GrendelsBane

On our last Shadow Labyrinth run we decided to give the new Voice Chat feature a try. We were quite optimistic about the new feature and hoped that it might save us our monthly Ventrilo fee. The World of Warcraft site makes Voice chat seem simple enough:

Voice Chat – The new Voice Chat feature is now available in game. Players will need to go into the Options menu under Sound & Voice to activate it. Volume sliders are available for the microphone, speakers, and game-audio fade (which automatically lowers the game audio when a voice communication is received), as is a “push-to-talk” setting. Right-clicking on a player’s name now includes the option to mute or unmute that player. Muting another player blocks all voice chat from him or her; the ignore feature now blocks both voice chat and text chat from that player.

We didn’t have any trouble enabling the feature and figuring out how to use it-the key binding feature and use is very similar to Vent. And it didn’t seem to cause any lag issues.

The problems came when we were trying to actually hear our party members. We found it very difficult to adjust both our input and output so that we could be heard by and hear others without turning our speakers up so loud that the background/fighting noises were unbearably loud.

I believe that the general consensus among our members is to keep using our Ventrilo. But that the Voice Chat will be a good option on those occasions when we join pick up groups rather than giving out our Vent password information.