Voice Chat goes live on PTRs today

Blizzard poster Hortus dropped by the World of Warcraft Forums earlier to announce that Voice Chat will be coming to the WoW Public Test Realm (PTR) on August 10… er – today.

Voice chat has come with the new PTR build and is currently available for parties, raids and custom channels only. Those who have been waiting for a cross-server battleground voice chat will have to wait a while. Hortus forewarns:

Please be aware, that this is a brand new feature and although it has been tested by Blizzard QA there are still many outstanding issues and we expect to find many more as we roll it out to a larger test group. Please be diligent in reporting bugs either via this forum or the in-game feedback tool, and be patient with us while we work out the kinks in this new system.

In order to facilitate additional testing, a second PVP server has been brought online, and the server population limits have been increased to lessen queues.

Hortus also provided an update that addressed a known issue in the new build. Apparently, the WoW voice chat doesn’t work on PowerPC-based Macs but should work fine on Intel Macs. According to the poster, the PowerPC build problem should be resolved in an upcoming PTR update.

If you’re good and ready, you should go on ahead to the PTR and check out the new voice chat. Some players have already noticed that the mic volume has to be cranked up and that the sound quality isn’t all that hot. We’ve got to remember though that it is still on the PTR, and is therefore still under testing.

Blizzard poster Hortus dropped by the World of Warcraft Forums earlier to announce that Voice Chat will be coming to the WoW Public Test Realm (PTR) on August 10… er – today.

Voice chat has come with the new PTR build and is currently available for parties, raids and custom channels only. Those who have been waiting for a cross-server battleground voice chat will have to wait a while. Hortus forewarns:

Please be aware, that this is a brand new feature and although it has been tested by Blizzard QA there are still many outstanding issues and we expect to find many more as we roll it out to a larger test group. Please be diligent in reporting bugs either via this forum or the in-game feedback tool, and be patient with us while we work out the kinks in this new system.

In order to facilitate additional testing, a second PVP server has been brought online, and the server population limits have been increased to lessen queues.

Hortus also provided an update that addressed a known issue in the new build. Apparently, the WoW voice chat doesn’t work on PowerPC-based Macs but should work fine on Intel Macs. According to the poster, the PowerPC build problem should be resolved in an upcoming PTR update.

If you’re good and ready, you should go on ahead to the PTR and check out the new voice chat. Some players have already noticed that the mic volume has to be cranked up and that the sound quality isn’t all that hot. We’ve got to remember though that it is still on the PTR, and is therefore still under testing.