voices

[Fensfield]

FF11 revolutionized MMO's by including cut-scenes.

Actually it just popularised them >.> Other MMORPG's, like Taleseaver, were doing it long before XI was kicking about the internet.

That being said... while voice overs in all cut-scenes at least might be fine, I think it might become a bit wearisome for every single NPC, not to mention, as others have said, it's a prohibitively expensive endeavor for a very transient return. This is the sort of thing companies like EA and Blizzard do when they've got several million dollars burning a hole in their pockets and a great deal of time on their hands.

[Shadygrove]

.... while voice overs in all cut-scenes at least might be fine, I think it might become a bit wearisome for every single NPC, not to mention, as others have said, it's a prohibitively expensive endeavor for a very transient return. This is the sort of thing companies like EA and Blizzard do when they've got several million dollars burning a hole in their pockets and a great deal of time on their hands.

Well.... no. It doesn't take massive voice acting nor megabucks to voice every single NPC in the game. As long as you don't care if they get repetitious.

I was in Warhammer Online for quite some time. Every character in the game, PC and NPC is voiced. Same handful of phrases for each race / gender. No difference in what you hear clicking on a PC or NPC. No septate scripting for quests, all those were written.

I could go for voiced CSs, but they then have to have voicing for the PCs in the CSs. Not that hard here, we choose from 3 voices / race & gender, but it could be expensive.