On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 9:46 AM, Niclas Fredriksson <niclas at acc.umu.se> wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Apr 2008, Jeffrey Watts wrote:
>
>  > I've played games that would utilize communication in EXACTLY the same
>  > way as Netrek.
>
>  What games are that?

To name a few:

Call of Duty 4
Halo 3
World of Warcraft: Arena PVP (five on five, single objective)
WoW: Battleground PVP (fifteen on fifteen, mulitple objectives - very
similar to Netrek)
WoW: Raiding (25-40 people, multiple objectives)

All of these have similarities to what happens in Netrek.  WoW mass
PVP and raiding are certainly very similar to Netrek, in that you have
multiple teams doing different things using voice to coordinate.  Note
that in WoW text is also used along with voice, when it is appropriate
(calling out timers, announcements, etc).

I've spent hundreds of hours using Ventrilo and Teamspeak to do these
things.  I was very resistant to moving to voice communications.  All
of my reasons for being resistant were proven wrong.  The reality was
that my resistance was simply born out of an unwillingness to change
established practice.

Additional channels are a bad idea, IMHO.  They don't work anywhere
that I've seen.  The only place where something like that is needed is
in MMOGs, and you only need them for text channels.

Jeffrey.

-- 

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy
from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a
precedent that will reach to himself." -- Thomas Paine