In her latest Player Perspectives column, MMORPG.com's Isabelle Parsley takes the issue of voice chat in MMOs. She discusses why she calls herself a voice-chatless fossil and how intrusive voice chat can sometimes be for those who just can't 'tune it out'. Read Isabelle's comments about voice chat and then let us know of your experiences by commenting below.

There’s no denying that some games and some gaming activities not only benefit from voice chat but, in many cases, actively require it. It’s a lot easier to herd a bunch of raiding cats when you can say “ARGH! Incoming!” instead of having to laboriously type (often in semi-darkness) “Oops, sorry about this chaps, but I do think I might just have pulled a roomful of Really Bad Mob Type 374. Inco—glerk!” Anything action-based and team-based benefits from being able to speak to each other, especially since while most people can talk just fine, not everyone is a demon-speed typist.

Read more Player Perspectives: Can we talk?

I agree 100% there, prefer typing over voice chat. Plenty of good memories of chat discussions over the years in MMOs, not much about the voice chat discussions. Guess we're getting old!

Can't blame you for wanting to stay out of voice chat, there are a lot of times that voice is just as bad as general chat except you don't have to read whats going on in general.  If you are in a raid and there is some knuckle dragging mouth breather furiously mashing his boner on the talk button because there is a female with an accent in vent and he feels obligated to do everything in his power to be a douche canoe its hard to tune out.  I prefer to stay out of voice chat if at all humanly possible unless some of my close friends are in it and no one else.  Pugs and vent make me want to commit suicide i usually connect then mute vent because i hate listening to the insane amount of retard that pours out of my headphones.

The first time I ever used voice in a mmo we were about to raid and two females decided to talk about their kids the entire time when we were setting up strats...

I knew from that moment that voice was something that i would only use in Raid or large group type pvp situations.

I totally agree with you.  I don't really like voice chat.  I recall all the days where I'd hang around the bank in UO or char in-town near the reg vendor in AC.  There is hardly anything in mmos worth hanging around for anymore.  Everyone is always rushing to go level up something +1 and not talk.

Voice chat causes drama and is very distracting when trying to immerse yourself.

Nothing kills immersion like having a 400lb orc with the voice of a 14 year old human. I usually just tell people I'm deaf if they insist that I use voice chat. But then it's hard to talk about music with those people, hehe. In games like TF2 though, I will usually set up the mic and participate.

An other dinosaur here that doesn't use voice-chat and can type fast enough not to need voice-chat at all. Aside from that, voice-chat is one of the things tat distracts me big-time from my game, and using it I can't do my thing at all (healing in most cases).

Funny thing is that most "kid" kinships (yeah, I play LotRo at the moment) require you to have voice-chat (Vent mostly, while LotRo has a good voice-chat included in the game) active or you won't be invited to raid at all >:( It's like those kids can't communicate at all without voice-chat...

[EDIT]

Oh, I forgot to mention that the PC is in the living room, and if I would use any voice-chat, my wife would go nuts of me talking to my PC while she's trying to watch tv :D

So glad I read your artical. (I barely read any) I feel not so alone now. I couldn't agree with you more. You explained it well, and it hit home to me.

I beta tested the very first online game and I happen to be a old dude. But when you type everyone is the same age. The girl thing must get very old too. In the olden days, guys were idiots (most still are) and would make fools out of them selves with female toons. Now I just assume every female toon is a dude. Makes life easier. lol

Game till you bleed.

Oh this site gets beter and beter , lol first i have jon wood i always read , now isabella.

Anyway back on topic , voice chat shouldn´t be used like that , 12 people chatting trough one and other .

It even gives me a headache , infact wasn´t a fan of voicechat till we went hardcore raiding .

It took away the mystic of who is a guy or who is a girl , and brings problem on there own .

Some people were so disillusioned that there favorite friend was not a guy or a girl .

It was a mess , sorry part of the reasons we all play mmo is seperating the real from the privacy .

But other side Voicechat is getting to be normal sadly , so get used to it , but once voice chat turns into the same mess as typing chats .

Then its pull the plug indeed , nothing wrong with your statement of being old fashion typist .

Voice is a good thing most of the time but I know  people for get things like who is talking.  The best one is  "follow me" or "come to me", and you trying to guess who they talker is??   And the one that gets me, " why did you not heal me I said heal me". Well some people voices are not diferent  enough to  know by the voice who  needs it.  And if i am the main healer in the group and i hear heal me i look harder and tend to slow down healing people.

  The other reason why voice is not good for people is they a chatter, and they talk while the play, ugg it got me, shizz that hurts ... ect..  I usely mute them and the world is quiet again :)

Other things, can be corrected usely by a little training on how to set up for voice chat and usely work oout well. But personal I don't talk on voice much becuase I just dont have much to say. 

Now see.. I'm just the opposite.. I am female and American living in Europe and a mature (read old) woman.. Meaning I am the oddity with the accent here.. But I like voice chat.. I can talk to my friends and I can be healing or dps'ing or whatever it is I'm doing at the same time.  

Dont get me wrong.. I can type and I type fairly well.. But if I am doing 3 or 4 things at a time its just easier to talk.  Of course I am in a older setting in a 6 year old guild and most , about 80% of our members are over 30.  And not everyone in our guild will or wants to talk in vc  but they tend to log on to hear what those of us who do use it are doing.. 

I've been using VC since Shadowbane and honestly will never go back to just type. 

I tend to not bother with voice chat in MMO's, i do on occasion jump into a private server for close friends (3-5 people and we all know each other from r/l) but thats about it. however i do use voice chat when i'm able to for my FPS clan, again we've known each other for years and get along well and we have strict rules in place. so i'd have to say i'm 50/50 about Voice Chat.

Can't STAND voice chat, and never team with people that require it. Fortunately I always play the healer, and a damn good one at that, so if I say I'm not going to do something people stfu and listen. I can type my mind out before most people are finished thinking it and the rest are done saying it, so that's not a problem, but every once in a while you still get that one person bitching incessantly that 'Everyone should be in Vent."

Fuck you, annoying person that takes video games entirely too seriously.

I don't want to hear your scratchy voice while I'm playing, I don't want to hear your childrens being mongrels in the background, I don't want to hear your bitch barking or your cock chirping (punny on purpose), your air conditioner running, your TV blaring, your horrible taste in music making it difficult to understand anything you're saying. I do not want to hear any part of you. I want to hear the clang of your sword, the fwoosh of my healing spells, and the dulcet tones of whatever singer is currently in my headphones, making my gameplay that much more enjoyable (because video game music is never fun for long).

Another introvert here, which is why I'm almost exclusively a solo act. Too much activity on the screen leaves my poor brain screaming and wanting to dive under the bed. Voice chat would only add to the problem. Thanks, but no.

I have to whole heartedly agree, I am disabled and my voice is a little muddy and I get made fun of more often than not on the rare occasions I brave voice chat.  I play games to escape my body, not to show it off.

I absolutely HATE voice chat and I also remember my stepdad carrying around his "cellphone" in a shoulder bag back in the day. LOL!  I can't stand listening to people talk about inane issues. For me, it really ruins the immersion.

I'M A DINOSAUR AND PROUD OF IT!

Thanks for the fun read (laughed at the petri dish part). Personaly, I like and use voice chat most of the time. I do understand Isabelle's points as well but the industry seems to be moving more torward in game voice chat systems, not just Ventrilo or Teamspeak.

In my experience with voice chatting, a good moderator can make a huge difference with the chat going on at the time which trickles down to your enjoyment of the game you are playing. A good moderator would allow you to chat about out of topic stuff (like kids, what kind of dangly parts you have, etc) off of the main chat room. The mod could also dictate what kind of chat you have ( for the mouth breathers) such as push to talk only, and to keep the potty mouthing at a minimal or at the verry least PG13. The moderator can also say, obide by these rules or you wont be permitted to use the chat.

It is always an option on if you want to speak in chat or not. During raids as some others have mentioned, it is imparative to listen to the Raid Leaders instruction so that all can achieve what ever goal they are trying to reach as a single unit and not some babbling creetons.

The problem with the up and comming games and their in game voice chat , is that it seems alot of them are taking the choice away from you, and are not moderating the channels to filter out the dinks that are just there to yell into the mike or just be abnoxious.

As a non-American girl-gamer I completely concur with having the heebie-jeebies about Vent....

There was this one guy who sang songs at me constantly and made me want to quit the game, then there are the munchers, gulpers (push to talk, not to eat fritos or drink cola), and the one person who doesn't have PTT enabled and hums to themselves constantly.......eaugh!

Immersion is a million times better with typing, I don't need to know (or care particularly) what the gender of my fellow gamers is, and I managed to raid (the few times I did it) perfectly fine in a RP guild that eschewed voice comms.

I also remember brick-sized cell-phones and spent a couple of years working for a company that used to lease them to foreign travellers (pre-roaming, pre-texting...we've come a long way!).

I do not have a problem with it. Have had some nasty experiences but some good ones too with Vent. I guess I am more tolerant of the people I play with. I know some are teens and some have grating voices. I am sure my high pitched squeak must have annoyed people too.  

Yes  I'm guilty of talking about menopause and periods because the Vent I was on had a lot of females. It was a girl guild in WoW.  We had some males but they were not many. On another Vent where the females were fewer we did not bore everyone with our females issues. It just depends on the Vent and who is on it. You cannot just paint everyone with one brush and just like so many experiences in life Vent is another aspect that can be bad or good depending on who is on.

It was very useful for raids and those were monitored and people were not allowed to talk unless authorized and those helped a lot. In Warhammer the vent we used was very good for our guild groups so my experience is that you can have a bad time if the people on Vent are bad but on the other hand it can be useful and fun.

I'm pleased to say that I tend to play with much more mature people than most of you seem to and seldom have these problems with voice chat.  It's a must for raiding and any kind of high level play.  You need your hands to move your character and make split second descisions.  If you stop to type, you're going to screw something up.  Vent is great.