Vent

Honestly, most raid leaders don't care if you can talk in vent or teamspeak. In fact, they prefer you don't. They want you on vent/teamspeak so you can listen. When your raid leader is doing his job pressing his buttons during a fight, it's hard to type a command or an issue or to get someone's attention so they can move.

Pressing a hotkey and speaking is far easier.

Vent/teamspeak will be 100% free for you. You will join someone else's preset server and you won't owe them anything. Tell them you can't talk, but you can listen. 99% of raid leaders have no issue with that.

As long as you download your voicechat service from the official website of that service, you won't get any viruses. After that, don't click on any outside links that people post and log out when you're done. You'll be as safe as you can be on the net.

Good luck and I hope you get raiding.

Best advise i can give to you is hunt around for a good guild, they dont have to be on the cutting edge of content. Form a good group with them and go from there and just leave pugging alone when not doing the lfg tool.

It is required for the ops he got booted from.

I just use skype to talk to my friends

How do you know, your just guessing. It was required by the ops leader not the operation.

You just have to be able to hear. YOU don't have to talk, reason they want you in Vent, so you can hear the instruction on specific boss fights. There are mechanics here & there you may not get right off bat(or several bats). This way it can be explained to you.


JJ

I meant operation group. I didn't mean the operation itself.

This I do agree with 100%.

You will tend to find as well that quite a few of them have their own voice server hosting (Ventrillo, Teamspeak, Mumble) as well... which tends to get used when *NOT* in ops as well for general socializing.

*edit* I would like to point out that the *average* typing speed for someone is just 40-50words per minute (can be as low as 25words per minute), whilst someone listening should be able to easily understand up to 150 words per minute... so explaining something verbally in a common language is normally 2-3 times faster than just typing it all out, which is handy for those long explanations....

What if the OP didn't use vent because the OP is deaf? The OP is apparently not deaf, but many other video game players are. That is a much greater issue and certainly applies to the conversation, even if it doesn't fit neatly into your point. It's really not that difficult to type. You responded to the OP. Did you use Voice to Text technology to do so or did you press your fingers against the keys on the keyboard?

Apparently millions of people can type (even if they type very poorly). Need proof? Check out www.twitter.com. Millions of people who have absolutely nothing interesting to say manage typing just fine. Many of them do it while driving which is far more difficult than typing while killing a raid boss.

I'm not deaf, but I do not enjoy listening to people blah blah blah about whatever they think is clever or interesting. I will enter vent for ops just because it is easier but only in my guild's vent or for a special circumstance (like a multi-guild event). Even when I run an Op, I'll type the necessary information because I don't discriminate against people who prefer to not use 3rd party software. The reasoning for not wanting to use it is irrelevant.

I've seen people kicked from groups because the sound of their voice is "annoying" or the way they speak just as often as being kicked for playing poorly. It's pathetic and sad.

The people who would kick me because I don't want to listen to them feel self-important don't matter to me. These are the same type of people who won't let me heal as a Mercenary because "force-using healers are much more effective" and make me play as DPS because "statistically, the DPS of a Mercenary is far greater than that of a sniper." Eh, I'll play my own way and be just as successful... thanks anyway.

With the LFG tool (i.e., PuGs), it's random and you take your chances. I agree with the point that you should just find a guild or regular group who fit your playstyle. I know it can be difficult, but it is far more worthwhile than just taking what you can get and being slapped in the face for it (as you have described). It is far more difficult to find guilds who do not "live in Vent," but they are out there. You'll find them eventually.

But those guilds will probably boot him when they find out he's unwilling to get any of those programs.