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Seriously, when I group with people and they have vent or Team Speak I am not amazed that most of them do not have any relationship except with their mom upstairs. When my girlfriend comes on the microphone at least half the time they make lewd remarks. I am using a decent headset is there a way to filter out background noise or make it just broadcast my voice?

I enjoyed this article because it relates to me. There's a reason why I don't own a gaming console. I haven't owned one since Atari 2600. Due to my four fingers on my hands, lack of thumbs, and inablility to hold game controllers in mid air, I cannot use those console controllers very well. I have to use them on tables to hold them. This is why I do better on computer games because of keyboards, mice (small light ones like those old two/three button ones), and simple small joysticks (think of those old one/two buttons one like those old school Atari 2600 joysticks). I currently have a Microsoft Sidewinder joystick, but they have too many buttons and too big for my hands, so I don't do well when flying (I avoid flying in Battlefield games ;)). :(

I also have speech and hearing impediments, so I don't use Teamspeak or any voice communications. I tried it once in Day of Defeat (original version) and obviously, no one knew I was saying (even my friends whom I talked to!). Hearing is another problem since I don't hear well with my analog bone conduction hearing aid (mono -- one microphone and can't determine audio directions). I love games that use closed caption/CC and suititles like in Half-Life 2 games (only use the dialog ones) and F.E.A.R..

There are several ways to go, but for my money, the best product is FantasyGrounds.

Fantasy Grounds is a "virtual tabletop" complete with d20 rules, character sheets, dice, a chat window, the ability to share images with your players, and to mask/unmask maps as your party progresses.

The current version is 1.05, but a major revamp has been in the works all year, with a version 2.0 due out "soon". Speaking of GenCon - the SmiteWorks guys (who make FantasyGrounds) will be sharing a booth with the guys from Code Monkey Publishing (makers of the E-Tools software for character creation).

Other tools to look at include OpenRPG and Klooge.

I'm not, personally, a fan of those, but everyone has their preferences.

Also, to aid in communication, I strongly suggest running a TeamSpeak server, so you can actually talk to your fellow players, instead of typing everything manually.

Why don't you just set up Teamspeak or Roger Wilco or Ventrilo or something?

First FireFox 1.5 is out, now IBM FSS Team Speak is out too!

If you're setting up your own server, then Teamspeak is free.

You might want to check out Teamspeak if you want a free voice service with a Linux server and client available. My boyfriend used to use Ventrilo as well, but when we discovered Teamspeak, we and basically everyone else we wanted to talk to quickly switched over.

I do kind of wish that WoW would work without Cedega, though. The only semi-real game that I have on my laptop is Creatures Dockingstation, and that's more of a demo than anything... so it would be awfully nice if I could level my cow at school as well as at home. However, I'm not willing to shell out extra money to do it.

My buddies and I already use Teamspeak for playing games like WoW.

For many years I've been perturbed, having to retain Windows hosts for my gaming needs. Though I would love to use Linux/*BSD fulltime, in the past I haven't been able to just from compatibility.

Now, it appears with Vista's pathetic OpenGL support, we are going to be forced to move.

Fortunately, WINE appears to be doing great things, and World of Warcraft is on the gold list. Hell, even Teamspeak has a linux client too!

Like it's been said you won't pay more. I don't like it either, but it can be nice. I use my onboard sound card for TeamSpeak on a head set, so it doesn't affect my regular sound. The onboard video is good for another display, two monitors are pretty useful. The onboard NIC is always great too.

Just use teamspeak, gamers have used voice comms for ages and teamspeak is just one of many. http://www.goteamspeak.com/products.php?t=screensh ots

bash-2.05b# netstat -p
Aktive Internetverbindungen (ohne Server)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 1 0 <my-hostname>:2752 <my-hostname>:www CLOSE_WAIT 18852/server_linux

Oct 4 20:37:16 [kernel] IPT New not syn:IN=lo OUT= MAC=00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:00:08:00 SRC=192.168.1.99 DST=192.168.1.99 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=626 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=2752 DPT=80 WINDOW=32767 RES=0x00 ACK FIN URGP=0