Saga ~ Our Online Roleplaying Family

Here's a fun one I thought I'd share.

http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/06/games_frontiers_0617

I saw that yesterday.  Very interesting.

Around the time DDO came out, I gave it a try for a week or so.  The game was fine, but the integrated chat really killed it for me.

Maybe it's elitist of me, but my pick-up group w/voice experience in DDO confirmed that a majority of players of MMOGs are not the sort of people I would otherwise choose to pass my time with doing anything else.  It's probably because I'm especially uninterested in tolerating teenagers that I'm not related to--especially since I deal with them enough on the job.

I think this will stratify the gaming community into more niches as voice becomes more and more a part of the normal experience in MMOGs.  Maybe there will be "boutique" MMOGs that can target a specific audience that prefers text-only servers etc.

That was a GREAT read--thought provoking and interesting.

I think some folks like the voice chat for the RP because they are able to adopt their character's persona as a movie or tv star might become their character.  I'm not an actor...all my creativity comes through my fingers.  If I use voice..and I have..it goes strictly to OOC and stays there.  I feel completely uncomfortable trying to make my character's voice with my own.

All of my characters have different timbres and tones...none of which I can actually mimic or create myself.

The larger social manifestations and implications are very interesting to consider...something I'll mull for the next little while.

Thanks for the link :kia

The only real interest of voice is for large group coordination. The raiding guild I was in on WoW couldn't have organized and complete MC or other 40 people raids without it.

It's completely useless in my opinion for RP or 6 (wo)men groups.

Most of my roleplaying is done face to face, in pen and paper games, so I'm quite used to vocalizing my roleplay and it would be my overall preference.

There's 2 big problems though.

1) For whatever reason, people love to drop to OOC when they log into Ventrilo.  Regardless of how comfortable I feel roleplaying in teamspeak etc it's useless when no one else is.

2) With text, it's easy to fill in the details about other's RP even if they're not actually roleplaying.  As the author experienced, the same person can communicate in text and it conveys a sense of character (even unintentionally) and you put them on live chat and that characterization is gone.

So overall, at the end of the day, I prefer text for my online RP.  I don't have Vent or teamspeak installed.

- Syll

when i roll play, i talk to myself.  everything i 'say', i've repeated outloud to sound out how to type it correctly, which is also why it takes me forever to respond.

i could go either way, but wouldn't have any issue going with voice.  and i highly recommend it for silly nights.  ;

Voice is good for raiding and tactical type games, and used almost exclusively by most major alliances in EVE Online. That said I've never liked it for roleplaying since I'm no voice actor amongst other reasons. After fifteen years of computers I've gotten to be quite a speedy typer, and I tend to come across much more eloquently with a written word than I ever have speaking.

QuoteI tend to come across much more eloquently with a written word than I ever have speaking.

ditto for me.

And I can type as fast as I can think...




...and sometimes faster ;)