand so many people at once, noise or crowds, etc. Pretty soon people will just assume my character is dumb or barely knows common, neither are true at all.
    Last edited by mmoc21a935316c; 2013-02-06 at 10:36 PM.

  10. #30
    Deleted
    Do it like FFX, and have a minigame, legendary questline, rare drops, archaeology artifacts, or all of the above have a chance to drop a 'language codex' for friendly and hostile factions. If you collect 10 codices for a specific language, you can read/write/and speak it. 1-9 and you get degrees of comprehension, but no ability to speak it yourself. For example:

    1. (Orcish)Ok'thok, marrag har kub zub! Garr luk thrat desh!
    2. (Orcish)Ok'thok, marrag the kub zub! Garr luk thrat desh!
    3. (Orcish)Ok'thok, marrag har kub zub! Garr he gets desh!
    4. (Orcish)Ok'thok, marrag the kub zub! Garr luk gets away!
    5. (Orcish)Quickly, marrag the kub spy! Garr he thrat desh!
    6. (Orcish)Quickly, marrag har human spy! Before he thrat desh!
    7. (Orcish)Ok'thok, attack the kub spy! Garr he gets away!
    8. (Orcish)Quickly, attack har human zub! Before he gets away!
    9. (Orcish)Quickly, marrag the human spy! Before he gets away!
    10. (Orcish)Quickly, attack the human spy! Before he gets away!

    The ideal way to do it would be to keep the language encryption as it currently is; an algorithm creates junk dialogue by loosely matching even-length words with equivalents in a dictionary. Then, your codex score gives you a chance to 'unscramble each word', the longer the word, the lower the chance. However, note that the words themselves need not be consistent when untranslated (as they currently are not) just derivative from a 'source' of actual words which can be decrypted. That is to say, the word for 'hat' in orcish will not be consistent to a non-speaker each time it is said, and cannot therefore be decrypted by an add-on, for example.

    Anyhow, the way it would work is say having 2/10 codices for a given language you don't speak would mean that you have a 20% chance to 'understand' a 4 letter word. Adding more letters would lower this chance. Once you have all 10 codices then you can actually select it as a language to speak in.

    For added fun, you could implement race specific 'accent' filters on all non-native languages being spoken (similar to how drunken slurring currently works in the game). 'Speaking levels' could be implemented, whereupon earning the ability to speak is just the beginning; a level 1 speaker has random words switched, rendered as untranslated gibberish, and ums-and-ahs insterted. Only by levelling your speaking to 10 can you render fluent speech in a non-native language. How you'd do this is tricky. It's tempting to make it simply through use, but then people would just grind up to 10 by speaking with a wall. Alternately, there could be some kind of requirement for a response in that language from another player, though this would still be open to abuse. In terms of gameplay, I think the best system is just another subsequent set of codices (or something like 'High Bibliomancer Rosiel's manual of correct and proper diction in Thalassian, chapter VII') to collect from various challenges.

    I think the way to go would be to bury codices and manuals in different areas of game content. You hand out some codices as 'low hanging fruit' to get people started, (like find and talk to some NPC), but then have some attached to some pretty tricky achievements (and mailed to you by an NPC) or low-chance raid drops. Maxing rep with a faction should earn you a codex too. I can imagine some cool codex-specific questlines in which you get a bunch of faction rep and a chance to 'get to know' a faction better. Killing certain NPCs that are racial enemies of the faction you're currying favour with. Levelling a certain kind of battle pet from 1 to 20. The options are plentiful.

    Apart from RPers, who would lap this right up, other players would surely get some enjoyment from hearing NPC dialogue, and being able to earn the ability to taunt or misdirect their foes. The fact that it is so hard won would screen out most of the spammy and trollish misuse, and also give it a certain kind of 'privilege', which can then be held against players in the case of misuse meaningfully (a week long suspension of something so hard earned would sting a bit).

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