Fully voiced? What’s the point. 99% of the player base will just hit escape and cut it short. ”

From Sanya Weathers’ recent article on MMORPG.com, apparently more players do wait for voiced quest dialog to play out than stop to read it. I guess she’s been in a position to see the metrics.

For me, it really depends on the quality of the voice acting. EQ2 had pretty much full voice acting at launch, but to an English ear most of the accents were so embarassingly bad that I couldn’t in good conscience hear them out. Eventually I got used to them and in the end found them quite endearing, but I would certaibnly never have pegged them as an incentive to play.

In Wizard 101, however, I do listen to most of the voiceovers unless I am in a real rush. They are sometimes bland, but always very professionally done and there are some interesting, subtle ironies in tone. They do sound like the work of a very small company of voice actors, though.

Oddly, my favorite MMO voice acting is in Vanguard, where NPC voice is limited to background comments. Apparently these were done by the devs and friends-and-family, but they are gorgeously understated and often quite zen. I have a particular fondness for the Qalia merchants who greet you with “Always pray for rain”. It’s the pause between “always” and “pray” that really makes that one sing.

Anyway, whether or not SWtOR is the first, based on my memory of Baldur’s Gate I am happy to believe it will be the best, and best always trumps first.

I have played WoW to death now and I have finally come to the realization the social aspects of MMOs are hurt by being able to solo through the game. Although forced grouping makes it hard to play casually, which is important these days. I think the answer is to make it rewarding to group. If you CAN solo in a reasonable amount of time, people will. However, if soloing is painful, and only something you resort to when you can’t group, I think that might be a decent solution.

All of that being said, I hope that FFXIV at least tries to find this balance.

And the same will be true of SWTOR. Unless they force me to listen to it, I probably won’t unless it is an important quest.

EQ2 was supposed to be fully voiced but nowadays voiceovers are pretty rare.

Now, I usually play with the sound off anyway to avoid annoying the missus, so . . . *shrug*

When I played the original Sims I made a Buffy: The Vampire Slayer house. I know, I know, but I was still a teenager…

I just hit level 64 on my main without ever joining a group. I don’t think I’ve ever been left sitting around wishing I was in a group, though I’ll concede that my visit to the KOS expansion areas was short, brutal and painful. Gotta love it when the second quest on the “solo” timeline is flagged heroic because it sends you to an area where it takes extreme care not to be swarmed by half a dozen heroic Gazers. I don’t see how anyone can solo that thing without stealth/invis.

(Ironically, my level 13 Sarnak Warden has joined a group twice, once to share credit on a named quest mob respawn and once for a guided tour of how not to get ganked by guards on the way to our Qeynos guild hall.)

I also made a Captain Picard and BSG’s Boomer. Picard turned out to be a party animal, who knew?

I’m NOT happy that once again, it’s just the base game and we’ll be forced to repurchase TS3 versions of expansion content. How can you go back to playing just the vanilla game when you’ve had seasons (farming & weather), home businesses, pets and hobbies. AND WHAT THE F is up with them trying to start up micro transactions? Their content is never as good as the custom content developed by the community at large. Why on earth would I pay EA for their bland designs when I can sub to a custom content website and get awesome things for a flat fee?!?! EA needs to get a freakin’ grip. Isn’t suckering us into rebuying the expansions over and over and over enough money????