Having your character talk during cutscenes

[Kallera]

I dont think because a company does it poorly that the idea itself is poor. In that matter anything FFXIV 1.0 did was a horrid idea and Yoshida made a horrible decision by keeping anything it had. (which some argue lol) But I know most people felt comfortable keeping most aspects but just reworking it a lot.

Imo, not a horrible idea and I think you are being highly unfair by pointing out mmos that failed entirely as example why the idea is bad.

I think its more that the idea lends itself more to non-MMORPGs, a story where there is single player, or a limited number of actors the player can assume.

A voice lends a personality, a look into what makes the character tick. For example, Saints Row 3. There you have 6 voices to choose from, and each handles the events throughout the game in their own manner.(one's a faux Jason Statham kind of guy, the other a typical rap star, another a bipolar lady seeing a shrink[and voiced by Lightning], and so on.) Within their own game sessions they are their own person.

But multiply that by hundreds of thousands of players, in one game? Not so much.

We may have the likes of default character like Derplander, but a MMO gives the option of the player to make their own story and adventure with their own created avatar. adding a voice with responses that aren't yours takes some of that narrative away, now your player is someone else, with shades of the default personality cloud who you are in chat.

The day they can make me sound like a take-the-wrong-things-seriously Elvaan lass, though, I'm all for it.