Communication

So far as EVE goes, I’ve talked about WHAT we communicate. I’ve only briefly discussed HOW we talk. Yes, there is an in-game chat feature that lets people basically text back and forth or IM each other. However in a more hectic situation found in-game such as a battle, of if you’re just too plain lazy to type, the typing out of what you want to communicate can be frustrating to downright degrading to the playing experience.

To solve this, the game has a built in voice communication system. However, as with most games the in-game voice application is shunned. Usually lag skyrockets, and the game becomes unplayable. This holds true in PlanetSide and World of Warcraft as well. So, the use of a third party program is often utilized. The two that I’ve always seen used are TeamSpeak and Ventrilo. PlanetSide almost entirely used TeamSpeak while WoW used Ventrilo. This doesn’t always hold true though, as there is some spillover into both games. I haven’t actually figured out the distribution in EVE yet, as I haven’t progressed far enough into the game so that voice communication is a must.

The use of a third party program also allows the users to play games that normally don’t have voice capabilities built in, such as old yet still very playable StarCaft. Of course there are drawbacks to the programs. Ventrilo has a user fee for hosting a client that others can connect to (normal users are free, only the host “server” has a subscription) for any size party. A Team SpeakServer is free for non-corporate use or for I believe under 40 or so users. However, TeamSpeak tends to have a somewhat lower fidelity to it, and as such is sometimes considered an inferior program by some users (I personally have no preference, but the free aspect of TeamSpeak is very appealing to me).

http://ventrilo.com/
http://www.teamspeak.com/