Raiding without voice chat: the pings and speech tools Blizzard’s 22 October podcast discussed

On Blizzard’s official End of Beta Special episode of The WoW: Forever Podcast, published on 22 October, a question asked whether every raid encounter would be doable for someone who stays out of voice chat and does not read chat. The answer started from the point that communication and coordination with allies are a big part of raid encounters, and then named some tools that can help.

Pings for targets and threats

The answer pointed to the ping system as a way for players to communicate in game without voice. Its example was a new add appearing, and pinging either to attack it or not to attack it.

Speech tools and accessibility

The answer also mentioned text-to-speech and speech-to-text, and tied tools like these to accessibility: being able to take part if you cannot get into voice. It added that some kind of communication with other players will always be preferable. Its overall verdict on the question was that it could go either way, not that every raid can be done without voice.

Separately, Blizzard’s beta notes posted on 15 October, Pacific time, added gamepad bindings to turn Voice Channel Transcription on and off from the Chat Channels menu. That is one binding, not a description of the speech features as a whole.

We have not tested any of these features. Which channels they cover, how they are set up and how they hold up during a busy encounter are open questions.

Communication may change as fights are learned

The answer expected things to shift over time. At first, people would most likely be on voice working out what is going on. Later on, it might not be needed in the same way. It also expected different guilds to settle on very different strategies for the new raid bosses.

Before raid night

These suggestions are ours:

• Agree how your group will mark and call targets, whatever the medium.
• If a raider relies on speech features, test them together before the first pull, not during it.
• Allow for more explanation while an encounter is still new to your group.

This account paraphrases the 22 October recording. It is not a transcript, and it does not describe the live game.