Fully Voiced MMO

*assuming that a company has surplus amounts of backing, enough time and resources to pull this off, this is a what-if it happens scenario*

Along with the personal character's voice choices we have now (which can be added and improved on), how would a fully voiced mmo affect a player? This can include storyline based quests, main or side, ally or foe, and of course your character. Wouldn't it be nice if a humanoid or any other types of enemy (that can speak) were to speak as you are fighting them, as you would in a fight, legendary or not.

Taking it a step futher, what if chat, broken or not were also transformed to vocal projections. Of course this will be hard to implement thus "future" is an important point in the matter. "Why not just use voice chat like TS/RC?" might also pop up in this discussion, why not have the best of both worlds? :D Plus you can create many different voices and project that voice that you like if personal privacy is an important aspect to you, yet still want to have a "vocal" experience.

NPCs would be more memorable (in my opinion) and less likely to be forgotten if there is a distinct connection between you and him/her, which might be the vocal interaction. "Oh yea, that hyper active NPC was Ermegarde!"

Parties and friends can communicate in some other way and you can limit that amount you hear. For example, shutting out voices outside parties if you wanted to focus on your party alone.

As to not inconvenience some players, specific parts can be turned off individually, or all of it all in all. Blocked players will also not be heard through this and you can add specific players to not be heard too. Maybe you can just lower the external voices' volume too as opposed to turning it off altogether as to experience an "alive ambience". The voices might get repetitive to some people but again, it can be turned off.

I personally would enjoy a fully voiced MMO in the future, especially random NPCs and enemy fights. It'll be just badass if all those text and shouts Ifrit does mid-fight were actually voices and other relatively memorable enemies/allies/npcs like Diabolos, Hildibrand, or that god forsaken naturalist you are trying to escort in Mor Dhona.

The Old Republic was fully voiced and I didn't think that factor was all that amazing, to be honest. Thinking about it now, I think the writing and such was pretty dry, which might have been a factor. I much prefer my player character to not actually talk either when it's a character that I make myself rather than a defined character like typical FF main characters, but that's just a personal preference.

One thing that is neat though is that since everything isn't fully voiced, the sections that are voiced stand out a bit more. I was pleasantly surprised at there being voice acting in the Gilgamesh fight, for example.

That said, I do wish that more cutscenes were voice-acted, particularly the main story ones. The new 2.2 storyline has a lot of voice acting in its cutscenes though, at least compared to the main story, so I was pretty happy about it.

A lot of this is just going to be down to personal taste, really.

Boss fights for Dungeons, raids, etc., should be voiced by standard, in my opinion. The rest of the games doesn't need to be voiced, I rather resources be put into.. MAYBE IMPLEMENTING FANTASIA IN MOGSTATION!

^^ imagine Titan talking to you all the time..using the the same sentences again and again on your 100 attempts to bring him down. Not sure if I find that so attractive. :D

We're already running out of npc quests on levels 1-49.

To think how few quests we'd have and how slow their developement would be if they were voiced...

I'd choose more quests every time. VII-IX have great storytelling and even those don't need voices.

What bugs me about the voice acting is that there is way more Japanese voice acting than English. I don't understand any Japanese that isn't related to food, but I still switched to Japanese voices to cut the awkward silences to a minimum.

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Originally Posted by nugglets

What bugs me about the voice acting is that there is way more Japanese voice acting than English. I don't understand any Japanese that isn't related to food, but I still switched to Japanese voices to cut the awkward silences to a minimum.

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If you switch to Japanese, are more of the cut scenes in the inn room log voiced, then? That might be interesting to go back and see.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

If you switch to Japanese, are more of the cut scenes in the inn room log voiced, then? That might be interesting to go back and see.

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Yes, they are. I play with a few Japanese characters and was talking about how disappointing the 2.1 cut scenes being mostly unvoiced was. When they acted like I was crazy, I switched to Japanese and a LOT more stuff is voice acted.

Wow, didn't know that. Reminds me of White Knight chronicles where Japanese players got everything and NA and Europe only a piece of the cake for a higher price. Very odd philosophy. I remember Yoshi stating that because of the short development cycles it is impossible to have voice overs and translations to the corresponding languages. I thought this included everybody but obviously not, only the rest of the World outside of Japan.

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Originally Posted by nugglets

Yes, they are. I play with a few Japanese characters and was talking about how disappointing the 2.1 cut scenes being mostly unvoiced was. When they acted like I was crazy, I switched to Japanese and a LOT more stuff is voice acted.

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Care to give an example?

THE VOICE ACTING IS ALREADY SO GOOD AND THERE IS TOO MUCH OF IT!
THEY SHOULD PAY THEIR VOICE ACTORS MORE MONEY!
ITS NOT LIKE THERE ARE TALENETED VOICE ACTORS LINING UP TO DO IT FOR FREE!

I have a feeling that voice acting might be much easier to produce over in Japan (as well as more expected by the players), at least when compared to the United States, due to the way voice actors are practically worshiped over there.

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Originally Posted by Aaron_T

THE VOICE ACTING IS ALREADY SO GOOD AND THERE IS TOO MUCH OF IT!
THEY SHOULD PAY THEIR VOICE ACTORS MORE MONEY!
ITS NOT LIKE THERE ARE TALENETED VOICE ACTORS LINING UP TO DO IT FOR FREE!

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This is a joke, right? There's no such thing as 'too much' voice acting in a game with cut scenes, especially when a good number of those scenes are silent. And they *do* pay their voice actors.

Also, CAPS, no thanks.

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Originally Posted by Spellbinder

Care to give an example?

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I don't really remember any specifically, but a decent number of the 2.1 Main Questline additions. I can give specifics once the game is back up if you'd like.

I still have JP enabled so I don't know what was/wasn't voice acted in English for 2.2.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

I have a feeling that voice acting might be much easier to produce over in Japan (as well as more expected by the players), at least when compared to the United States, due to the way voice actors are practically worshiped over there.



This is a joke, right? There's no such thing as 'too much' voice acting in a game with cut scenes, especially when a good number of those scenes are silent. And they *do* pay their voice actors.

Also, CAPS, no thanks.

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YOU HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR AND UNDERSTAND JOKES VERY WELL!

Actually, "The Secret World" has almost all of its content fully voiced. Even all of its minor sidequests have voiced cutscenes accompanying them, and even listening for voices in-game as you explore around is crucial for certain quests.

That was actually part of why I really liked TSW - it's world was already really unique for an MMO (It's a modern setting where "every urban legend is real", so you get zombies, vampires, eldritch horrors, secret cults, the illuminati are real, etc.), and the voicing and NPCs all really helped it come alive. It's a shame the actual combat was sort of shallow and got repetitive fairly fast. (Remember how boring your skills are whenever you go into like level 15-25 content in roulettes here? That's what it's like in TSW. Forever.)

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Originally Posted by nugglets

to cut the awkward silences to a minimum.

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Yup this bugs me too! I remember the joining the Scions of the Seventh Dawn and there were cutscenes in a sequence, one part had voiced acting then suddenly the next has none XD

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Originally Posted by Gextiv

Boss fights for Dungeons, raids, etc., should be voiced by standard, in my opinion. The rest of the games doesn't need to be voiced, I rather resources be put into.. MAYBE IMPLEMENTING FANTASIA IN MOGSTATION!

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Yup I agree with the dungeons and raids voicing standard! This is just assuming that all parts of the game has resources they need, this is generally for any mmo, present or future btw not just FFXIV XD

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Originally Posted by Garlyle

snip

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Ooh, I didn't think of that. Optional voice dependent quests would be really interesting to play with, instead of the usual look at the map and go here quests.

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Originally Posted by nugglets

Yes, they are. I play with a few Japanese characters and was talking about how disappointing the 2.1 cut scenes being mostly unvoiced was. When they acted like I was crazy, I switched to Japanese and a LOT more stuff is voice acted.

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Nope. If it's voiced in one language, it's voiced in all.

The problem is just that half assed once again...
If you add voice then please the whole line and not only in a few cutscenes!
I mean: You doing main story quest, first cutscene in same quest is voiced, secund one is not, then third again and thats the thing that needs to be fixed.
It just makes no sense why some are not while others are... later on those quests arnt even that important, so why voiced? just small talk? ...

Anything with Scions of the Seventh Dawn should be fully voiced imo :P

Dungeon bosses should be voiced, more specifically the "end game" dungeons. Don't care about anything else. Fights can't reach that epicness without the bosses cheesy one liners & death taunts.

About the ten thousandth time I heard Vaelstraz in Blackwing lair cry out "Forgive me! Your death only adds to my failure" in vanillia wow, I decieded voices for boss fights was not a good thing.

^ Is why it should be optional, to please both sides! :)

Would also be cool if voices were not sequenced but random. Instead of a mob saying "Bob you shall die!" at 20% HP, it would be pretty sweet if mobs/bosses react to random crits/abilities, cause not all abilities will hit that soft spot but some will! Dunno, just ideas flying here and there.

In normal mmos your personal character also does grunts while attacking, it would be nice if spoken expressions were also included in the mix, again should be optional!

Maybe for specified spells too, that are actually spoken to fire off like black mage spells. Hearing your character cast something (as repetitive it may seem to some, for some not) in an archaic fashion can also be a nice addition, again optional!

Fully voice acted MMOs is not a new concept. It's weird how every once in a while I see someone start a topic just like this.


EverQuest II was the first to attempt it when they launched about 8+ years ago. I think they gave up on it in later content due to the massive cost.

DC Universe did a fantastic job of voice acting everything 4 years ago.

SWTOR was about 2 years ago and it too was almost 100% voiced.


The problem is the incredible additional cost to hire a variety of voice actors and a recording studio. If they have a budget for that, wouldn't you want that money invested in a better game?

Assuming the game has enough resources on each department, and successful at that, and has surplus amount of effort that they can direct to something else. Just wondering how this can be pulled off without it failing in the future of games :O