There are ways to do voice chat that would be usefull in a MMOG.
You can have it area based... Not all voices are played within a regoin.. but only voices that are close enough to the player.
Have it set up so that you can disable random voices or even set the range you hear voices or limit the amount of voices you hear.
Also have a onscreen display. (player name) (Little collored dot) that glows or is displayed when someone talks with a fade time on it. That way if you don't want to hear that person you can ignore then. and it is stored in a ignore list. Also give the user the option you put a note next to you....
EXP (orange dot) "Some random 12 yo kid that keeps yelling in his mic"
One of the things that you can do... That i think is cool, is add ingame voice modulation. That way if you want to sound like the 300 lb half-orc male that you are playing you will.. Even if you are a 110 lb 20 yo female.
THe main thing about doing something like this in a real game is that it has to be a part of the game from the beginning, the game itself has to be set up with this feature in mind. Tools and places and ways for people to do game things.. (trade, group, quest, ext..) all have to be intergrated into the system. It can't be a Half-Ass after thought. thats what is gonna make it fail..
Also.. if you are gonna make it a voice only game then i think everything needs to be voice also.. NPC's and PC's. Whats the point of making all your players have to use voice when they have to read what all the NPC's say in-game.
But if it was well done, thought out and time spent into balancing the game out so that it can run.. Then it will be fine. Some people wont like it.. But unless you are trying to brake the bank.. I'm sure you could find enough people that like it to keep yourself and your game online.
Anyways.. I'm pushing for a voice based system. And on my project it's one of the primary system that i'm trying to get to work.. but i'm also working on doing full text to speach system for all my NPC comunication. It's just the bandwidth that comes up.
I'm also working on a speach to text system for giving commands to the NPC's. It's a keyword system that it scans for when someone talks...
Betty: just fine... I'm trying to find some bandages I ran out.. you know where i can find any?
Sam: (keyword FIND came before keyword BANDAGES within SET TIME DELAY) You know the tailor usely sells bandages, if you want i can tell you where his shop is.
Betty: Thanks Sam, could you please
Sam: (keyword SAM (active waiting script for keyword) COULD YOU) {would also be set for other posible replies, SURE, OKAY, THAT WOULD BE GREAT} Sure thing, it's just down the road in that dirrection and take a right at the torch stand, you will see the tailor sign hanging in the dorway on the left.
Now this is a pretty simple conversation, and it's alot to ask for.. but it's something that i'm playing with.. But the NPC's are set to respound to a few keywords. and those keywords open up other set of keywords.
I'm also working on a line of site detection system, what this does is let the system determine if the player is facing the NPC while talking to them. If line of site is not there then the system determines that the player is speaking to someone else. Now directly clicking on an NPC will select that npc and the system is asured that that player is speaking to them.
PS... my project is for school, it's not a release to public game. It's just ideas and concepts that i'm working on for a grade.
I played Tale of Tales maybe...3-5 years ago? It was an interesting "game". Definately fun, but got very boring, as once you were done exploring and such, interaction was desired. Not being able to chit chat at all was a big downside, and I ended up uninstalling it.
"So... judging by the direction this topic is going... The new patch is to implement quantum physics into the game by the use of a LHC. Right?"
We will still need to be able to read to play MMO’s in the years to come? Outrageous! I don’t understand why Jamie did not also mention the need for us to change to an interface which only involves us using one finger to control our character. We are illiterate morons after all so that would help us a lot in game.
I would suggest Senadina that if you want to play a badass male warrior you drop the kitty avatar for a start, that’s a bit of a give away.
I have not played it, but some people I know who have say it certainly takes you out of your skin as it were.
I loved this from the EvE patch notes about their ‘voice fonts’:
"Voice fonts have now been added to EVE Voice. This new feature will allow you to alter your voice during chat to increase or lower pitch or to change from male to female voices. This is certainly not going to be abused in any way."
Although affordable voice-changing software is available for many years now, I still see the same old arguments that seem to be ignorant of this fact in discussions about voice-chat in online games for just about as many years now.
Voice is fine unless you enjoy immersion, and voice completely destroys that. Plus voice can get pretty boisterous as you mentioned. At least with text you can still roleplay. It is kind of like listening to a book on tape or just reading it, I would much rather read it myself.
The problem with MMO's is that if someone can abuse it they will and you just can't control voice hence it is just not practical to use until someone writes software to control it.
While the deer game is interesting, I could not imagine playing it more than an hour without being completely bored. MMO is about socializing and having a game so limited is not going to do it for most players.
Anyone who has tried to play any game on consoles that allows voice chat and has an open public lobby for the game has experience the "whinning, childish screamers". It is niether pretty nor inviting to sit there wanting to just play a game and have some immature brat screaming into your hear. Essentially, just take some of the typed chat you see in many MMO's and imagine it put to voice. At least the typed version I can easily ignore.
A neural interface should come out soon, since we have primitive ones out now, who knows what the future will bring. Speaking your mind, will become pretty literal.
Everyone seems pretty opposed to the idea. I don't know. Maybe it will slowly regulate itself. Much like in real life, you like or dislike a person based on your interaction with them (hopefully, anyway). With voice only, you would have a much better idea of who you're dealing with than just through chat.
I wonder what a voice chat would do to a game, if you weren't able to communicate with people who are not in your immediate vicinity. In game your voice would emanate from where your character is standing and would only travel so far. Just like IRL people might spread out a bit more, find a quiet place to have a conversation. For usabilty's sake this could be amplified for people who are in your party or friends and guildmates.
If you care about your reputation, you would (one would hope) take care not to be an idiot at the mike. While squeeky kid voices may annoy you in TS, a visit to /2 Trade puts the fear of god in you. These people are or will be allowed to vote... Unbelievable!
One of the things i find funny about this discussion is the bashing on the kids.
Now i know alot of people have only WoW to use as a MMO of refrence, but from what i've been involved with, most of the cases of annoyence has come from people above the age of 18, not below it.
Don't get me wrong alot of kids can become annoying, but most of your nerd rage you get is from adults.
So, lets not just trash the younger players... all ages i'm sure have had there stand out performers.
Also, many games produced now are geared for the 18-25 yo market. So in saying that you don't want to be reminded that you are playing a kids game, makes me question what games are you playing. (this is not a dirrect attack on anyone but just a blanket statement about the general feeling)
And i beleive, that voice chat while it can be abused, will regulate itself. Jusy like text chat has.
Even though text is easier to log and search. Players do regulate it.. ever see what happens when someone types in all CAPS... ITS PRETTY MUCH TAKEN CARE OF QUICKLY.
And as long as you give people the ability to ignore or control who and what they hear than i don't see the problem.
There's a decent amount of deaf people that play mmos, too. I personally know of 2, and based on threads I've seen pop up in the various official forums, there's quite a few out there. Of the 2 I know, one of them is the best healer I've ever played with in WoW, so it's not like they don't matter in terms of contribution. (Seriously, I've seen that thrown out there-- "Deaf people can't play for s#!t, so it shouldn't matter.", which is complete bull)
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Voice chat can't help but take the RP out of MMORPG's. I am a middle aged female, how am I gonna roleplay a badass male warrior if everyone can hear I have a feminine voice? I am somewhat interested in APB, and think the "proximity" voice options are cool, but gonna make it hard to RP.
I get what you are saying, but imagine those poor PnP players. Man, their RP must have really sucked eh? j/k
To answer the (perhaps rhetorical) question, EvE implemented "voice fonts" a few patches ago (http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=202). I imagine there would be additional software that could do this as well for other games. The point though, while EvE might not be your game, the technology is implemented and, as a result, might find its way into other games.
You actually have voice filters for male -> female and vice versa in APB.
The only voices I enjoy in my games are professional voice actors, which only exist in limited amounts of MMOs and even singleplayer games. I do not want to listen to some young kid selling his old gear, whilst playing some large warrior or space marine type, it would completely ruin what little immersion I get from MMORPGs today.
I'm a very quite person when it comes to vent. I'll only ever get on for raids/fleets/etc. and do I rarely ever start conversations with people I barely know, in my guild or not. I also prefer reading much more than listening, which I'm sure some people will agree with; you can't sit still to an audio book but you can read for hours on end.
there are too many difficulties to overcome to implement a fully voice driven game:
first, voice recognizing software is quite ineffective (unless you use simple keywords), so NPCs will be hard to interact with (well, you can still use text for that, but it'd make no sense).
second, it can work when outside, exploring the world, you see someone you would like to talk to, approach him, and talk. in large cities, with some 300 players standing next to an auctioneer or main shop or whatever?
third, channels! you have to learn people's voices to recognize 'em, else you would never know if whatever you just heard came from the surroundings, the guild channel, the party channel, the system or else
fourth, accents: i can pretty easily understand a german or russian speaking english because they'll tend to speak it like they learned at school (and it's pretty much the same around the world), but i often experience major difficulties when trying to understand an american (especially texan) speaking his mother language, they tend to break every grammar rule i learned at school...
fifth, microphones are often cheap and fragile (i can't even remind how many new headsets i had gone through), and without one you can't play the game
sixth, 9 out of 10 people i ever hear on teamspeak/ventrilo have their microphones badly configured or half-broken, or have some source of noise nearby (computer fans, tv, children, washing machines, music...) so you just can't understand most of whatever they say.
there are also many other points i probably forgot...
I think that the text-based communication is one of the best things left over from the past. With every other game that is based online going to voice communication, it is nice to go in knowing that there are a thousand people playing and you don't have to listen to them talk.
At this point you use ventrilo if you need to coordinate, but there is a certain comfort knowing that you don't have to hear the 13 year old's voice crack as he tells you what to do, or the older gentleman's monotone telling you what not to do. Let them type it.
And honestly the game described, about being a deer? Does anyone else think that sounds completely lame?
In addition, the social aspect of MMORPG's are the selling point. Otherwise we would all still be playing normal RPG's and World of Warcraft wouldn't be making Blizzard mounds of cash every month. And it's not as if games haven't already tried the voice communication route. DDO for instance. I think to cripple the social aspect by either knocking it out completely in favor of fancy emotes or by overadvancing it and bringing us the amazing atmosphere that we all love in games like Call of Duty... (yeah, sarcasm) is a bad move.
I hear you there. I sound like Barry White and Tom Waits' kid. Made it hard to play female toons in Aion or GW, or male toons in fact with their art styles.
I think the next step will be to have some pre-boxed voice over options. Almost like emotes. So you pick your 'voice' at character creation and then typing 'hi' while targeting another player sends them a 'Hi' sound, as well as a "Bob says to you: Hi"
Voice to text and text to voice has come a long way. It wouldn't be too crazy to think it could go from the above to:
You say 'hi'.
The game types 'hi'.
The game sends the typed hi over the server to your target.
Game re-speaks 'hi' in your chosen voice at the target's computer and types "hi" in his chat log.
Then you get around all the RP issues. Inflection, tone and flow would become difficult. Especially if you're trying long sentences or complex ideas. But you could also just type what you wanted to say. Or include <nt> for "no talk" or something like that.
These games are doing away with the millions of years humans took to develop a larynx and communicate with a voice. Now that’s proper old school for you, none of your fancy frills like words and sentances.
Voice chat can't help but take the RP out of MMORPG's. I am a middle aged female, how am I gonna roleplay a badass male warrior if everyone can hear I have a feminine voice? I am somewhat interested in APB, and think the "proximity" voice options are cool, but gonna make it hard to RP.
I get what you are saying, but imagine those poor PnP players. Man, their RP must have really sucked eh? j/k
To answer the (perhaps rhetorical) question, EvE implemented "voice fonts" a few patches ago (http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=202). I imagine there would be additional software that could do this as well for other games. The point though, while EvE might not be your game, the technology is implemented and, as a result, might find its way into other games.
Point taken. I believe there IS a difference tho between PnP RP with RL friends and on-line RP with strangers. It's a matter of suspension of disbelief and a common understanding.
And if other MMO's adopt the " voice fonts", it would be very cool.
I think the sci-fi MMO market is a rich playground just waiting for some developer to make the leap to an entirely VOIP communication system. The much maligned Star Trek shouldn't even have a place to use a keyboard Scotty didn't like them neither should the player!
I think the tech is still too expensive to implement and scale properly though. I imagine that going from a server set up handling however many lines of code figuring out how far your "voice" will carry from you avatar becomes astronomically more expensive to do and to maintain when you add an entire city's worth of people around you. Can you imagine hearing yourself think in Orgrimarr's Auction House or Iron Forge's with that many people bantering back and forth?
Continuity wise it has to work as well. Do we look at private "whispers" the same way with voice as we do with text? Should there be an item that has to be aquired to allow this first? If we're all allowed to whisper now we have more key commands to switch from local "around me" chatting to target someone specifically, which is something I don't like the idea of and I'll tell you why. An MMO experience is supposed to be an immersive one and immersion requires something called "The suspension of disbelief." If I'm wrapped up in the world I'm thinking about the story and what's happening around me, the second I have to take myself out of it to go through the chain of events to select and "call" if you will another player I'm not in the game world I'm in some kind of psuedo Skype lounge.
Comments
There are ways to do voice chat that would be usefull in a MMOG.
You can have it area based... Not all voices are played within a regoin.. but only voices that are close enough to the player.
Have it set up so that you can disable random voices or even set the range you hear voices or limit the amount of voices you hear.
Also have a onscreen display. (player name) (Little collored dot) that glows or is displayed when someone talks with a fade time on it. That way if you don't want to hear that person you can ignore then. and it is stored in a ignore list. Also give the user the option you put a note next to you....
EXP (orange dot) "Some random 12 yo kid that keeps yelling in his mic"
One of the things that you can do... That i think is cool, is add ingame voice modulation. That way if you want to sound like the 300 lb half-orc male that you are playing you will.. Even if you are a 110 lb 20 yo female.
THe main thing about doing something like this in a real game is that it has to be a part of the game from the beginning, the game itself has to be set up with this feature in mind. Tools and places and ways for people to do game things.. (trade, group, quest, ext..) all have to be intergrated into the system. It can't be a Half-Ass after thought. thats what is gonna make it fail..
Also.. if you are gonna make it a voice only game then i think everything needs to be voice also.. NPC's and PC's. Whats the point of making all your players have to use voice when they have to read what all the NPC's say in-game.
But if it was well done, thought out and time spent into balancing the game out so that it can run.. Then it will be fine. Some people wont like it.. But unless you are trying to brake the bank.. I'm sure you could find enough people that like it to keep yourself and your game online.
Anyways.. I'm pushing for a voice based system. And on my project it's one of the primary system that i'm trying to get to work.. but i'm also working on doing full text to speach system for all my NPC comunication. It's just the bandwidth that comes up.
I'm also working on a speach to text system for giving commands to the NPC's. It's a keyword system that it scans for when someone talks...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EXP: NPC smith PC henry PC betty NPC sam
Henry: Hey betty, hows goes everything today.
Betty: just fine... I'm trying to find some bandages I ran out.. you know where i can find any?
Sam: (keyword FIND came before keyword BANDAGES within SET TIME DELAY) You know the tailor usely sells bandages, if you want i can tell you where his shop is.
Betty: Thanks Sam, could you please
Sam: (keyword SAM (active waiting script for keyword) COULD YOU) {would also be set for other posible replies, SURE, OKAY, THAT WOULD BE GREAT} Sure thing, it's just down the road in that dirrection and take a right at the torch stand, you will see the tailor sign hanging in the dorway on the left.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now this is a pretty simple conversation, and it's alot to ask for.. but it's something that i'm playing with.. But the NPC's are set to respound to a few keywords. and those keywords open up other set of keywords.
I'm also working on a line of site detection system, what this does is let the system determine if the player is facing the NPC while talking to them. If line of site is not there then the system determines that the player is speaking to someone else. Now directly clicking on an NPC will select that npc and the system is asured that that player is speaking to them.
PS... my project is for school, it's not a release to public game. It's just ideas and concepts that i'm working on for a grade.
I played Tale of Tales maybe...3-5 years ago? It was an interesting "game". Definately fun, but got very boring, as once you were done exploring and such, interaction was desired. Not being able to chit chat at all was a big downside, and I ended up uninstalling it.
We will still need to be able to read to play MMO’s in the years to come? Outrageous! I don’t understand why Jamie did not also mention the need for us to change to an interface which only involves us using one finger to control our character. We are illiterate morons after all so that would help us a lot in game.
I would suggest Senadina that if you want to play a badass male warrior you drop the kitty avatar for a start, that’s a bit of a give away.
This is the deer game site: http://endlessforest.org/community/
I have not played it, but some people I know who have say it certainly takes you out of your skin as it were.
I loved this from the EvE patch notes about their ‘voice fonts’:
"Voice fonts have now been added to EVE Voice. This new feature will allow you to alter your voice during chat to increase or lower pitch or to change from male to female voices. This is certainly not going to be abused in any way."
Yeah right
Although affordable voice-changing software is available for many years now, I still see the same old arguments that seem to be ignorant of this fact in discussions about voice-chat in online games for just about as many years now.
--
Delanor
My english sucks amd is even worst when I speak, that why I prefer text based chat.
I played seveeral games with voice chatand i don't remember anyone voice chatting.
"you are like the world revenge on sarcasm, you know that?"
One of those great lines from The Secret World
Voice is fine unless you enjoy immersion, and voice completely destroys that. Plus voice can get pretty boisterous as you mentioned. At least with text you can still roleplay. It is kind of like listening to a book on tape or just reading it, I would much rather read it myself.
The problem with MMO's is that if someone can abuse it they will and you just can't control voice hence it is just not practical to use until someone writes software to control it.
While the deer game is interesting, I could not imagine playing it more than an hour without being completely bored. MMO is about socializing and having a game so limited is not going to do it for most players.
Anyone who has tried to play any game on consoles that allows voice chat and has an open public lobby for the game has experience the "whinning, childish screamers". It is niether pretty nor inviting to sit there wanting to just play a game and have some immature brat screaming into your hear. Essentially, just take some of the typed chat you see in many MMO's and imagine it put to voice. At least the typed version I can easily ignore.
Let's party like it is 1863!
How about voice to text. That way you won't have to type and won't have to talk to strangers, just your PC.
The only reason people like voice chat at all is because its a little faster than typing, depending on the person.
A neural interface should come out soon, since we have primitive ones out now, who knows what the future will bring. Speaking your mind, will become pretty literal.
Text.
I don't need to listen to children in my mmo reminding me of the harsh reality of me playing a kids game.
Playing: Rift, LotRO
Waiting on: GW2, BP
Everyone seems pretty opposed to the idea. I don't know. Maybe it will slowly regulate itself. Much like in real life, you like or dislike a person based on your interaction with them (hopefully, anyway). With voice only, you would have a much better idea of who you're dealing with than just through chat.
I wonder what a voice chat would do to a game, if you weren't able to communicate with people who are not in your immediate vicinity. In game your voice would emanate from where your character is standing and would only travel so far. Just like IRL people might spread out a bit more, find a quiet place to have a conversation. For usabilty's sake this could be amplified for people who are in your party or friends and guildmates.
If you care about your reputation, you would (one would hope) take care not to be an idiot at the mike. While squeeky kid voices may annoy you in TS, a visit to /2 Trade puts the fear of god in you. These people are or will be allowed to vote... Unbelievable!
One of the things i find funny about this discussion is the bashing on the kids.
Now i know alot of people have only WoW to use as a MMO of refrence, but from what i've been involved with, most of the cases of annoyence has come from people above the age of 18, not below it.
Don't get me wrong alot of kids can become annoying, but most of your nerd rage you get is from adults.
So, lets not just trash the younger players... all ages i'm sure have had there stand out performers.
Also, many games produced now are geared for the 18-25 yo market. So in saying that you don't want to be reminded that you are playing a kids game, makes me question what games are you playing. (this is not a dirrect attack on anyone but just a blanket statement about the general feeling)
And i beleive, that voice chat while it can be abused, will regulate itself. Jusy like text chat has.
Even though text is easier to log and search. Players do regulate it.. ever see what happens when someone types in all CAPS... ITS PRETTY MUCH TAKEN CARE OF QUICKLY.
And as long as you give people the ability to ignore or control who and what they hear than i don't see the problem.
There's a decent amount of deaf people that play mmos, too. I personally know of 2, and based on threads I've seen pop up in the various official forums, there's quite a few out there. Of the 2 I know, one of them is the best healer I've ever played with in WoW, so it's not like they don't matter in terms of contribution. (Seriously, I've seen that thrown out there-- "Deaf people can't play for s#!t, so it shouldn't matter.", which is complete bull)
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
You actually have voice filters for male -> female and vice versa in APB.
The only voices I enjoy in my games are professional voice actors, which only exist in limited amounts of MMOs and even singleplayer games. I do not want to listen to some young kid selling his old gear, whilst playing some large warrior or space marine type, it would completely ruin what little immersion I get from MMORPGs today.
I'm a very quite person when it comes to vent. I'll only ever get on for raids/fleets/etc. and do I rarely ever start conversations with people I barely know, in my guild or not. I also prefer reading much more than listening, which I'm sure some people will agree with; you can't sit still to an audio book but you can read for hours on end.
there are too many difficulties to overcome to implement a fully voice driven game:
first, voice recognizing software is quite ineffective (unless you use simple keywords), so NPCs will be hard to interact with (well, you can still use text for that, but it'd make no sense).
second, it can work when outside, exploring the world, you see someone you would like to talk to, approach him, and talk. in large cities, with some 300 players standing next to an auctioneer or main shop or whatever?
third, channels! you have to learn people's voices to recognize 'em, else you would never know if whatever you just heard came from the surroundings, the guild channel, the party channel, the system or else
fourth, accents: i can pretty easily understand a german or russian speaking english because they'll tend to speak it like they learned at school (and it's pretty much the same around the world), but i often experience major difficulties when trying to understand an american (especially texan) speaking his mother language, they tend to break every grammar rule i learned at school...
fifth, microphones are often cheap and fragile (i can't even remind how many new headsets i had gone through), and without one you can't play the game
sixth, 9 out of 10 people i ever hear on teamspeak/ventrilo have their microphones badly configured or half-broken, or have some source of noise nearby (computer fans, tv, children, washing machines, music...) so you just can't understand most of whatever they say.
there are also many other points i probably forgot...
I think that the text-based communication is one of the best things left over from the past. With every other game that is based online going to voice communication, it is nice to go in knowing that there are a thousand people playing and you don't have to listen to them talk.
At this point you use ventrilo if you need to coordinate, but there is a certain comfort knowing that you don't have to hear the 13 year old's voice crack as he tells you what to do, or the older gentleman's monotone telling you what not to do. Let them type it.
And honestly the game described, about being a deer? Does anyone else think that sounds completely lame?
In addition, the social aspect of MMORPG's are the selling point. Otherwise we would all still be playing normal RPG's and World of Warcraft wouldn't be making Blizzard mounds of cash every month. And it's not as if games haven't already tried the voice communication route. DDO for instance. I think to cripple the social aspect by either knocking it out completely in favor of fancy emotes or by overadvancing it and bringing us the amazing atmosphere that we all love in games like Call of Duty... (yeah, sarcasm) is a bad move.
Quote FTW
And by quote I mean this one, oops.
I think the next step will be to have some pre-boxed voice over options. Almost like emotes. So you pick your 'voice' at character creation and then typing 'hi' while targeting another player sends them a 'Hi' sound, as well as a "Bob says to you: Hi"
Voice to text and text to voice has come a long way. It wouldn't be too crazy to think it could go from the above to:
You say 'hi'.
The game types 'hi'.
The game sends the typed hi over the server to your target.
Game re-speaks 'hi' in your chosen voice at the target's computer and types "hi" in his chat log.
Then you get around all the RP issues. Inflection, tone and flow would become difficult. Especially if you're trying long sentences or complex ideas. But you could also just type what you wanted to say. Or include <nt> for "no talk" or something like that.
*perks up ears*
*scratches chin*
*nods*
*pause*
*dances*
These games are doing away with the millions of years humans took to develop a larynx and communicate with a voice. Now that’s proper old school for you, none of your fancy frills like words and sentances.
Point taken. I believe there IS a difference tho between PnP RP with RL friends and on-line RP with strangers. It's a matter of suspension of disbelief and a common understanding.
And if other MMO's adopt the " voice fonts", it would be very cool.
I think the sci-fi MMO market is a rich playground just waiting for some developer to make the leap to an entirely VOIP communication system. The much maligned Star Trek shouldn't even have a place to use a keyboard Scotty didn't like them neither should the player!
I think the tech is still too expensive to implement and scale properly though. I imagine that going from a server set up handling however many lines of code figuring out how far your "voice" will carry from you avatar becomes astronomically more expensive to do and to maintain when you add an entire city's worth of people around you. Can you imagine hearing yourself think in Orgrimarr's Auction House or Iron Forge's with that many people bantering back and forth?
Continuity wise it has to work as well. Do we look at private "whispers" the same way with voice as we do with text? Should there be an item that has to be aquired to allow this first? If we're all allowed to whisper now we have more key commands to switch from local "around me" chatting to target someone specifically, which is something I don't like the idea of and I'll tell you why. An MMO experience is supposed to be an immersive one and immersion requires something called "The suspension of disbelief." If I'm wrapped up in the world I'm thinking about the story and what's happening around me, the second I have to take myself out of it to go through the chain of events to select and "call" if you will another player I'm not in the game world I'm in some kind of psuedo Skype lounge.
Just my two cents.
It is about time there was talk about this game... This game is way old but very very interesting to play.