When you join a group in New World you get put into group voip. This means that you can only talk to the people in your group and not the people around you. Similarly people in open world who are not in your group will not hear you.
If you turn off group voip then you will hear people outside of your group again and you can talk to them but the other people in your group will not be able to hear or talk to you since they will still have their group voip turned on.
Group voip can be turned off by pressing escape and turning group voip off by pressing the small button under the group avatars in the far left column. A lot of people dont know about this and assume that their voip is bugged.
That button is so small that it’s very easy to miss.
Group voip makes sense for dungeons, open world events like corruptions, PVP related events or whenever you just want to talk to some friends and not be bothered by people around you.
I think that for open world it should be off by default.
Suggestion: Rather than having the voip button only visible on the map-screen - add a smaller text above the group portraits saying “Group voip: ON/OFF” so that people know that voip exists and if they are in it or not.
Default mode should be group voip off and be an opt-in thing for when you and your group wants to talk in private.