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With Revelations 1.4 came a whole new mechanic for Eve Online.  Eve Voice, a fully integrated voice comm system allowing players to talk to each other in real time, negating the need to furiously type intel in gang chat while trying to stay one step ahead of an enemy intent of plastering your brain over the nearest asteroid.  The kind folks at CCP are offering players a 30 day free trial, of Eve Voice, followed by a reduced annual subscription fee of $9.95 (norm. $14.95).

Like many others my initial reaction to the development of Eve Voice was 'Why?' We have Ventrilo and TeamSpeak at our disposal, both are proven, stable and light voice comm programs aimed at the typical MMO gamer and server hosting is cheaper than $9.95 per head.  Every Alliance and Corp worth their salt is already voice enabled with one of these programs, so why are CCP doing this?  To find out the answer I realized I would have to take up the free 30 day trial.  I am still left wondering 'Why?'.

The day after Rev. 1.4 was released, I tried out Eve Voice, and was hugely disappointed.  It makes sense that you can only voice activate one of your chat channels at a time, otherwise it would be pure bedlam.  It's nice that it shows who is talking in the chat channel with a little green speech bubble over their name, it's also nice that you can configure  which button you use to talk (middle mouse by default).  That unfortunately is where it's positives stop.  Not everyone who plays Eve, plays on the latest all singing, all dancing dual core enabled PC.  My PC is more than adequate to play Eve and use Eve Voice (apparently) but when I push the middle mouse button to talk...... the Universe stops.  Yep Mr Lag rears his ugly head and presses the pause button on his remote control!  This is very frustrating, and down right suicidal in the middle of an engagement.  In effect what CCP have done is make the middle mouse button a self destruct shortcut.

Another major downside is that in order to be heard, the other players must also be using Eve Voice in the same channel as you. So obviously everyone in a gang, would move voice chat to the gang chat window right?  Problem solved right?  Well, what about those players in the gang who don't have Eve Voice?  They won't hear what's going on, so it will all need to be typed anyway, thus making Eve Voice redundant (unless we introduce a new clerical career into Eve, that of the Audio Typist, available for hire to relay all your voice chat into text chat for a reasonable amount of ISK.  Confidentiality guaranteed). 

In order for Eve Voice to take off, CCP will require a huge take-up in this product and very quickly.  This will be their biggest hurdle, and also where I think they will stumble.  To succeed with this they will need Alliances and Corporations to fully buy into Eve Voice and insist their members subscribe to it.  Thus insisting their members spend an additional $14.95 per year to play Eve.  I'm sure that will be a popular decision with their members and any potential new members.  Good luck with enforcing that!  There is also the lag issue.  Everyone I know who has taken out the free trial have said how badly it performs.  Unfortunately there is no way to cancel the trial once started, so I can't pause it, and maybe try it out later once lag problems may have been resolved. So instead, we will be left with a sour experience of Eve Voice and will not be so inclined to hand over hard cash for in the future.  Subscription rates will also be hampered by Ventrilo and TeamSpeak.  Both of those programs allow for moderation.  Users who insist on behaving badly can be kicked or banned.  Eve Voice has no such options, allowing for great disruptions especially with up to 200 users in one channel at any one time.  Oh what pandemonium that would be!

Maybe once the problems are addressed and Eve Voice is running smoothly, it could be a good system.  But until at least 70% of players subscribe and therefore make it worth using it will never reach it's potential, nor can it hope to become a serious contender to Ventrilo or TeamSpeak.

Monma Cicov