Why is it that in DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online), paralyzed characters still “move”

It's a largely instanced system, similar to Guild Wars. You instant-transport between hubs and run instanced quests out of those hubs. (If you're not familiar with instancing, it basically means you go into a private clone of an area with only your group. No random strangers wandering by.)

There are three types of areas, according to their website:

• Quests: Instanced for 1-6 people, small area with a storyline to play through.
• Adventure Areas: Instanced for 1-6 people, wide open area to explore, with dungeons and outposts within it.
• Raids: Instanced for 1-12 people, more challenging quests

So, if you just want to jump into quests/raids with a small to medium size group, this sounds like a good game. If you like to solo or explore a big open world, maybe not so much.

Have you tested to see if this happens on other systems for you? Say a desktop and a laptop connected to the same ISP connection at home. Most often when I have guild-mates or party members complain about audio issues it is due to their personal user settings. Make sure that voice-chat is turned on even if you have no microphone, if you use a headset sometimes, and speakers other times, especially if the headset is USB or wireless, you will have to go in to your audio configurations and confirm that the game is looking for the correct device. If these suggestions do not easily help you, please let me know, I'll work up an audio configuration tutorial page on DDOwiki to help you. (I should make one anyways, but this may bump up it's priority ;-))