Having voted for making phones a bit more realistic and better RP support, I'll also vote for the notion that *disguising* one's voice on the phone wouldn't have to be ruled out either! Including disguising gender, why not, for the really motivated and capable "suspicious caller".
But not only is this unusual among the playerbase, it also doesn't help when my character is the one *getting* calls and then not being able to talk about who it might be. It just isn't realistic that no clue to gender at a minimum is possible unless the calling player does something ehich is frankly out of the ordinary, in practice.
It makes me want to write a macro for sending a [OOC: what gender does your voice sound like?] to clue the other player in, that here's a situation that they _might_ not intend. If at that point they choose to not answer or choose to fuck with me, that's fine, but at least at that point it's intentional and can support realistic RP. I'm not gonna use a macro or issue OOC comments over the phone like that because that would make RP suck too, but that's how frustrating this is to me.
Eh, I know it's been like this forever, So, without a MOO change, would anyone like to offer advice then, how you have "played around" it over the years? 'Cause I'm finding it hard, and have been for weeks. Thanks!
Think about your own personal phone usage. When calling, pretty much anybody, and for me also when I text someone who may not recognize my number I say "Hey whatup its Bilbo the Dildo" or whatever. Also using words of familiarity like, bro, chief, luv, dad, whatever to identify myself.
When your not sure though, just ask!! How many times have you had a call with someone in your life that you know intimately, and that you always recognize by voice, but because he/she's calling from a different phone, or has connection issues that distort their voice, you don't know right off who they are, and you ask, who is this??