LOTRO Voice Chat in Fellowship

Firstly, it's important to realise that you are effectively running two separate sound systems. The game sounds, like the music and special effects, and the voice channel. You open the main menu by pressing "Esc" and then click on the Options button. From there select the Audio button on the right and scroll down this section to find the Voice Enabled checkbox. Tick it to enable the voice chat options. You will only be able to see these voice options within the game itself. You can't do this from the Options setup on the character selection page before you enter the LOTRO game world.

The voice channel can use any microphone and any output device, but here's what we found when playing around. By far the best option is to have the game sound playing out of your speakers and have a dedicated headset with microphone for the voice chat. You can pick up a headset of around ten pounds, or go for a deluxe USB affair for around thrity pounds. Whichever you go for, the headset is a good investment for your PC setup anyway because you can use it outside of LOTRO for VoIP programs, like Skype, to chat with friends and family for free.

Using a directional microphone on your desktop and the speakers does work, but the voice volume from the other players is quite quiet and you are best advised to turn the game volume and music right down so you will be able to hear them. We really can't advise using a built-in mic as comes on some laptops because they are too quiet.

In the Audio Options section with voice enabled, you can use the drop down menu to select the recording device and output device for voice (hopefully, a headeset for both).

Now, the options for LOTRO voice chat do enable you to do something about the volumes. There is a mic gain slider which increases the volume on the voice sent from your mic, so get everyone to try turning this up if people are sound quiet. Also remember that Windows has its own volume controls for microphones in the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel. What's more, this is a well known bugged area in Windows XP, so if you are finding no volume being picked up, there is a strong possibility that Windows has turned the mic volume down to zero. Go to the control panel in Windows and open the Sounds control panel, click on the Voice tab and the Volume button there.

Lastly, there's also a voice capture threshold. Move this down to make the mic more sensitive so it starts transmitting your voice at lower volumes or up if it is constantly picking up and transmitting background noise.

You can click on the Mic Test checkbox to see if the mic is working correctly. Try talking and you should see a volume bar appear as you do. If not, then the mic isn’t picking up and you should check all of the above.

So, how does it work? Brilliantly. We all had broadband, but it didn't affect any lag on the game that I could detect and it meant we could both direct the other members of the fellowship to help out when we needed them. It made it easy for us to find each other again when we'd become separated and it turned the game into a social experience as we could chat when we were just running around outside of combat.

Voice chat is only enabled between players who are in the same fellowship, so by having chat enabled, you won't hear any of the other players running around you in the game; I say again, only fellowship members. Effectively a fellowship sets you up automatically with a private audio chat channel. You don't have to listen to anyone running past calling you useless, which is comforting if you're a beginner.

It is amazing how comfortable with MMO gaming you can become quite quickly. Chatting to other gamers while seeing them next to me in LOTRO didn't feel intimidating, but of course these were people I knew in the real world. It will be interesting to see if voice chat remains as appealing while in a fellowship with people I don’t know. For now though, voice chat in LOTRO has shown me that it can significantly enhance the gaming experience, and thankfully with very little configuration needed.

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