nline text chat is almost as old as the Internet itself. But even though you can chat with your friends in real time, that doesn't mean it's always the most efficient way to communicate. Imagine frantically typing text to warn the members of your group about the next move of a dungeon boss while stringing together a series of moves to keep the boss's attention. Or facing off in an arena against intelligent human opponents who will anticipate your actions and exploit any weakness. Typing a message to your team costs valuable seconds, time you could use to counter your opponent's strategy or even take one of their members out of the fight. In short, standing still to type sometimes just isn't an option.

Voice chat, a brand-new feature introduced in patch 2.2, will let you and your friends talk directly to each other using a microphone or headset instead of text-based chat. With this exciting new feature, you can talk to your party, your raid group, your battleground, and even players in custom channels that you can create and moderate. All this is tied into an intuitive and user-friendly chat interface that allows you to manage, moderate, and modify all your chat channels.

Set Up

Enabling voice chat in World of Warcraft is a fairly simple, straightforward procedure:

1. Make sure your microphone is connected to your computer before you start the game. If your microphone needs to be turned on, make sure it's active and unmuted.
2. Bring up World of Warcraft's main menu.
3. Go to the Sound & Voice settings (This will only display as Sound & Voice if voice chat is enabled on your realm).
4. Click the "Voice" tab at the bottom of the interface to bring up the voice chat options.
5. In the voice options screen, click the "Enable Voice Chat" checkbox.
6. Voice chat is now enabled.

After you've enabled voice chat, you should be good to go. However, you may want to spend a few minutes adjusting the voice chat settings to ensure you get the best performance out of your system.

• Enable microphone: Make sure this box is checked so you can speak using your microphone. Select your microphone input from the dropdown directly below this checkbox.
• Microphone volume: Adjust the input level of your microphone. The ideal volume range may vary for each type of microphone, so it's a good idea to experiment to find a volume that works well for you.
• Microphone test: While you're adjusting your volume level, use this to test how others will hear your voice. Click the "record" button to start recording your voice, then use the "play" button to listen to your voice. Play around with this until you've found a good volume.
• Speakers: Here you can select the output device where you'll hear the game's sound. If you are wearing a headset, for example, you can choose whether you'll hear the game through your regular speakers or your headset, whichever you prefer.
• Game audio fade: This lets you adjust how much the game's sound and music volume is reduced while other people are talking in voice chat. This is especially useful in action-packed boss fights where combat sounds may overwhelm your party's voices.

The voice chat mode setting gives you control over how you start broadcasting when you want to speak in a voice chat channel. There are two options: "Push-to-Talk" and "Voice-Activated."

• Push-to-Talk: You need to hold down a key if you want to talk, as with a walkie-talkie. You can assign any key to this function. If you'd like a sound to play every time you press or release your Push-to-Talk key, select the "Push-to-Talk Sound" checkbox. This option gives you perfect control over when others can hear you, but requires you to manually activate it.
• Voice-Activated: Any time your microphone picks up a sound beyond a certain threshold, voice chat will activate. This is useful if you want to chat completely hands-free, but it can be triggered by any sound, not just your voice. If you're gaming in a noisy environment, Push-to-Talk may be preferable.

Parental Controls

You can adjust an account's voice chat privileges via the Parental Control feature in the account management section of the World of Warcraft website. You can completely enable or disable voice chat, or you can set it to allow listening, but not speaking.

To adjust an account's voice chat settings, simply log in to the parental controls section as normal, then locate the voice chat controls. Select the level you want to assign to this account, then save your changes.

fter you've enabled voice chat and adjusted the settings to match your system and your preferences, it's time to try out the new chat features. Bring up the game's social interface by pressing "O." Next, click the Chat tab to take you to the Chat Channels interface. Here, you'll find all the tools you need to join, leave, create, and moderate your channels.

The Channel List

On the left side of the interface you'll see a list of chat channels you are currently in. If you highlight one of these channels by clicking it, the right side will show a list of other people currently in that channel. Some special channels in the channel list may be grayed out; these include the party, raid, battleground, trade, and looking for group channels. These channels have spots reserved for them by default, so they show up in your list even if you're not currently "in" them. You can leave these channels to free up space in your channels list once they've become active (for example, trade only becomes active when you're in one of the major cities).

If voice chat is activated, you can select one of the channels in this list to be the channel you're "talking" in, meaning that you will be participating in that channel's voice chat. To do this, simply right-click a channel and select "Enable Voice" from the context menu. You can only make the party, raid, battleground, or one of the custom channels your active voice channel. Also, you can only participate in one voice chat at a time; if you enable voice for another channel, you will leave the previous one.

• Joining or creating a channel: You can join a channel or create your own custom channels through the chat interface by clicking the "Add" button in the bottom right corner. This will bring up a dialogue box prompting you to enter a channel name and optionally a password for the channel. Adding a password to your channel will prevent people who don't know the password from entering your channel uninvited. Once you click "Okay," the channel will be created (if it doesn't exist yet) and appear in the channel list on the left. If the channel already exists, you will join this channel. You can join both standard and custom channels this way, so for example if you left the trade, local defense, and battleground channels at some point, you can re-join by clicking the "Join" button and entering the channel's name. If you'd like to add a password to an already existing custom channel, right-click the channel name and select "Set Password" from the context menu.
• Leaving a channel: Simply right-click a channel name in the channel list and select "Leave" from the context menu.
• Inviting players to your channel: You can invite other players to your custom channels. This can be useful if are in a channel that is protected by a password and you want to add another player without telling them the password. Right-click the custom channel in the channel list and select "Invite" from the context menu. This will bring up a dialogue box prompting you to enter the name of the player you wish to invite. The player will see a dialogue box asking whether he or she wants to accept the invitation, similar to a party invitation. If the invitation is accepted, the player will enter the channel without having to enter the password.

Channel Moderation Tools

Players can moderate their own custom or party/raid channels. This is useful if you want a bit more control over who is talking, or if you have a player who doesn't respect your channel's etiquette. As a party/raid leader or the creator of a channel, you have several different moderation options you can access by right-clicking on a player's name in the players list on the right side of your chat interface.

• Whisper: Opens up a text prompt where you can type a message that only this player will be able to see.
• Invite: Sends a group invitation to the selected player. If you're in a public channel such as general chat or trade or a custom channel, you can use this to quickly invite your friends to form a group with you.
• Target: Makes the selected player your current target for targeted spells and abilities.
• Make Moderator: Gives the selected player moderation privileges in this channel.
• Remove Moderator: Takes moderation privileges away from the selected player.
• Mute: This option will add the selected player to your "Muted" list. You can't hear muted players in voice chat, but you can still read their texts in regular chat. Players on your "Ignore" list will be filtered out in both text and voice chat.

To see your "Muted" list, select your "Friends" tab. Your "Muted" list is next to the "Ignore" list. You can unmute players by selecting their name in the list and clicking the "Unmute" button.

• Silence in Channel: Prevents the selected player from using voice chat in this channel. Silencing is different from muting in that muting only affects what you hear, while silencing filters the player out for everyone in the channel.

Voice Channel Picker:

Left-click brings up the chat channel UI, while right-click brings up a list of available channels, if you have them. If you don't, it acts like a left-click.

Voice Chat Tips

• Voice chat is disabled by default.
• You can only have voice chat active in a single channel at a time.
• Channel moderators and party/raid leaders can mute a player for everyone else in the channel.
• Voice chat is not moderated by Blizzard. We recommend familiarizing yourself with the tools to keep annoying or disruptive voice chatters at bay.
• A maximum of five people can be heard simultaneously through voice chat.
• Since the voice chat servers are separate from the game realms, you can still chat while zoning, or even while alt-tabbed out of the game if you have the "Sound in Background" option enabled in the in-game sound options.
• When a party converts to a raid you'll automatically be moved to the raid channel.

Voice Chat Troubleshooting

• USB headsets must be plugged in before running the game or they won't be recognized when attempting to use them.
• If you feel that you sound too quiet, play with your microphone volume in both the game options and in your operating system's sound control panels.
• You can't talk if you don't have a microphone. Ensure that your microphone is plugged in correctly and that the sound options in your operating system are set so that your 'line in' or 'mic' isn't muted and is at a reasonable volume setting. Refer to your headset/microphone manufacturer's documentation for assistance.
• The quality of your microphone will impact the quality of audio and how you sound to others. Even popular brands sometimes use lower quality parts.
• If you're not hearing anything at all, make sure that the appropriate devices are selected within the voice options

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