Okay, new forum design is sort of offputting, but I do like the new features.
With that out of the way, I’d like to put in my two cents coming from seeing, witnessing, using, and eventually watching the death of add-ons that had attempted to facilitate cross-faction communication, even if it is for Roleplay.
Now, while I don’t wish to be the one that dashes the hopes and dreams of the roleplaying community, I do want to put forward that there’s an example of an addon that existed during the days of Vanilla that allowed players to communicate across faction. Now, mind you I don’t know the exact rules of discussing previously banned/broken addons so I’ll go over this lightly.
The first addon to do this was aptly named Babelfish/Babblefish. It translated the opposing faction’s language into that of the character you were playing, and vice versa, this also allowed players with the addon to speak to each other without seeing [Orcish] or [Common] before their messages.
Blizzard caught wind of this, and if my memory isn’t failing me there were some Cease and Desists thrown out and the API was mended to block use of that addon.
While times has changed, and there’s little meat to even have two factions at this point, I do see why Blizzard may’ve gone out of their way to break the addon. First and foremost, whatever addon you publish will always be used by someone in a fashion that, you the author, do not intend for it to be used; which goes down the path of easily accessible cross faction harassment without the hassle of creating characters and alts to continue to poke, prod, haze, and humiliate another player for whichever reason this theoretical person may choose.
While yes, the RP community should be seen as a cross-faction community that wants to break the bonds of faction restriction to roleplay, but at the same time there are people out there who will use your addons in a malicious manner and potentially ruin the fun for all.
I, myself, am not a fan of these cross-faction communication addons mostly due to how they’ve sprouted up in the past, gained some traction and Blizzard goes “Nuh-huh, you can’t do that.” and disables functionality.
I don’t see Blizzard turning the tides against in-game cross-faction communication anytime soon to the point where they’ll be in favor of addons like Babelfish or CrossRP.