Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone, so as we all I am sure are aware about is that TeamSpeak is the most commonly used VoIP service used to communicate with each other, whether it may be for guilds , WvW, Raids, etc. The problem is, and please someone correct me if I am wrong, there is only a limited amount of people who may use one server without having to pay.

Me and my friends have been using RaidCall when we play games (usually GW2 or League of Legends) and have been doing so for the past year. The quality is just as good as TeamSpeak and Mumble from our experience and completely free. Creating, finding, and joining public servers, say for GW2, or creating private servers for guilds or your own group of friends is equally as easy. I was just hoping we could spread the word and get more people to use it so when joining PUGs or what not, we dont have ot worry about someone having a TS server. If there is some reason I am missing as to why this would not be a good idea, I would be more than happy to learn so! Thank you for taking the time to read this =)

I’ve found you generally get what you pay for.

Raidcall is a good low cost option, as is mumble, but a well moderated TS3 server has a lot of functionality (file buckets, logging, etc.) that extreds beyond voice comms, which is why you find that its generally a more popular option for a guild’s “official” comms.

For pugging though, easy access and basic comms is more important, as you don’t want to have to type in server bookmarks every time you PUG, so raidcall is a pretty good fit. A lot of people use Skype as well, now that it’s built in to windows.

Every system has pros and cons.

The only one I’ve found to be absolutely awful has been “Discord”, which is entirely web based. It spends most of its time living up to its name because it is so badly bug ridden at the moment and doesnt support push-to-talk so you hear every neckbeard mouthbreathing, chewing and talking to their cat, but it holds a lot of promise for a future where maybe we can have clientless chat (there is a client version for discord, but if youre going to use a client anyway theres no reason to both choosing discord in the first place).

As much as I am a die-hard MS Windows fan for gaming (there really is no competitive alternative) some people arent. RaidCall, like many things, is Windows only. Anet supports GW2 on Mac OSX, and for those players RaidCall simply isnt an option.

I don’t expect RaidCall to ever gain much popularity because:
A) the other coms platforms are already entrenched with users and TS in particular is very feature rich, while RaidCall has few users and few features comparitively.
B) No one wants to use a chat system that prevents or makes it difficult for other players (Mac users) from joining. It would be different if GW2 was a PC only game, but thats not the case. Even though Discord is terrible, the reason people use it is because its the most inclusive (no need to install anything). Likewise, the reason the best client based services are successful is partly because they are all multiplatform.
C) There are literally dozens of top notch coms tools and nothing differentiates RaidCall especially when its locked to Windows. Ventrilo is multiplatform and is probably the most simple to use. TS is multiplatform, the most popular, and the most feature rich. Skype is multiplatform and supports video and interfaces seemlessly with all of the mobile OS’s so you can message people even out of game.

Raidcall closed down its US support team.

Free Cloud Based Solutions

Discord – no download required. Web based. Requires download for push to talk. Great for community events.

GameVox – available on Mac/Win/Linux. Web integration. From the original mumble team. GameVox is the official voice com of Gaiscioch who previously used ventrilo, teamspeak, and raidcall. Great customizable skins. Familiar controls. Works with overwolf.

Raven.9603:

The only one I’ve found to be absolutely awful has been “Discord”, which is entirely web based. It spends most of its time living up to its name because it is so badly bug ridden at the moment and doesnt support push-to-talk so you hear every neckbeard mouthbreathing, chewing and talking to their cat, but it holds a lot of promise for a future where maybe we can have clientless chat (there is a client version for discord, but if youre going to use a client anyway theres no reason to both choosing discord in the first place).

I think Discord is pretty great. The main advantage is that it’s super easy to get people to join: paste a link that people go to and they’re sent right into your channel.

The client version does have push to talk, so yes everyone should be using the client ideally. But still, the advantage of getting people to join easily remains. So it’s not directly inferior to TS.

I like the big chat window, and the interface in general doesn’t kill my eyes like TS or Mumble does. I also haven’t encountered any bugs at all (honestly curious about what problems you’ve had). I’m fine with TS but I do hope that Discord becomes more popular because I like it personally.

Wahaha.7938:

I think Discord is pretty great. The main advantage is that it’s super easy to get people to join: paste a link that people go to and they’re sent right into your channel.

The client version does have push to talk, so yes everyone should be using the client ideally. But still, the advantage of getting people to join easily remains. So it’s not directly inferior to TS.

I like the big chat window, and the interface in general doesn’t kill my eyes like TS or Mumble does. I also haven’t encountered any bugs at all (honestly curious about what problems you’ve had). I’m fine with TS but I do hope that Discord becomes more popular because I like it personally.

i agree that the web based interface is nice, as is the ease of invitation. the other nice part is that you can create links for a session, so if you only want someone in your TS for one raid temporary links are sweet
the problems ive experienced with it:

• hot mics. this can be a major drawback with certain people or a non issue with others. only fixable with client, but Client+Link is not an improvement over existing client systems.
• people join and cant hear others talking. i’ve been on both ends of this and its frequent, especially in raids (more players = more chances for one of them to have a problem). it happens a lot.
• people join and things work normal for 5 minutes and then they cant hear others talking. sometimes fixable with a page refresh. voice coms are often for low-margin-of-error gameplay that cant afford people windowing their game to refresh a browser. this also seems to happen very often.
• its not browser agnostic. this is more of a pet peeve to me as a computer scientist.
• people crash out of the chat and dont automatically come back in the way they would with a client service. if someone crashes out they often need to be reissued a new link. again, when needing coms for serious play, we cant afford to be doing this.

so mostly, its a stability issue.
overall, i think a service like Discord is the future of game coms, but I am not sure they will be the ones to rise to the top.

Raven.9603:

the problems ive experienced with it:

• hot mics. this can be a major drawback with certain people or a non issue with others. only fixable with client, but Client+Link is not an improvement over existing client systems.
• people join and cant hear others talking. i’ve been on both ends of this and its frequent, especially in raids (more players = more chances for one of them to have a problem). it happens a lot.
• people join and things work normal for 5 minutes and then they cant hear others talking. sometimes fixable with a page refresh. voice coms are often for low-margin-of-error gameplay that cant afford people windowing their game to refresh a browser. this also seems to happen very often.
• its not browser agnostic. this is more of a pet peeve to me as a computer scientist.
• people crash out of the chat and dont automatically come back in the way they would with a client service. if someone crashes out they often need to be reissued a new link. again, when needing coms for serious play, we cant afford to be doing this.

I had a party member who couldn’t hear us but I assumed it was a problem on their end. I’ll keep these issues in mind next time, thanks. Now I realize my comment about not encountering bugs was not accurate because I haven’t really tried the web version. It does sound pretty bad.

Wahaha.7938:

I had a party member who couldn’t hear us but I assumed it was a problem on their end. I’ll keep these issues in mind next time, thanks. Now I realize my comment about not encountering bugs was not accurate because I haven’t really tried the web version. It does sound pretty bad.

The desktop version is the web version. It’s running in electron, a nodejs+chromium html5 app platform. It gains some extra abilities like system-wide push-to-talk, but the underlying code is the same.