On Sat, 5 Apr 2008, James Cameron wrote:

> I also think that 8 players on a single audio link is not at all 
> impractical, given the expected conversation latency.  I'm regularly on 
> conference calls with that number of people, and we all learn rapidly to 
> do random back-off, just like in real life.

I'm also regularly on conference calls with a lot of people but there is 
no similarity to that type of communication and netrek communication. When 
you are on a conference call, there is only one (or possibly a few) things 
happening at the same time. You decide that you will first talk about item 
1 on the agenda, then move on to item 2, etc. In netrek there are a lot of 
plays happening all over, and every player has their own view on what the 
team needs to know or do *right* *now*. This is especially true on pickup 
where a lot of newbie players are playing that haven't yet quite grasped 
how to prioritize correctly in netrek.

Having a communication channel consisting of eight random pickup players 
would be total chaos. It might be fun, but it would hinder the team's 
performance, rather than boosting it.

-- 
Niclas