Yeah, I'd talked to Tek about doing a Dolby Axon pilot/trial as well. But ultimately didn't go anywhere, largely because I didn't see how putting another option out there would add any value in the short-term.
For better or worse, WoW-Red, the vastly majority user of the existing vent server ... has just a huge amount of inertia with vent. It ain't broke. It does what folks need it to do. While we have gotten through other transition in the past relatively seamlessly, moving form one vent server to another ... that's a long way short of getting people to install a new client and reconfigure settings and whatever else. To make it work, would really need to stop one service and transition to another ... having part of the guild on TS and part on Vent ... would just be a mess. Again, I'm speaking to the single WoW-Red entity on the assumption that's 90% of the current activity/usage. For Red, the voice forum really isn't about what's best for raiding or BGs or whatever ... it's about providing another piece of glue to stick the community together. It also happens to help raiding ... but we're not optimizing around raiding.
Anyhow, I'm sure you're right, ewoks, about there being other options that are better out there. But I think it will take some catalyzing event to get us to move ... and I don't see that catalyst out there right now. If a "new game" (Rift? KotOR when it comes) wants to try out something else form the get-go, that's a good opportunity ... but you lose perhaps some opportunity to cross-game chat like we had with WoW/WAR (not sure at all what Toj-Rift uses right now?) Anyhow, unless Tek and notashamed aren't getting financial support for vent to the extent or timeliness needed (and I don't think that's the case) ... I vote "kick the can down the road" and focus on other priorities, like designing tabards.
