Few like the sound of their own voice. And even fewer like the voices of their World of Warcraft buddies'. Sure, voice chat is nothing new to online, but has become more and more common in MMORPGs. With text chatting giving way to in-game voice chat, good old internet anonymity is being threatened in the virtual world. Writes Clive Thompson over at Wired.com:

Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident, bold and streetsmart.

But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat — and asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice. I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and ...

... realized he was an 11-year-old boy, complete with squeaky, prepubescent vocal chords. When he laughed, his voice shot up abruptly into an octave range that induced headaches and probably killed any dogs within earshot. Oh, and he used "motherfucker" about four times a sentence, except when his mother came into his bedroom to check on him.

Worse yet, as one poster at the always heady Terra Nova points out, throw up a voice chat server and "the girls stop talking completely, the shy people shut up mostly and all that is left are the 12- to 18-year-old guys, and it becomes a locker room." Personally, I'm a text guy. Words, words are good. You? Brian Ashcraft

Bad Sounding Voices [Wired via Slashdot]

Contact information for this author is not available.