Blizzard Officially Launches Voice Chat for All Games - MMORPG.com News

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Blizzard Officially Launches Voice Chat for All Games - MMORPG.com News

Blizzard has officially launched its version of cross-game voice chat. Simply called "Blizzard Voice", the new program is accessed via the Battle.Net client where players can start channels, invite friends in by right-clicking or dragging their names into the program.

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Forgrimm

Torval said:

It doesn't seem like you need to be a Blizzard player to use it. You can create an account and a channel. I think only the launcher needs to be running. Not any more trouble than any other voice or IRC client. I'm not a huge fan of voice chat though.

You need an active account with Blizz to log-in to the launcher and access it. It's specifically for use with their games.

Xingbairong

Tested it out today and I quite like it, however they need to add more options to invite people.
At the moment you can only invite people that are in your friends list and if you are doing for example a Rated BG with random people, 1 person will have to add all to his flist and while it doesn't really take any effort or time to do that I'm sure that it will off-put a lot of people.

As for the quality of the sound. So far it's not bad, but it can definitley be better. Still beats Skype, so at least that's good... now when you play with friends you don't have to use Skype and other similar crap programs

filmoret

Barren's chat 2.0

Forgrimm

Torval said:

Forgrimm said:

Torval said:

It doesn't seem like you need to be a Blizzard player to use it. You can create an account and a channel. I think only the launcher needs to be running. Not any more trouble than any other voice or IRC client. I'm not a huge fan of voice chat though.

You need an active account with Blizz to log-in to the launcher and access it. It's specifically for use with their games.

Making a Blizzard account is free. You have to create an account to login into most chat or voice systems, even if it's just a user for an IRC channel.

Do they lock it down so you need to be logged into a game in order to join the channel? I use the chat service all the time when I'm not logged in and playing their games.

Not sure about that. The voice chat they had back in the day was locked to the game from what I remember.

Incomparable

I would trust blizzard voice chat more than a 3rd party program, for the assumed benefit that it would not have security vulnerabilities.

voice chat programs only care about providing the limited service of voice chat, while a game service wants to ensure more than that.
for example i would assume when joining someones chat channel they would not have my IP address as they would in other 3rd party chat programs.

Wizardry

You would trust Blizzard more?lol

Ok so this means Hearthstone will have voice chat through THEIR system but the game doesn't even have typed chat lmao.
I am guessing there is more to it than simply adding in voice chat because Blizzard always leeches simple ideas to gain money from gamer's.Likely at least adverts popping up steady as well cookies,just another way for Blizz to make more money,they rarely do anything for the gamer unless they benefit more.

azurrei

Wizardry said:

You would trust Blizzard more?lol



Ok so this means Hearthstone will have voice chat through THEIR system but the game doesn't even have typed chat lmao.

I am guessing there is more to it than simply adding in voice chat because Blizzard always leeches simple ideas to gain money from gamer's.Likely at least adverts popping up steady as well cookies,just another way for Blizz to make more money,they rarely do anything for the gamer unless they benefit more.

you just described every other company, gaming or otherwise, in existence - congratulations

goozmania

I'd prefer it remain a friends list only thing, as I don't want to have to speak with people in HotS... considering I hate literally everyone in that community :-D

gervaise1

Incomparable said:

I would trust blizzard voice chat more than a 3rd party program, for the assumed benefit that it would not have security vulnerabilities.



voice chat programs only care about providing the limited service of voice chat, while a game service wants to ensure more than that.



for example i would assume when joining someones chat channel they would not have my IP address as they would in other 3rd party chat programs.

Actually the argument would be that TeamSpeak, Mumble, Ventrilo etc. will focus 100% on their product because that is all they do whereas for Activision Blizzard voice chat is just a feature competing for company resources (money) with the likes of e.g. CoD.

Moreover because it is simply a "game add-on" designed to make their games more attractive (i.e. profitable) and not a free standing product it won't directly make them any money. And in 12 months time - or whatever - when the reasons for setting it up have been forgotten and the pressure is on from senior management to hit a profit target ..... well that is when support budgets for things like this get cut.

Now the counter-argument is that a big company can simply throw more resources (money) at a product and create a "better" product than a "smaller" company. The likes of TeamSpeak et. al have been around a long time doing a very solid job, constantly improving security etc. so I don't think that holds here.

This move could be a reaction to the Amazon announcement.

Veexer_Nui

That was a waste of time developing. Everyone will still prefer to use skype, teamspeak, discord ect

Nikaas

Ohh look another company launcher having wet dreams of being the one and only single stop for all my gaming needs. Cluttering my RAM/CPU with services i will never use. I lost the count, a have like 5+ insisting a should use them.