Can you use a USB headset to talk with other members of your party? If so, how?
FYI - I’m a newbie. My buddy sent me guest pass last week. My pally is level 10. My wife bought the game for me yesterday as an early birthday gift. 
Check out Teamspeak. This will allow you to talk to other members of your party provided they also are on TS and on the same channel. It’s used extensively for end game raiding.
And enjoy the game. Its imense.
I’ve used teamspeak, but think it stinks. My guild uses Ventrilo. The bad thing about Ventrilo is that you need to have, or to purchase space, on a server for it to work. I believe it’s the same for TS.
I’ve heard of people using Skype which supposedly doesn’t need a server, but when I tried to DL it a couple years ago they wanted me to pay for it.
Welcome to the [del]addiction[/del] game! World of Warcrack is fun! (and only comsumes most of your free time. As in 90%. But anyway…)
But the real question is: What server are you on?
I don’t think you will have to worry about running into too many Dopers; IIRC, there’s not much overlap in servers (for mains).
I probably should explain this a little better. When I say you need a server, I don’t mean that everyone needs their own. The server is the host and everyone in the group will log into the server to talk. You should talk to the people you’re playing with, if you’re on Vent and their on TS (or vise versa)… you won’t have much success in your communication. So just use what they do, if they’re already using one… then the server part is already set up.
Teamspeak is really dreadful quality compared to Ventrilo. I’ve run them both.
My husband and I host a server for our guild to use Vent. We just have an old pc running Win98 sharing our broadband connection. Once we get past, say, 10 man raiding we’ll probably need to purchase space on a hosted server, though. The issue isn’t the hardware; it’s the bandwidth.
I’ve run Teamspeak and Ventrilio, and they both suck IMO. I really really REALLY hate this tendency to use them for raiding and such. The sound quality is bad, they’re not intuitive to set up (not a problem for me, but there’s always someone who can’t figure something up) and I have my doubts about how secure they are.
Inevitably raids are held up by them. The main tankk can’t hear anything, or someone can’t type in the URL correctly, or some other problem. Maybe it’s better in big established raiding guilds, but the raids I’ve been on it’s been a nightmare.
There’s also the teenage boy factor. Y’know, it’s bad enough reading their typing. I don’t want to hear them talk. I know, I know, only the raid leaders are supposed to talk. But what happens if the raid leader is a teenage boy? puke
Add in that I really am a girl, and I sound like a girl, and sometimes I don’t want to advertise to every yahoo on WoW that I’m not a teenage boy myself. I don’t need everyone knowing I’m a girl. I like my anonymity.
I guess I’m just an old curmedgeon. But I’m just sick of every single pickup group I get having someone who apparantly can’t read because they use TS/Vent most of the time and can’t be bothered to actually look at the /party chat, or yelling at me to not change targets because they are using CTRaidAssist, or bitching because of some other of their macro/add-ons/whatever isn’t working.
I think that’s your problem right there. PUGs are teh suxx0rs. 
No kidding.
I have a group of friends I play with… but inevitably there’s only 3 or 4 of us on at a time. We always seem to be stuck with a couple pickups.
The worst is UBRS. I like the dungeon, but oh-so-hate doing it because instead of 60-80% of the group being people I know, it’s more like 40%. And there’s always some dumbass who can’t manage to play without some pain-in-the-ass add on.
I had another warrior the other day tell me I was the worst tank he’d ever seen (I play warr, and was main tanking) because I didn’t stick to one target all the time so he could use CTRaidAssist. Um, excuse me, but there’s 5 mobs here, and 3 of 'em are dead set on Priest Crunchies for lunch. No shit I don’t stick to one target, I tank 'em all. Quit being a lazy hooplehead and pay attention instead of just banging your CTRaidAssist button.
My guild has this problem too. Got to the point we had another server just for mature players. You had to be invited to join this server and it was heaven.
So, on a side note about this… One of the reasons WoW -hasn’t- become addictive for me is just this sort of thing. My compy isn’t set up to handle things like Ventrillo and the like, and I’m always nervous about screwing up a group because I’m such a n00b. I also -like- soloing. However, from the way people talk, it sounds like this will bite me in the butt later in the game. Is this the case?
Moron. You don’t hit the main tank’s target unless the tank is also MA (which is rare) or there’s only one mob–I’d hate to see that guy on the core hound packs, eek! Pick a rogue or hunter (using an assist macro if necessary) and follow his target if you must. Most groups have an assigned MA anyways.
CTRA is incredibly useful, and CTMod is the only addon I use aside from WhisperCast–thankfully someone showed me how to edit trigger words so now when someone asks for a ‘pretty pink paw’ it goes into my queue. Although it still bugs me when they do that.
ArrMatey!–it probably varies a bit from server to server. Generally PUGs (on my server at least) will only invite to a TS or Vent server if it’s being formed by guildies, and people rarely get pissy about it unless it’s a guild raid and they require it–not all do, and some don’t use it at all, though that’s rare. Although one time I was raiding with four Fusion guys who never invited me to their server (I knew they were using it too, it was obvious, plus I asked one of them, a sorta-guildmate of mine, if they were and she said yes). I was not pleased. And yes, soloing will bite you in the butt at end-game. Don’t worry about it though, just find a good small raiding guild and they’ll help you slip into endgame raiding.
Well, I can’t say I’m addicted… not yet. Actually, I only play of 1 or 2 hours a night, if I can. I have to get up early for work, and can’t be on all night long. Besides I have a wife and dogs that need my attention as well. However, weekends are another story entirely…
My pally is on Shadow Moon. Markairion. Look for me.
The subject was communicating and you guys are losing me with your abbreviations and such. PUGs? CTA? Please explain and tell me some others I’m likely to run into.
That’s always been my thinking as well. Unfortunately it seems like most guilds (at least on my server) never figured out that this WoW is not EQ, and the strategies that worked well for EQ (like assisting the tank) don’t map right into WoW.
And heck - for 5 and 10 man groups, you don’t even need a MA. If everyone just pays attention and mostly hits the same mob, things work out just fine. I hate hate HATE it when I get some pickup idiot who wants to use CTRA for UBRS - I immediately write them off as either idiots or too lazy to actually play the game.
PUG = Pick up Group. That is, a group of people who meet up via the “looking for group” channel as opposed to friends or guildmates. Generally horrible, horrible things, to be avoided at all costs.
CTA: I don’t know what that stands for specifically, but it’s shorthand for a group of mods that do things like allow you to pick one person in a raid as the Main Assist (MA) and everyone else can easily target their target. That’s handy, because it brings down the monsters fast, and makes it so that the healers can concentrate on healing one or two tanks as opposed to every yahoo on the raid.
There are a lot of acronyms and shorthand in WoW. This should help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_(World_of_Warcraft)
My post earlier got eaten (someone feed those hampsters already) but I think he means CTRA (CT Raid Assist–I don’t know what CT stands for either), which is part of the CTMod addon package. There’s other parts to it as well, but for raiding CTRA is the part you’ll need specifically. You can download just what parts of CTMod you want, or get the whole thing–I usually do the latter, even though I use little of it. It has some handy and just plain nice stuff.
As for not needing a MA for smaller groups…maybe, maybe not. It’s certainly useful for newer raiders. “Just hit Mister’s target and you’ll do fine.” Eventually they’ll learn, but having simple directions like that is useful when you’re still a newb. You don’t need CTRA for that though–just say ‘Mister is our MA’ and hope everyone knows how to make a macro.
I made it to 60 only doing a few instances, seriously. I paid for it with lesser gear, but like you, I preferred soloing. If you find a good guild, it’s much easier to group with guildies. We don’t usually use Vent unless one of our Guild Leaders who really really likes it is on. When I filled in on a secondary tank position with some non-guild friends in Zul Gurrub (20-man endgame instance) the other day, I was on their TeamSpeak, but couldn’t make out a damn thing they were saying most of the time. The raid leader typed the important instructions on screen and indicated kill order with the nifty new icons you can mark targets with, so it was okay.
Don’t worry about endgame when you’re just starting out. I’ve found that I’ve basically played one game up until 60, and now it’s shifted a lot for me. It will make more sense as you progress.
So what the hell does CTRaidAssist actually do? I haven’t played WoW in a while.
It does a lot of things… really.
While one of the main uses is to show the health and mana/energy/rage bars of everyone in the raid, this function can be gotten through the raid tab in the game itself. What the raid tab doesn’t give you is, the ability to check the resistances of everyone in the raid, the reagents carried by everyone in the raid, the durability of everyone in the raid, the ability to send messages in the middle of the screen to everyone, the ability to send automated messages to the raid when bosses do special attacks, see the time remaining on buffs, see the main tank and off tanks (and Main Assist) and their targets, and more…