Please remember that people are entitled to their opinions. Also, please remember that being contrary for the sake of being contrary is rarely productive.
In response to what I'm seeing... I feel like Victoria and Kardaine are agreeing loudly at each other.
Victoria says VoIP is great for player collaboration, planning, etc...but makes role-play harder... unless you're role-playing a same-gender, similarly aged person, as otherwise, it's hard to "hear" what the person is role-playing as. It's a fair point. I couldn't easily roleplay an 18-year old female with my voice. However, I could if I stayed in chat.
Kardaine says VoIP is required if you're playing the game essentially out-of-character. You want to tell your buds you're in trouble and it's hard to type that. Admittedly, while that's the only example Kardaine has provided, it's still a valid example.
However, Kardaine's issues can be alleviated with NPCs smart enough to come to your aid if they can see you're in trouble, friends who are smart enough to come to your aid if they're standing within earshot of you, as well as "Shout" emotes, which allow you to get peoples' attention with one click of a button.
In either case, we see value in integrating VoIP into the game, however it effectively is already solved by the use of 3rd party software.
So it really comes down to... do you want the ability to play as a Ward (or some other mechanic we've discussed) or do you want to have integrated VoIP instead of TS/Discord/Vent/Skype/....
