IRE Asks: Should MMORPG quest NPCs have voice actors?

Ask any mentally handicapped WoW player, you're not there to read the text or hear someone ramble on their life's story....Its like any good b-movie action flick....when to skip to the action scenes of the movie and fast-fowards though all the boring stuff.  Voice acting has its place when its put to use at pivitol moments, but if anyone here has played everquest 2(origional release) which did the ENTIRE game with all voice acted npc's its a big waste of time when no-one wants to listen to dialogue choices. 

However....there will be some players expecting such quality out of such games/stories/what have you.  Expecially with how well and lovingly crafted the story is about getting every team of players into situations which promote working together to all make decisions at pivotal moments weather to sacrifice the lives of some just to get something "Done" or take the effort and kill more stuff for a more positive outcome.

The best answer?  None there really isn't a good or bad because everyone has differing opinion on the matter. I personally feel that really best phrase is "A painting's worth a thousand words"

Nope.

I often listen to my own playlists while playing games, unless there isn't an option to turn off in-game music, unles it's a game with well implimented dynamic musical cues, and it's a pain to balance the levels between game sound and iTunes, especially if the game sound effects and voice have a wide dynamic range.

Voice actors sounds great in a graphical MMO, I guess. But one of the reasons I prefer text games is that I prefer to fill those things in with my imagination.

adds a lot to normally boring quests.

lol. no.

Only if it's done well.

I don't want to have to hear the denizen talking when I spam greetngs to figure out what he wants, I'd just mute the sound anyway

Interesting concept... I wouldnt mind it. I mean it would make questing interesting and possibly more immersive?

If we have the option to mute the sound I dont see why not.

I play it muted most the time, and in most conversations the actor would just get overwhelmed.

if it's done well

oh lord NO. First it would be disgustingly expensive for IRE, and second it's annoying enough trying to have a conversation in Thera with the kid bragging about ditching school. I could only IMAGINE him with voice acting.

yes

Should be able to do it already using MSP

If MMOs go the voice acting route, then they need to ensure they pick talented voice actors. Nothing is worse than poor voice acting.

It might be good if it were not put in a place that would spam you in anyway. Llistening to the same thing over and over would be worse than a bad thing. If I had to listen to vellis explain to me how to turn in butterflies every time I saw him it wouldn't be long before I didn't want to see him. 

The voices in my head are much more entertaining. :-)

Make sure that the voices are cool!

voices give it that extra something, you can turn them off in games too or turn them down, you don't need to listen to them if you don't want to,  but for those who do? amazing.

I think having voice audio during a text game would break the immersion.  It seems like a more natural extension for graphical mmo's that have overlap with other media that feature audio (video games, animated films).

I long for the early SWG days...

I can see the aspects of both sides.  I enjoy the fact of Achaea over WoW because I get to picture what I want the the stuff to look like, not the other way around.  But at the same time, sometimes what others come up with is a better idea than what I have.  So it's a 50-50 for me

It would annoy me having to mute the tv or music to listen to stuff. Part of the reason I love Achaea is that I can multi task. Also...people play graphical games pretty much until they complete it. I've played Achaea for ten years. Imagine hearing the same voiced sentences over and over for a decade?! No thank you!

Normally I'm fainting at the blob of text before I read it at times. Maybe like the Collegium history quest! 

I am pretty sure jaba the hut never loled.

I don't speak Achaean so it would be really hard to understand.

@Sebaste: Its better than the "addicting games" track they were on for a while...just sayin' 

I'm not to big of a fan of  voice actiong in a text based game.  I like to have my own opinions about how people sound without some voice actors  rendition on it, especially if  it conterdicts my own view of how they sound.  It's like audio books for me.  I buy a book to read, not listen to someone else read it to me.  If I wanted that, I'd have rented the movie.

Why not :)

I do like the idea of adding sound effects to text based gaming. It'd bring an entire new idea to gaming. Or at least have the option of turning sound effects on.

I don't think this would work, no matter how good the voice actors were. I read way faster than people talk, and I'd be out of the room before they would have finished speaking.

It would be a waste of music listening time.

Seems most of the regular players are like 'nah im too cool for that, nah I listen to music instead, nah Im too busy to listen' etc. But I think it would increase ambience in the game for new players, it's a neat idea. If technology permits, take advantage.

Choices instead of voices!

it wouldn't make sense

Yay voices!

sure

Also, I don't see why people are having such a hissyfit over MMORPG vs Mud. You know... a Mud /is/ an MMORPG right? Just not so 'massive' as it might have been in its heyday. And there still are/were  Muds that support MSP (Mud Sound Protocol) that could be any sound effect/music at all not just voices (Ie if you wanted to make your own soundtrack while fighting the big boss, or hear your bardy friend's latest composition [if they were talented enough to record their own songs for your use] and everyone else screaming in agony you could) XD. It's good in small doses or for special things. Also a good potential thing for those who may be vision impaired.

' The history of modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, and related virtual world genres such as the social virtual worlds exemplified by Second Life, traces directly back to the MUD genre. Indeed, before the invention of the term MMORPG, games of this style were simply called graphical MUDs. A number of influential MMORPG designers began as MUD developers and/or players (such as Raph Koster, Brad McQuaid, Matt Firor, and Brian Green) or were involved with early MUDs (like Mark Jacobs and J. Todd Coleman).

However, with the increase in computing power and Internet connectivity during the late nineties, and the shift of online gaming to the mass market, the term "graphical MUD" fell out of favor, being replaced by MMORPG, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, a term coined by Richard Garriott in 1997.'

That's right, the horror of it all. WoW which Text-gamers may or may not despise/hate is a Mud too in a sense.

But really...nah. Save like...MAJOR plot point quest giving NPCs

No.

Voice acting is cool!

Maybe I'm missing something but with the availability of the Skip ahead button a lot of games have, the player is then able to choose to listen or not

yes yes yes

That is a tricky one. I think some places they could be fine but then again if they are done poorly for a character that everyone knows it could be a bad thing.

yes to voices!

 This might sound stupid but, would if implimented all these voice blepes bog down the mud as  they're each  accessed repeatedly?  I mean enough at one time or close togher.

definitely not, the lag as of late has been horrid enough as it is

Money best spent elsewhere.  But if you can budget full voice acting by all means do it...

The problem with voice acting is it is often a hit or miss.  If you do not do it just right the game will have less immersive qualities...  Just my take on it...  Feel free to disagree!

are we not done with this article yet? :)

But maybe we're hitting on a new genre.

Graphical MMOs, text games... where's the fully audio-based RPG?

While I hate the voiced NPC idea, a voiced narrator like in Bastion would be awesome.

The only voices that I like to listen to are the ones in my head.

get them out of my head!

Nope.

You get him to do voice acting for Achaea and I will NEVER logout.  Ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZQhUc8GpTY

Talk to me baby

It would save lots of keystrokes if we could talk to each other. We could do our own voice acting.

I am glad to see that the idea has been moslty rejected by the community.

sure!  i would have been super into it. but I think the best way to do it in IRE would be to keep the general set up we already have, just instead of having to read the text the NPC puts out in response to being greeted you could hear it. or better yet see the text and hear it. that way anyone who doesn't have speakers could still enjoy the game, even if not as much.

say no to the voices!

My speakers stay muted, I wouldnt notice.  Too many chances of me running across a site with music or something.  I'm used to silent computers.

If NPCs started talking at me in my text based games I wouldn't play them. The beauty of text is that I'm a fast reader and don't have to wait for the voice actor to finish speaking.

If my speakers were spammed with constant voice acting from NPCs, I might be inclined to turn off the volume. Voice actors are great during cutscenes, but I think having them for NPCs would be excessive.

I dunno about SWTOR dialogue hurting game immersion, especially when the logic is that people would prefer branching dialogue. Haven't really played the game myself, but I believe SWTOR is way MORE about dialogue choices than any other graphical MMO. And I can't see how, if you're already going the full graphic route, immersion would actually be hurt by having the characters voiced. Though the same doesn't hold true for MUDs. The great thing about MUDs is, as I believe others have said, that it's all imagined by the players, and therefore player character representation is incredibly flexible and content can be created and changed much more easily. So no, have voice-overs in IRE games would not only be more expensive, it would be terrible.

ya

I'd rather see graphically-enabled muds first. The future is near!

No

we all play text based games. Clearly they are, if nothing else, entirely unnecessary.

no

no

I have no idea where those articles are coming from and what is their purpose.

Why would I want to take my time from the game and speculate what would I do if Vellis greeted me over my speakers?

Nope.

Don't really see the point and don't know where IRE would get the funds to pay for it.  I would rather see improving other existing areas of the game.

No - great once, clicked through after that!

^ Great!

Would be nice but think of the spam that could happen just from giving animals over to Talus or multiple people greeting the same NPC quest point.

I think that voice over material can be good once in a while. But eventually they become silly and I just end up skipping them because I read faster than the character can talk.