Were you playing against GOMEN, Darkheart, and Aone?

Its a very micro-intensive game with little time to sit around chatting so its no suprise you don't see much. In-game VoiP is usually rubbish anyway and is another thing the dev's have to make (which reduces time they can spend on other issues). Much better to use your own program externally like Vent or Team speak.

If you want to know who is an AI, hit tab....anyone with 0ms ping (other than yourself of course) is a comp.

I mostly only chat when I am losing by a huge margin and just waiting for the "clean up" to take place.  There really ought to be a surrender button after a certain period of time during a match that the whole team can vote on so that it doesnt take an extra 10 minutes to "lose".

Funny - I played with them last night - silence! I at least tend to say 'hey' and giove a GG towards the end of a match. Also always fun to compliment the guy who just chased you half-way across the world for that killing blow and survived the towers.

I have to say though, so far I haven't gotten any smack-talk or nastiness - those that have been chatty were pretty cool so far.

Er, also, you're presuming a couple of things:

- they speak your language... I mean, hows your Japanese?

- they can type by touch (I can't imagine hunt-and-pecking during melee)

- they're not too busy finding the on switch to be barking marching orders.

FWIW, I always start each game with a  quick greeting, just to see who's awake, and let them know that I am.

I just love how Stardock trick so many people in beleiving AI players are real humans.  Most people fall for it including me in the beginning.

I guess people aren't used to 1. seeing AI players online and 2. AI players replacing real humans after disconnect.

i talk on vent with my friends and my friends usually are my teammates.

The only real way to tell if you are playing against humans is to hit tab and look at the pings and stuff in the scoreboard.  If a ping is 0, it is typically a computer player.

Yeah, use vent with players in a game that you just joined.  Oh wait, you cannot alt tab because the game will lock up.

Bright idea.

Usually why there is a mute or ignore feature.

To be fair, most teams I've played with use the in-game chat, and in most cases, it's either words of encouragement, strategies, or short messages to help coordinate the team. The community by and large seems decent.

if you hit enter it will pop up the previous chat as well as your reply screen. 

I have definitely been killed for typing at the wrong time before but it's necessary to talk when deciding how your team will play.  

When they introduce native VoIP it will be a grand day

Voice in WoW was a huge miracle at first, but, omg, you get cussers, bad losers, kids saying "poop poop poop giggle".  I HATE voice in Wow now uless I play with friends.  I think I"m just fine with chat for now; I can get ventrillo or something if I want a cohesive team.  If they would let you make some kind of marcros (likee OOM or such) that would be perfect.

I find that even a minimal level of communication helps when it comes to building advanced units, and a little help when you need.  I found asking someone to buy an advanced unit after you bought one works wonders, since most people don't mind spending a little gold to overpower the other team.