Problem with voiceovers is... they always go at same speed. Sometimes I might sneeze during it and miss a part. Sometimes I really don't want to listen to it 15th time and want to skip. Sometimes a dwarf has such ugly accent I can't understand more than one word in three. Sometimes people don't understand english well enough.

Text is always there, if you read fast or slow, if you have to go to toilet or someone is talking next to you, if you want to look up a word in dictionary or if you want to reread it when you log in a week later.

And if you are really not interested in reading, there is always a TL;DR on the bottom (or on top).

This is the most stupid thing I've ever heard! lol

Reading the quest in text is everywhere!
Warhammer, Eve Online (missions), Everquest, Lineage2, WoW, CoH,... should I go on?
Its even present in non mmo's (Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc).

People these days want to do as little as possible and get rewarded for it.

This might sound harsh but I'm glad your friend has quit... tell him to go play CS or something,
no quest text there! :P

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Q u o t e:
So in other words your friend pulled a TLDR on nine lines worth of text?

I fear for the future of our societies if people like these become the norm. "I don't want to read wah wah". Move to North Korea then, nobody will expect you to read anything there.

EDIT: I thought going to school was a great idea but text in books was the dealbreaker.

EDIT2: And I also strongly disagree with the notion that "you have to work hard to find the story" in WoW. You don't. It's literally presented to you on a silver platter. I guess some people are just too damn lazy to actually hold the platter and grab its content.

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the thing is the way a lot of people view it, "we do enough reading in school" so when you settle down to play a video game or watch the telly, you're shown the story , you don't have to read it yet again. So many peeps i know, some with first class degrees, the only reading they do is for school or work, and they do alot of it, time to play or relax they don't want to have to yet read more, it's an annoyance in a video game, especiallywhen almost all other games tell and show you their story.

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Q u o t e:
Actually, in a recent interview posted on Gamasutra, Cataclysm's Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi comments on the notion of telling a story and quest texts. The article is an interesting read, and can be found here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25192

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very intersting, i liked this bit.

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Q u o t e:
So as you said, you guys have been doing this for well over five years now, and you've learned a lot. What are some of the things you've learned about MMO design, particularly when it comes to conveying story in an integrated, interesting way?

AA: The most important one, I think, and this is just from sitting at meetings -- any new guys who come in, they always have that urge to tell their story. "I'm going to tell this amazing story. It's going to make you weep when you read it."

That's when I stop them right there. I'm like, "Stop right there. Nobody's going to read whatever you're trying to do. It could be the greatest thing since Hemingway. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to read it." You have to take a different approach, and you show the player that.

It's the old adage: show, don't tell. You show them. It's a different world. That's when you're starting down the right path.

When we first started doing this, sure we knew it, but we didn't understand it. There's a difference, and it only really comes from practice. It's almost a zen thing with the quest guys at this point, where it's a [matter of] "Do this quest without any text." Just blindfolded. "Do this quest, and let's see if I even know what's going on. Create something. What's going on? Can I tell if I'm entering this room or entering a point of interest? What am I looking at? What is happening?"

I think that's improved our design vastly over the years. Of course, we're still going to have text, but we're not dependent on it. As we advance our technology, too, with quest map [points of interest] and things like that, we'll become less dependant on it. Because right now, what we use it for is as a means of direction.

Certainly, we will provide story and lore when we can, but we want to provide that in the actual act of doing the quest. The one thing we still can't decouple from it is directions -- where do you go? But we're getting there.

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I'm interested to know how they are going to show us the new story.

Does that mean we will actually have voiced out quests and a lot more interaction with the storyline as we are going through the quest, i.e. interesting npc or mob pops up and actually says stuff rather than hiss or squeal at you. that'd be awesome, altho i doubt it.

witht he new change, you cut out many of those kill 10 -20 boar quests, then the amount of stuff you have to put in speech if you were making the whole thing speech automatically is reduced a lot. but it is so much more exciting.

I alwyas thought that another difference between wow and wc3, was that during wc3, your enemies would talk when you were confronting htem all the time, not just text window, and they would spill important parts of the storyline to you. So it was not just the quest givers, everyone talked, you the hero, the mobs etc, i know it was all scripted, which you can't have in quite the same way on an mmo, but you can do a lot better than versions 1-3 of wow have done.

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Q u o t e:
Actually, in a recent interview posted on Gamasutra, Cataclysm's Lead World Designer Alex Afrasiabi comments on the notion of telling a story and quest texts. The article is an interesting read, and can be found here: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25192

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Thanks for the link. It's interesting to read how use of phasing was born, when the tools have been available in war3 already, but nobody really thought of using it globaly.

On topic, the problem with voiced text is that you have what, a few thousand quests in game? All those lines spoken would be hours of text, which equals craploads of data. I'm still wondering how Bioware plans on delivering that, it's gonna take loads of data just at release, not even counting the actual content patches following. Imagine downloading an 800 MB patch now. Then add another 2 GB just for spoken quest text - it's simply not worth the resources. Imo, of course.

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Q u o t e:
In the Death Knight starting chain, the quests the Lich King gives you have actual voice acting. To be specific, he reads you the quest text. Now... how many people do you think actually listened to him finish his long-winded speech? I know I didn't after the first quest.

Making the NPCs talk would be even slower and people would get annoyed by it. Real story progression should not be done in your quest log. It should be visible to you as you are doing the quest. A good example is the Battle of Undercity, where you can tell what's happening without having to read anything but chat bubbles (and even that is spoken out loud).

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not necessarily, you only think that way becuase you are use to brushing through taking and handing in quests, there are many ways to present the story than having to physically wait there for a long speech to finish.

A lot depends on how you present your request, there are boring ways of voicing a quest, and really cool ways. I never thought the opening narrative when you start a character was boring, i thought it set a nice tone that sadly never contd once you started. Also you don't have to tell the entire story at the quest giver. The quest giver cna say a little bit, and you can discover more as you do the quest, especially if some of the mobs /creeps speak as you're fighting them. AS you approach the quest giver, having completed the quest, he starts speaking to you without you even clikcing on him persay. If you haven't compelted the quest approaching him will have him urge you on or give you clues. Trust me their are ways, wow just doens't do that part very well.

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Q u o t e:
Problem with voiceovers is... they always go at same speed. Sometimes I might sneeze during it and miss a part. Sometimes I really don't want to listen to it 15th time and want to skip. Sometimes a dwarf has such ugly accent I can't understand more than one word in three. Sometimes people don't understand english well enough.

Text is always there, if you read fast or slow, if you have to go to toilet or someone is talking next to you, if you want to look up a word in dictionary or if you want to reread it when you log in a week later.

And if you are really not interested in reading, there is always a TL;DR on the bottom (or on top).

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this is why eveyr game that voices quests always has a text copy, so if you missed something, you can re-read, or if you didn't have time to listen, or didn't want to, you can check out the text. It really isn't hard, you always present both, but hearing it and having some interesting animation i.e. watching it conveys the story far more effectively than reading it does in this sort of medium.

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Q u o t e:

This is the most stupid thing I've ever heard! lol

Reading the quest in text is everywhere!
Warhammer, Eve Online (missions), Everquest, Lineage2, WoW, CoH,... should I go on?
Its even present in non mmo's (Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights, etc).

People these days want to do as little as possible and get rewarded for it.

This might sound harsh but I'm glad your friend has quit... tell him to go play CS or something,

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it is present in a lot of rpgs because there are a lot more quests. but just becuase it is everywhere doesn't mean it is the best approach, nor does it mean a game maker shoudln't go one up on the older games in this department, especially when you can weave a more interesting plot and more fulfilling experience with a well told tale. in RL, i'd hate every time someone wanted to tell me something, he handed me a scroll i had to read, ..like in nwn, in rl, there is a combination of reading and listening, in wow there is no listening. In the new star wars and final fantasy games, all quests would be voiced.

Suggesting to voice act over 8000 quests is just silly, the text is enjoyable to read, at times funny and makes doing the quests less boring because you know why you are doing it.
Not even talking about different client languages.

I'm going to wade in here, as some one who played conan when it first came out i can say voicing all the quests is a bad idea.

When you start conan the first 20 levels its all voiced and in cut scenes which at first seems great but very soon grows old because while you just want to go play the game you instead sit there 5 minutes clicking through the branching conversation trying to find out what they want often having the same scene repeated to you even though you clicked on a different option.

Then after 20 when you enter the real world the voices disapeer completely and you just have cutscenes with text quest on the bottom but no option to skip the conversation so your still stuck listening to the npc prattle on for a minute, personally i'd much rather click the npc, read the text in a few seconds and be on my way.

Also you'd probably have to triple the size of wow on your hardrive to accomodate the sound files.

It didnt work in conan it didnt draw me in it just pee'd me off wasting my time, but given all the other flaws with conan this was minor but it really didnt do what it was meant to i.e. draw me into the world.

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Q u o t e:


Thanks for the link. It's interesting to read how use of phasing was born, when the tools have been available in war3 already, but nobody really thought of using it globaly.

On topic, the problem with voiced text is that you have what, a few thousand quests in game? All those lines spoken would be hours of text, which equals craploads of data. I'm still wondering how Bioware plans on delivering that, it's gonna take loads of data just at release, not even counting the actual content patches following. Imagine downloading an 800 MB patch now. Then add another 2 GB just for spoken quest text - it's simply not worth the resources. Imo, of course.

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i'm not so sure, it depends on how you present it. People are over estimating the hard disc space requirements with modern or state of the art compressioni algorithms avialable today, they are still thinking we use the same software we did over 10 years ago, you'd be surprised how much we can pack in these days.

Secondly, who said anything about having to read out all the quest information? surely you must understand there are many ways to convey your story than in one sitting over text or speech right? An e.g. is an npc follows you part of the way, explaining his plight to you as you move to location or start doing the task, the npc tells part of the story, others oyou meet add a little more, you see alot of stuff too taht explains part of what is going on, some of the mobs you encounter also talk, giving you a more full picutre as you kill them or fight with them.

Says who it has to be in one sitting with you just standing there. and normally even if it is, chances are any game designer would program the npc to be doing interesting things, i.e. walk here, make something as he speaks, etc, so you are seeing stuff as you're listening. And always, there are text bubbles accompanying the speech, and you can always turn either or both off.

To me this is far more enthralling and entertaining than, lump quest window

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Q u o t e:
I'm going to wade in here, as some one who played conan when it first came out i can say voicing all the quests is a bad idea.

When you start conan the first 20 levels its all voiced and in cut scenes which at first seems great but very soon grows old because while you just want to go play the game you instead sit there 5 minutes clicking through the branching conversation trying to find out what they want often having the same scene repeated to you even though you clicked on a different option.

Then after 20 when you enter the real world the voices disapeer completely and you just have cutscenes with text quest on the bottom but no option to skip the conversation so your still stuck listening to the npc prattle on for a minute, personally i'd much rather click the npc, read the text in a few seconds and be on my way.

Also you'd probably have to triple the size of wow on your hardrive to accomodate the sound files.

It didnt work in conan it didnt draw me in it just pee'd me off wasting my time, but given all the other flaws with conan this was minor but it really didnt do what it was meant to i.e. draw me into the world.

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to me, it sounds more a problem of not having the optiont o skip stuff. For e..g i think wow's opening narrative/cinematic is BRIlliant, it's really cool, i loved it to bits, but everytime i start a new character, i skip it, at least i have the option to, now if i did'nt, i would find it gets very old and tiring, and probalby find it a bit irritating.

That's where AoC fails, you don't have the option to skip through stuff, and you are kept in one place too long, it's better than no speech at all though, even though it irritates after a while. But do you get that not being able to skp through is annoying. Not the fact that it's voiced. that is cool. It's all in the presentation, and voice beats no-voice hands down, unless you do a bad job. Come on, if the npcs had annoying voices, talked funny and unrealistically, off course you'd rather read the text. Just like if you're friend had an irritating voice and talked funny don't you wish you could press the mute button on her or have the option to read what she says? Same in a bad movie, but it doesn't stop when it is done right, it's great, good voice actors, good animation, and the telling presented in an intelligent way.

No reason why the npc cnat follow you for e.g., this only happens on your client by the way, so someone else willsee his npc there. sort of like when ever you interact with npcs and they turn towards you, this only happens on your client, not on anyone elses. But to answer your question, ofc if it is not done well it's annoying. AoC didn't do end game well at all, if we were to go by their standards we'd be saying end game on mmos is not a good idea or cannot be done.

Don't know if I should laugh or cry.
Someone doesn't want to play because they can't be bothered to read quest text in a role playing game.

<------------------ Nintendo is that way

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Q u o t e:

Well, another thing to consider is that World of Warcraft is not a game released in just one language, but multiple. Localising voices for all quests would not just require voice actors and recordings for English, but a replication of all this data in all the languages and regions World of Warcraft is localised in. This is not to say that such a task is not possible, but rather some food for thought for those of you debating the pros and cons of game wide voiced quest text.

On a related note, perhaps some of you will also find this article on Gamespot about some of the numbers behind World of Warcraft an interesting read: http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/worldofwarcraftexp1/news.html?sid=6228615&mode=all

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oo, interesting, more articles, thanks for the info Slorkuz. also regarding other languages, it is well known that most video games have voice in one language, english, even those that voice everything, but, the quest text that always accompanies the voice can have a language change. it's just like on tv when you have subtitiles, you can speak english and still use subtitiles, afterall not everyone can hear properly for eg, so i would never imagine you guys at blizzard ever doing voice overs in multiple langauges, only the one.

Oh and as a non-english native speaker, i wouldn't all that mind voice overs in english. I may have preferred them in my own mother tongue, however, at least i can tell my mum or girlfriend my english is improving, and even learn some new stuff in the language, as i'd hear it in english but read the text in my native language

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Q u o t e:
Don't know if I should laugh or cry.
Someone doesn't want to play because they can't be bothered to read quest text in a role playing game.

<------------------ Nintendo is that way

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library is that way ----------> some people actually spend crap loads of timein uni/work reading, they just don't want to do the same thing at home on a video game, epseically since most video games you don't have to read long texts, the opinion of new players or potential new players may not be important to you, but if new people aren't picking up wow because of things like boring text windows or not cool enough character animations, as a developer i'd wnat to know, and i'd want to improve aspects of the game i can.

rather than tell my playing public that they're idiots for not wanting to read or that they should be happy with 10 year old character animation because they are good enough or my fanboys don't complain about it.

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Q u o t e:
Voicing a computer game takes a phenomenal amount of time. Doing it in a way that doesn't look completely rubbish and cheesy takes even longer.

I don't know about you, but I am waiting quite long enough between content upgrades.

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This, not to mention all the millions of soundfiles needed for each and every conversation you can have with each and every NPC in the game would take up massive amounts of space. I personally think my WoW folder of 14.4gb is big enough.

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Q u o t e:


Thanks for the link. It's interesting to read how use of phasing was born, when the tools have been available in war3 already, but nobody really thought of using it globaly.

On topic, the problem with voiced text is that you have what, a few thousand quests in game? All those lines spoken would be hours of text, which equals craploads of data. I'm still wondering how Bioware plans on delivering that, it's gonna take loads of data just at release, not even counting the actual content patches following. Imagine downloading an 800 MB patch now. Then add another 2 GB just for spoken quest text - it's simply not worth the resources. Imo, of course.

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Maybe Bioware's game will not have a few thousand fetch quests in-game, but a few hundred story-driven cinematic quests like Kotor? And guess what, Kotor had fully recorded dialogues. So maybe you indeed know how Bioware is going to deliver that :P

7000 quests, wow, that's a lot, what i found staggering is that TBC added nearly as many quests as originan wow, as did wotlk, and they were only 10 levels... thanks for the article Sozurk,

putting every quest to voice may be great, but not necessarily the smartest opiton, or necessary to make it quite the cinematic masterpiece. it just needs to be done intelligently. I liked the first article the CM linked, where it seems the quest style is going to change dramatically to more story driven, so you may sitll have fluff quests which won't be voiced, but all the important, story driven themed ones would be fully voiced, and the way they do it would be through out the quest, i.e. not jsut at picking it up, but whiles doing it etc,

that would be how i'd do it, cataclysm is a great opportunity to now do this stuff in -game, rather than rlease a new version and still have quest presentation through that text window, largely unchanged.

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Q u o t e:


Maybe Bioware's game will not have a few thousand fetch quests in-game, but a few hundred story-driven cinematic quests like Kotor? And guess what, Kotor had fully recorded dialogues. So maybe you indeed know how Bioware is going to deliver that :P

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interesting, and that'd be the approach to adopt for wow, besides if they did it in wow before the star wars game came out, it 'd certianly take the sheen off that aspect of a rival :p

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Q u o t e:


Plenty of other games tell their story better than WoW does, with and without cut scenes or speech.

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Mind listing some of these plenty of other games?

TBH, lazy person can't be bothered to do any work, expects game story to be given to him on platter when that doesn't happen throws in towel.

Why is that a loss to the game? Would you want that same person in your raid? Boss doesn't drop item he wants (or he loses roll) he /ragequit.

Bottom line IMO you get out of any game what you put in. If you aren't prepared to learn how to play and read the text you won't get much ou of it. Go play a FPS or console game instead.

edit:-

Further point, at the moment Voiced and Cutscene/Video works for the most part to emphasise a point of interest. They make what you are doing special for a change. This is no ordinary quest this will have implications for the wider world... If you change the quests so that all of them use the same tech and all of them are video/cutscene/voice over how do you make sure that some quests still stand out?

For instance if go kill me 20 bugs was presented in the same way that The Wrathgate was presented, aside from the fact that by 74 you'd automatically skip through all the long winded stuff missing a pivotal point in the current lore (and lessening your own perspective of the world) but how would you know that The Wrathgate was more important to the story of the game than the level 10 go kill 20 bugs?

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Q u o t e:
There is a story to wow, you just have to work hard to find it

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Reading 10 lines of text is hard work.