As someone who's played an online game with and without voice chat, I can see both the benefits and the concerns that go with each aspect. I played Phantasy Star Universe for several years (don't hate) on PS2 and then on Xbox 360. On PS2, it was far more similar to our current community. The Xbox 360 community was...well what you'd expect from an Xbox community.

I admit that sometimes it would be nice to not have to type so much, but the times in which people are being rude and rowdy, I think a lack of voice chat is great because it helps traffic such incidents. In other words, if people start acting like jack asses and saying rude things, their conversation is "recorded" and therefore allows for such negativity to stay at a minimal. You don't have people calling you all sorts of demeaning things.