Guild Voice communications help.

[SneekyB]

Hi guys,
I have recently joined a small casual, mostly leveling guild. I myself used to raid a lot but now I'm a casual raider.
The guild in question has not raided together so I've kinda started steering them into some light raiding and running dungeons.
My problem is the guild does not have any type of voice communications and we really need to have something. I know next to nothing about Ventrilo or teamspeak but I have used them before. I also do not have the extra peso's to pay for a account.
Does anyone know where I could go to compare gaming voice communications and how they work and how they are set up?
Any help would be very much appreciated

[Dedic]

Compare? Not sure. I can tell you Vent on typefrag is great tho, and you can get a trial offer for a server. After that it's not expensive.

If one person can't pay for a server, have everyone who raids chip in and send you or the GM a buck or two via paypal every month.

Raiding without voice comm seems like a nightmare to me. Maybe some day Blizz will fix their in-game voice chat, but until then you'll have to use a third-party server.

Edit: on the other hand, maybe you're trying too hard to make your guild a raiding guild. If that's not their culture, perhaps finding an established raiding guild (with a vent server) is easier than bending this one into what you want. Just a thought.

[Mackus]

Ventrilo's often cost $5 a month, less with website bundles such as guildlaunch for example

[Mackus]

Although I wouldn't advise paying anything for a casual guild tbh

[Martie]

I thought Blizzard had a built-in voicechat thingy going on. I wonder why nobody ever uses it.

Anyway, you don't need voice chat. In fact, I've heard compelling arguments against using it.

[SneekyB]

Thanks for your reply's. To clarify we will allways be a casual lvling guild but some members have expressed a desire to do some light raiding. Most of them have no raiding experiance whatsover. The only reason I would like to have some type of voice communications so I can explain things a lot easier.
Anyway I'll look into your suggestions, thank you very much

[Dedic]

@Martie: as I said, in-game voice comm is broken. Blizz has acknowledged this and says they want to make it work. IMO they don't need something like that taking up bandwidth.

Also, who said what that was compelling against voice comms for raids? I'd say they're nuts. Typing in the middle of a raid boss fight is not possible if you want to stay alive. Communication is key, especially in Cata raids where every fight is complicated and requires coordination. Unless they know of some psychic link system, voice comm is the best there is.

[Tschus]

I think u can try to host a mumble or TeamSpeak server yourself. Both are free for non-commercial use.

[Fetzie]

You can host a teamspeak3 server on your own webspace so long as you have permissions to install software on it. The standard server software you can get without a license allows for 25 slots (iirc), you can obtain a free license for a server that allows a lot more clients (i think it is up to 300), this is called a non-profit license. If you get this particular license you are not allowed to use your server for business or to make any money.

http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=teamspeak3

[Rosakleb]

Depending on how many of you are likely to want to chat at the same time
Why not use skype ? Can easily handle several people at the same time

As for raiding my GM does not use voice Coms and is a very successful raid leader so it is is possible

[Griff]

Can anyone recommend any Mumble hosts? my little guild is thinking about making the switch.