Guild Wars 2

Basically, what I’m suggesting here is giving voice acting for every npc, that does that talking animation, but doesn’t say anything.

For example, in the Queen’s throne room there are bunch of people who come in, bow, and then do the talking animation, but don’t say anything.
It just feels VERY unnatural when you see these NPCs “talking” and there is complete silence.

If all the NPCs were actually talking with voices it would clutter your headphones. The silent talking animation in MMOs is used to create atmosphere more than anything else.

Hurhurrderp.2513:

If all the NPCs were actually talking with voices it would clutter your headphones. The silent talking animation in MMOs is used to create atmosphere more than anything else.

This.

I’d make the npcs who come see the queen say something though, the first time I saw someone enter the throne room I stood there and waited for something to happen because I wanted to see what happened in the world that was worth an audience with Queen Jennah.

But nothing happened.

I always felt like big population centers in MMOs should have an ambient background track of unintelligible crowd noise and talking for this very reason. It’s nice to have actual conversations occur between NPCs, but they can’t happen so often that they drive all the players nuts after hearing them for the millionth time, so just a general ambient track that makes it sound like you’re in a big, bustling town filled with people conducting business would add a lot to the atmosphere. For the more personal scenarios like the throne room you mentioned, though, they really should have recorded dialogue for it.

You could just put them on rotation and adjust the range at which you can hear them. (Though I’ve noticed that there are problems with this in the game right now)

It’s obvious nobody wants them talking all the time and at the same time.
Otherwise it’ll be like that norn who has seen creatures of metal and steam times 20

If you’ve visited Hoelbrak you know who I’m talking about.