As gamers, and most notably those that do anything cooperative will use a VoIP, which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol:
- Mumble
- Ventrilo
- Skype
There are few other well known ones out there, but for todays post I will be talking about those main three.
Which one works best? Which has the least lag? Can I customize? Lets find out.
Mumble: Can you follow instructions?
Mumble is what I use and is for me by far the best one for our basic needs.
I use it for several reasons, it’s cheap, easy to set-up and best of all it has VERY little lag.
- Cheap: On the Mumble website you can get a 25 man mumble with yourservername.mumble.com for $10 a month which is comparable to vent servers, with the added ease of having your own name.
- Easy to Set-up: Now a great deal of people that use my mumble server are able to get on just fine. All you have to do is follow the directions! This simple step can make your life a living hell. If you don’t do mumble set-up properly it can become a bit trickier. Still nothing I haven’t had to deal with.
- As a side note: My old guild used to use this as a application requirement, if you were smart enough to figure out how to get mumble up and working then you managed to get past that phase.
- As a side side note: In Windows 7 you sometimes need to run Mumble as Admin.
- Lag: Anyone who raids, or PvPs understands the need for low to no lag. Vent has lag. We can all agree that Vent has some lag issues. I’ve been using Mumble for 4 years now, and I’ve never had issues with lag, and my mumble server is in California, while I’m in Florida.
To demo this I generally have people get into Mumble and Vent at the same time, and then hear me talk, the difference is an awesome selling point.
Complicated Customization Panel: I am going to do at least one Con for each of these and Mumbles big downside for me is the channel customization. I’m sure that if I was given a proper tutorial on how to set it up I’d be good, but out of the “box” it’s quite confusing.
Side Note: I do like that you can have your mumble overlay on your games, so those that have only one screen can always see who is speaking.
Vent: Ping: 175
Vent is the plug and play of VoIP’s. You’d have to be a slightly “touched” hamster to screw it up. Customization is annoying but easy, Cheap, and everyone has it.
- Cheap: On Typefrag you can get a 25 man Vent server for $10, which is the same as Mumble.
- Set-up: Back to the hamster, seriously Vent couldn’t be easier to set up. All you really need to do is make sure that your input and output devices are selected properly and you’re good to go.
- Customization: Vent’s customization is widely ranged. You can raise and lower peoples volume, which I dislike since I’m used to Mumble automatically doing it, but for some people that blare music (you know who you are) this is a nice feature. On top of that, all the other customization is a matter of pushing a button or sliding a bar.
- Side Note: I wish Vent had an overlay system.
- Lag: VENT HAS REALLY BAD LAG I think that’s all that really needs to be said about it.
Skype: Do you wanna date my avatar?
I’ve never really understood the point of using Skype for gaming. I use it for collaborating on other projects, or simply talking to friends and family. It’s free technically, you have to have an account, and no customization.
This doesn’t look good for a review.
- Free: If you are only using voice, and not video it is free to have as many people in a conference as you’d like. All you’ll see is a little avatar. However, if you want to add multiple people with video, you’ll have to fork out the $8.99 a month to get premium.
- Account: You will need to go to the website and make an account, which means hooking it up to an email that will get hit with spam. Unless you’re like me and you have a spam email.
- Side Note: Along with an account comes just one more passworded program to use.
- Customization: Mine likes to randomly tell me that my microphone is too quiet or that my video quality is bad. When it come to tooling around with settings you’ve got really next to no power.
As always these are my opinions and should be taken at face value. No matter how you choose to use to connect with your friends I hope that you have fun!
/Cheers!
Uhm unless this article is old and hasn’t been updated Vent does have an overlay system. And it can be moved if you set it up in binds before had with the push of a button while in game so you can place it where you want.
I will say, however, that the two other advantages to Skype for me are:
My guildies, who do very little VoIP for gaming, have Skype; and Skype allows me to completely control who is using my connection (so long as I turn it off when I’m not using it.)
These are both huge benefits when the group using it doesn’t do much very organized. I’d definitely consider using something else for raiding or concerted BGs.
Oh God, here she goes AGAIN trying to nag me into switching the guild to Mumble. J/K
I agree with almost all of this. Mumble is a fabulous voip that unfortunately still hasn’t achieved a lot of recognition. Vent is perfectly decent alternative with the main advantage of universality. Skype is a fancier program with a lot of additional features, although most of those don’t apply much to gaming. One disadvantage to Skype, though, is that unless I’m just a moron (entirely possible) you cannot use a ptt key with Skype; you can ONLY do open mike. That can be a major issue if (like me) you sometimes need those brief moments off-mike to vent before you address your groupmates again.