VOIP

Voice Over Internet Protocol
It’s been around for a long time, at least as long as broadband has been available, but I’ve never really had a use for it before. However, ever since watching the “Leeroy” World of Warcraft fan video (scroll down a bit), I’ve been thinking about how much cooler it would be to use real time voice chat with my online buddies while playing. Typing out text messages in the game is all fine and good, until you get into a situation where you need to communicate very quickly or in great detail, and then it gets clunky. There’s been many a time where I had been playing in a group with people and suddenly needed to tell them something while we’re already engaged in a battle… and having to let go of the mouse and hotkeys long enough to type “There’s another one coming up behind”, or even just “help” or “lookout”, is an eternity in which my own character is rendered physically unable to respond to the impending issue. Spencer had obviously been thinking the same thing; cuz he checked out then clued me into a program called Skype… and it’s great. The interface is much like a plain old messaging program, you fire it up and it checks your contact list for who’s online, then gives you the option to call them. Once connected it works just like a telephone conversation, except you’re speaking into your hands-free desktop microphone, and the voice is coming through the PC speakers. Spencer and I tried it out briefly a couple days ago, then Craig picked up a headset and joined the party last night. We still need to hammer out a few kinks, but already the game experience is a lot more enjoyable… so much more playing time is spent actually accomplishing something, rather than stopping every few seconds to hammer out a few lines of text.
I’m all about efficiency when it comes to my unhealthy addictions.