Blizzard Voice VS Others

[Gorthezar]

I was wondering now that Blizzard's voice chat has been out in the open for a couple of days what does everyone think? Will you be switching to it over say Discord, Mumble, etc. If so Why? If not why not?

My Guild wants to switch to Blizzard Voice because nobody you PUG could ever say "Oh I don't have installed but I know the fights." on the other side of that however I think Discord sounds WAY better and I feel like at this point most of WoW/Other Blizzard game players probably have this application installed.

[Gorthezar]

One of our guys tried it and says he loves it. That said, moving from discord is a hard sell as they've done such a good job with it. As for Mumble etc ... does anyone even use those anymore?

I think the main one still in use is probably Teamspeak but I agree I enjoy Discord very much It is also lightweight for those with older computers it isn't a resource hog however I have no real idea how good or bad on the resources the Blizzard Launcher + Voice is so no real judgement from me. I just remember one of the big reasons a lot of people didn't like the Curse/Twitch app for voice was it was WAY worse in this regard than Discord.

[MrExcelion]

As a voice program I've always liked Mumble and used that until the ascension of Discord, can't recommend anything but Discord nowadays. Interested to see what people say about Blizzard Voice though and how the customization of a server compares to what Blizzard Voice can do, and more long-term will they keep a dedicated team working on this (because Discords always evolving)

[Fyersing]

Voice Quality:

• There doesn't seem to be any distinction in quality between Discord or Blizzard Voice.
• Anecdotally, this is true for those using $3 earbuds or $400 Sennheiser Wireless Earphones.

Social Features:

• There aren't many features, and certainly nothing major, which are exclusive to either Discord or Blizzard Voice.
• The most notable thing lacking, from Blizzard Voice, is support for linking images in chat. This makes meme night with the boys a little more cumbersome than it probably ought to be.

Administrative Features:

• The administrative functionality is, as with the previous categories, nearly identical between Discord and Blizzard Voice.
• It could be argued that Discord allows for more extensive customization of "Permissions", but for the average person this is totally irrelevant in all but very niche circumstances.

Organizational Features:

• The way you actually go about joining the group(s) is exactly, exactly, the same in Discord and Blizzard Voice.
• Personally, I'd prefer if Blizzard actually went a different way with this and took us back to Server Name/Server Password-style channels. This would especially benefit from a BattleTag-esque system being applied to the groups.

EDIT: I would personally like to see Blizzard Voice/Blizzard Groups completely uncoupled from the Blizzard Launcher. As well, all Blizzard games should probably have in-game functionality that allows for the creation and management of the Blizzard Groups -- it sort of defeats the purpose of trying to compete with existing software options if you don't actually bring anything new to the table.

[Regalbeast]

One of our guys tried it and says he loves it. That said, moving from discord is a hard sell as they've done such a good job with it. As for Mumble etc ... does anyone even use those anymore?

Meh, Discord is okay. It's basically Slack for gamers. Not anything new.

[Raiju]

I don't see any reason to move. If you want voice quality you'll still be on TS / mumble or something else even over discord or blizzard voice.

The messaging is annoying, since it interferes with game swapping or popping out every window just to make it like it was before the discord copypasta. There's no way I can see to change your display name per channel which I'd argue is an extremely useful feature on discord. Inability to upload your own icons could be forgiven if they actually gave you a decent amount. Weren't there hundreds more datamined than we actually got? It's really poor overall. Not necessarily a bad thing but I personally dislike how the namelist takes up more space. The ability to minimize to just icons is once again ruined because of how few icons there are and the likelihood of duplicates.

The Blizzard launcher has also had a lot of issues with causing lag inside WoW if left open in background due to bugs, which interferes with use of it as a social client.

4/10, maybe will try again when it's out of beta and it feels like an actual competitor to discord. Right now it's a not terrible substitute if you couldn't use discord but I see absolutely 0 benefit to switching, and personally preferred the convenience of the last messaging incarnation of bnet. It's not a total failure, but the fact it's a beta is inescapable.

For voice I still use mumble for premade stuff though. PuGs on discord for convenience. No PuG can say no to discord as it works in browser, btw. If they say no just get someone else.

[Aeula]

Blizzard simply because I hate having to download Teamspeak, Mumble, Discord, Raidtalk (Or whatever it's called) and all the other voice things whenever I want to raid.

[TreacheryZJ]

Discord is where it's at. Bots/webhook support are amazing.

[Lollis]

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Patch_2.2.0

Yeah. It went perfect last time.

[Gorthezar]

I don't see any reason to move. If you want voice quality you'll still be on TS / mumble or something else even over discord or blizzard voice.

The messaging is annoying, since it interferes with game swapping or popping out every window just to make it like it was before the discord copypasta. There's no way I can see to change your display name per channel which I'd argue is an extremely useful feature on discord. Inability to upload your own icons could be forgiven if they actually gave you a decent amount. Weren't there hundreds more datamined than we actually got? It's really poor overall. Not necessarily a bad thing but I personally dislike how the namelist takes up more space. The ability to minimize to just icons is once again ruined because of how few icons there are and the likelihood of duplicates.

The Blizzard launcher has also had a lot of issues with causing lag inside WoW if left open in background due to bugs, which interferes with use of it as a social client.

4/10, maybe will try again when it's out of beta and it feels like an actual competitor to discord. Right now it's a not terrible substitute if you couldn't use discord but I see absolutely 0 benefit to switching, and personally preferred the convenience of the last messaging incarnation of bnet. It's not a total failure, but the fact it's a beta is inescapable.

For voice I still use mumble for premade stuff though. PuGs on discord for convenience. No PuG can say no to discord as it works in browser, btw. If they say no just get someone else.

Yeah I was wondering if if the Blizzard launcher had issues like the Twitch app. I remember when the Twitch app released for voice chat but it made games run worse.

[Daedius]

Discord is easily the best VoIP currently imo, both a message board and good voice chat clarity.

[Notshauna]

It's EXTREMELY laggy for me, like basic management takes seconds for the client to respond. Beyond that which I assume will be resolved by release, it simply missing a lot of features from discord. Simple things like image posting and setting up custom avatars are woefully missing. Beyond that this is more of a niche thing but as someone who has a discord bot it's also missing from Blizzard Voice, so a lot of unique features are lost.

[Razion]

I don't think the Blizzard Voice can do video-calls, upload images in chat, or even upload your own avatars. Without at least those things, I probably wouldn't switch off Discord.

[Gorthezar]

I don't think the Blizzard Voice can do video-calls, upload images in chat, or even upload your own avatars. Without at least those things, I probably wouldn't switch off Discord.

Not to mention at the moment the Blizzard mobile app only lets you speak 1 on 1 and not with your entire server whereas Discord I can do both.

[Ticj]

While it's good that blizzard has its own so people don't have to use an external voice program, discord is still wayyyyy superior.

[Gorthezar]

While it's good that blizzard has its own so people don't have to use an external voice program, discord is still wayyyyy superior.

I agree with you I was mostly trying to prove a point my guild leader thinks I’m stubborn for not wanting to switch to a worse voice program and I never once said to him it was extremely worse just that I thought it sounded worse than Discord.

[Deleted]

Initially I was on a fence regarding discord due to issues with voice chat, but they seem to be mostly ironed out by this point. We've switched from TS this expansion, mainly because hosting a server yourself is always prone to issues and paying for a virtual one is kinda silly when you can get a better one for free. Plus it actually has proper mobile support, unlike TS, which always had issues, at least on android.

I also love persistent chat, makes it a lot easier to plan things, or notify when you're not going to be there for the raid.

Plus discord is basically reemergence of irc, and i love that. Most communities now have their own discord, and it's much easier and faster way to get an answer than forums. So chances are you'll be using it for class/other game servers, so why not get a guild one as well.

I do have to admit that I had not checked out blizzard voice, but I still remember the previous fiasco, and it has that origin syndrome: everyone is using steam client(discord), so why should I use this, less popular, origin client(blizzard voice).

[Fyersing]

Plus discord is basically reemergence of irc, and i love that. Most communities now have their own discord, and it's much easier and faster way to get an answer than forums. So chances are you'll be using it for class/other game servers, so why not get a guild one as well.

I do have to admit that I had not checked out blizzard voice, but I still remember the previous fiasco, and it has that origin syndrome: everyone is using steam client(discord), so why should I use this, less popular, origin client(blizzard voice).

This is basically the correct answer.

You won't lose anything of note (apart from image support) by using Blizzard Voice, but you also don't gain anything as of the current iteration. A few tweaks to how they (Blizzard Groups, specifically) work would vastly increase the chance of the program being used by the playerbase at large -- interestingly, the one feature set that would be absolutely specific to Blizzard Voice (that being in-game management), and also the biggest selling point, is entirely absent.

[TheFirstOnes]

Discord's better.

[The Iron Fist]

I prefer Twitch. If someone isn't willing to install a voice program, they probably aren't someone you want to raid with anyways. If they are that lazy then they'll be lazy in raid too.