I think the problem is just as you said, there isn't a dedicated voice tool for everyone to use that doesn't suck. For guilds it's no big deal but for pugs it's pulling teeth to get everyone to get into voice chat because they don't want to download their 5th voice chat program, now they have less of an excuse as long as it works properly.
And still no offline mode.
So... how do you enable it? Is that "Alpha access" random like the game betas?
I know its gonna slightly upgrade the pug experience, but its gonna give a lot of work to the raid leader. For this to work, they need to give the raid leader a bundle of tools to control his chat room. Both when it comes to mute and kicking. If they do that, which they might not do since they blizzard, then its gonna be a usefull tool for pugs..... But thats it. Dungeon groups are not organized enough for them to use the system and guilds want to have more control over their voice-chat then something blizzard can mix up. Also, its another thing which can go broke, so its at the same lvl as other voice chats.
Didn't this fail last time they tried? It was so hard to hear and was super annoying to use. I hope this works better.
They're doing it so there's a unified voice chat for all of their games. You listed four different programs, meaning the playerbase is split among those and other VoIP programs. So long as they can maintain and iterate it, which is the real question, it could go a long way towards improving and unifying the Battle.net community.
Professor of History at Dalaran University
There really isn't anything to be afraid of. Whatever shit chat Blizzard put out in the past should be totally irrelevant to what will happen in 2016. Most games and platforms have a decent voice chat these days it shouldn't be a big deal.
How do i get this alpha version? I can't find an answer anywhere!
This is a really good thing if they can make it work better than the previous iteration. Which I heard is the case from Overwatch players. It fucking sucks to try and get people on VoIP in (for example) a pug. I hope the raid leader/voice chat group "host" can force push-to-talk so I don't have to hear people's heavy breathing, cheetos eating, burping, laughing, sneezing, background noise and shit like that. People who use voice activation (or even continuous transmission) are fucking retarded.
Having a voice chat that is readily available like when i play csgo for 5 mans and pug raids would be fabulous. The voice chat option has been there for expansions now but hasn't be implemented in a way its auto used on grouping. I think that would be ideal as it instantly would give people have mics/speakers a means to communicate rather then to have to turn the feature on. Without testing it maybe this is how it will work more. "shrugs". Idea's... But seriously I'm sick of having to use alternate solutions like ts or vent.
This is what voice chat 1.0 should have been. At bnet account level (although, I'm pretty sure Bnet wasn't a thing back then). Pickup groups, guilds, cross-game voice chat without vent? Yes please.
Will this be enabled by default in like bgs and pug raids? Cause I can't wait to converse with 14 yo brats.