Patch 8.1 and Cross-Faction Roleplay

Community General Discussion
304

As a man who helps co-op run a neutral aligned organization, I can truly say that this is a set back on all front for the community that we, and others are trying to build.

I’ve read multiple post, 200 of them in fact, all trying to say the same basic concept: That this addon was meant to enhance the ability for people to immerse themselves in game. Not destroy it.

For them, it dampers any reality that the idea of having people on the other side that they can share their stories with, engage in roleplay with, and otherwise be able to have a powerful structure in the roleplay community.

This idea that we need to be separate in order to keep the game immersive is a folly idea. The more people you involve in immersion, the better that event tends to be.

As for me personally, it hampers the server wide events that my guild has every year. Up until this point, our Fight Night events that we host every month with nearly 30-100 people turning out to roleplay with, has been essentially one sided due to lack of being able to put people together.

When CrossRP was released, we saw it as an opportunity to possibly expand our monthly brawls out to the other side. And we were in the process of doing so, until this happened.

We also planned to host Carp Ball events on our server that, again, would branch onto both side until this has happened. It’s not impossible to do these, but it hinders our ability to execute them in a proper fashion that can overall make our game more immersive.

Furthermore, this makes the reality of a roleplaying game truly weakened. Not only are we subjected to sticking with our own factions when some of us roleplay as neutral characters, but coordination of legitimate PvP events in the world becomes more of a chore than of fun.

And I’m done writing the essay. My apologies that this has gone on for so long, but I figure that I needed to make a note of this. I’d be more than happy to see CrossRP come back, or have a system in place for the game that we can use as a community of people. Thank you Blizzard, here’s to hoping you make the right call.

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305

The issue is that Blizzard has already expressed their favor with Cross RP and especially how the developer actively fights against its use in any sort of harassing behavior. It’s turned off in Battlegrounds, only usable on RP realms, etc.

This isn’t Blizzard covertly destroying it, it’s them going against their prior word, assuming the addon-breaking was intentional.

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306

If CrossRP substantially increases cross-faction harassment, then so does BTag friends, the emote system, communities, whispers…

CrossRP is entirely opt-in and disabled during PvP environments. A player who is theoretically being harassed by cross-faction chat can just turn the addon off or connect to a different channel. It’s no different than saying “if someone is harassing you over BTag messages, then unfriend them.”

Truthfully, harassing someone with CrossRP is more of a hassle than just creating an alt to whisper them.

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307

Okay, so essentially blocking off CrossRP to only the “RP realms” and cut off the roleplayers who do not have characters on RP realms, but they still use addons like TRP3/MRP/XRP for profiling their characters.

This… has my support less and less.

308

If some can’t have it, no one should? Is that what you’re going with?

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309

If it’s using the BattleNet social API then, or at least is accessible from it’s UI you can still message players through it without being on their friendslist, and that’s an error on Blizzard’s part.

Yes.

310

Communities.

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311

To understand someone cross-faction you both have to enable the addon and then join a Community that you can easily be booted from if you’re a creep or an idiot. It’s a two-stage opt-in feature. It’s not like you can just roll a level 1 alt and run into Stormwind to start shouting at someone.

I’ve been very, very fortunate to have never been harassed in-game to any notable extent, but I do know several people who have, and it’s always been from the same faction, on both sides. Horde and Alliance don’t mean anything when you’re a bully or an immature dingus.

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312

Lucky them being harassed from the same faction.

313

Faction mounts need to be deleted. Horde players can’t get them and that’s unfair.

314

Supporting.

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315

Now you’re grasping at straws.

316

I feel like you missed the point completely there.

317

Let’s not.

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318

If some can’t have it, no one should.

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319

The point of RP vs Normal servers is to distinguish “HEY IF YOU WANNA RP GO TO THESE SERVERS INDICATED”. I don’t see how its an issue if something that is made for roleplayers that it should be available only to rp enabled servers.

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320

Let’s not forget what this post is actually for friends. It’s to try to get Blizzard to see what we’re wanting. We want to try to keep things as civil as possible. Not that anyone has done anything to officially deem it uncivil as of this moment, but its just a heads up.

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321

Again, you’re grasping at straws.

People speak of the roleplaying community as an ‘inclusive’ group of players that love newcomers, but if someone wants to roleplay on Lightning Hoof, or Firetree and would like to use your addon, they’re out of luck because they’re not playing exclusively on a roleplay realm.

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322

CrossRP uses BNet communities to function. You don’t need to friend anyone to join those, but they are still inherently opt-in.

If the addon already uses infrastructure that Blizzard has in place - and has given us tools to moderate our experience in and to report bad actors we encounter - then we can’t say it will substantially increase harassment any more than any other given social feature.

While I’m sympathetic to the resistance at designating who can do what on which server, if restricting it to RP servers means the difference between the addon getting to exist and it not getting to exist, it’s not really fair to say that the rest of the community should similarly be out of luck because someone wants to RP on Illidan instead of a designated RP realm.

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323

I read through your post and I want to say they’re all valid concerns, but here’s a few things in favor of the legitimacy of Cross RP’s approach.

Firstly, the Babelfish addon was very “dirty” in how it worked. For example, when someone wants to send a translated message, they need to spam public text with a bunch of nonsense -that can be translated on the other side by interpreting each nonsensical word as a distinct “value.” You can actually still do this, but I’d expect the user to get flagged for spamming. :smile:

Secondly, just before BFA was released, Blizzard updated their user agreements, basically removing the rule that says you can’t talk with the opposite faction.

Thirdly, the functionality has essentially been added, by Blizzard, to talk across factions. People join a Blizzard Group together, and they can talk across factions, simple as that. This is even what Ion told players they can do when someone brought up cross-faction during Blizzcon 2017’s Q&A. All Cross RP does is makes that a little more convenient. (Okay, a lot more convenient, by copying the text and making it appear like the enemy is simply using /say and /e.)

And finally, it can’t really be abused by malicious people, due to the fact that there is a bit of a setup process. Intentionally it’s designed to not be super automatic, because I know that the devs want to preserve their faction divide mechanic in some shape or form. You have to join the same community with other players and press “connect” to begin a roleplay session.

That being said, while you can’t really be malicious with Cross RP, I suspect that it’s more likely this functionality was broken due to them trying to address some other malicious behavior with the communities (as outlined in the OP).

12 Likes