not really…it doesnt work in bgs
has to be opted in every time you log in
and is tied to blizzard communities…
really hard to exploit tht.
so far it’s all hypothetical. or using a old addon tht existed in a complete diffrent wow era.
That’s a different addon, then. There’s similarly nothing stopping anyone from coding an addon from scratch without the blocks in it, but that hypothetical addon isn’t the one this thread is about.
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Someone would have to rewrite their own version of the addon and purposefully remove all of the barriers put in place. That’s honestly not something I would call easy, especially considering the investment-to-return ratio would have to warrant someone being really out of their right mind to build up to exploit something.
Even without the addon, you need to accept a battle-tag request in order to experience abuse from someone on the opposite faction or be in the same battle-net community as them to receive that sort of negative environment; all of that is STILL opt-in and Cross RP’s purpose was literally to streamline those elements for more fluid and larger-scale cross-faction RP.
Locking the API didn’t move the hurdle for those situations.
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I attended ToA this year, and I honestly couldn’t imagine such a large scale event without Cross RP. It was an incredible experience and one that everyone had a lot of fun with. The only other times I attended roleplay events with Alliance and Horde present, it always had to be singled down to a one on one basis, people had to friend each other, then the not so much fun time of whisper rp began.
One of the nights before ToA, the addon was suggested, a community constructed, and pretty soon a bunch of us were hanging out at the tournament grounds just having fun with the addon. We were reading each other’s profiles, talking in /say and /yell, and all in all reveling in the elegant and yet simple addon that the wonderful Tammy had created. The best part was all the implications. It would be super simple to rp with each other!
Please bring it back.
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Open up lua editor
Edit some lines of code.
Remove the blocks, including setting the opt-in to always on.
Repackage, and use in manners that the author didn’t originally intend the addon to perform.
i’m loose on coding. but even i know, this would do nothing, cause you would still have to link up through bnet…
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It’s easy enough to remove the blocks, but they still have to join the same community as the person they want to “harass.” And even then, Cross RP will try to block any messages on the other end from invalid sources, so unless the “attacker” gets the victim to download their modded version, it’s going to be quite difficult. Even then? If someone actually manages a form of abuse, they can just be banned from the community.
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None of which most people would bother to do.
And even then, if someone did, they’d have to get whoever they’re trying to harass to friend them and invite them into a Community.
A pretty absurd chain of unlikely events would have to occur to open up the possibility of harassment you’re so concerned about.
And even then, the person can be quickly and easily ousted/blocked.
This is a problem that only exists in your imagination.
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And potentially Blizzard’s if they’re looking at the big picture instead of the small picture the users look at.
Ya, along with what Tammya’s already mentioned. They’d need to get whoever they wanna bother to get their tampered with version of the addon.
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I’m not trying to deride but I genuinely am curious, what malicious activities do you think someone could commit to if they were to accomplish those things?
Gameplay wise, there’s not much that I can really think of. In-game battle-net communities already blur the line for that and if you understand how the addon works, like you said, you should understand that this addon really just “connected the dots” that Blizzard already put in place.
Harassment, Gameplay exploits, PvP win exchanging, and most other elements that come to mind are already doable without this tool.
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If Blizzard’s developers are worried about someone taking an addon, rewriting substantial parts of it, repackaging it under a similar name, and then social engineering people to download it so malicious actors can maybe harass them, then we need to have a broader discussion with them about the point of security.
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Blizzard sometimes, doesn’t like players doing their work for them, but right now I am delving into some other communities that shall not be named to see if there has been a culprit that has abused this functionality that CrossRP uses.
Again, I’m not for cross-faction communication addons for reasons that I’ve explained and you can refer to them in post 303.
There’s little that this one can do to warrant a disconnect/shutdown by Blizzard, but to other communities.
That dynamic you are willfully mischaracterizing as “the big picture” would preclude anything that can potentially be used to harass other players from existing.
So say goodbye to any form of communication with anyone in the game, PvP, PvE, and pretty much all social aspects of the video game… all things which are opt-in, and all things which can be a source of harassment and anti-social behavior.
Adding my support to this. Cross rp was a god send for the RP community and this needs to be fixed.
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Conflict is the root of storytelling. WIthout conflict, there is no story.
For over a decade, we’ve been roleplaying in a world whose core story is a tale about a conflict between two factions. Yet we were entirely unable to interact with the other faction in a roleplaying setting, unable to weave that conflict into our personal stories beyond a surface influence without taking the roleplay out of the world of Warcraft and into IM clients and forums. The workarounds were all either awkward or limited in some way-- for example, restrained to a specific class or race.
Cross RP changed that in amazing ways. At last, we could depict and experience the conflict at the heart of Warcraft in RP as we always wanted to-- by allowing our characters to interact with the other faction beyond a handful of limited /emotes. We could depict anger and hatred… or a desire for reconciliation and peace (like that time that Blaine gave Anduin his hammer. Or when Varian decided to spare Garrosh. …gee, thanks for WoD, Varian.)
And now it’s gone.
Please, Blizzard, find a way to bring it back, or take down the language barrier on RP realms. The language barrier doesn’t exist in lore, anyway.
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Your concern is fairly valid - that someone else could theoretically expand upon what I built to create a complete destruction of the faction barrier (as well as generate a massive amount of server traffic), but there is one thing that would sort of prevent that: communities are limited to 1000 players.
This in itself is a huge detriment to any mass-scale exploiting that could cause gameplay concerns, because the exploit would basically be limited to 1000 players or less, and any upstarts would fizzle out quickly with frustration.
As it is right now, since the audience is fairly small, everyone interested in cross-faction RP can fit within the same community, so that allows ease of use (there was probably less than 50 active players per night, big events aside). This wasn’t actually my intended purpose during development, to have everyone in one community. I aimed for Cross RP to be more event-oriented. That way it further lessens the potential for abuse, as players have an extra step of consent before they can interact with each other.
And again, thank you for the input and discussion! Sorry about any hostility in here; some people are just upset about this sudden change. If you have any questions about how the addon worked, I’ll be glad to answer with commentary about how it was designed. ![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
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I’m sorry but at this point you are going WAY out of your way to try and create a malicious intent for the addon.
Its fine that you don’t like it, but so far the thread has been kinda proving that the majority of people that use it don’t use them for malicious reasons.
If someone is truly malicious, the existence of this addon, or nonexistence of this addon, will not stop them.
Just because a tiny handful of people are dirtbags, does not invalidate the vastly positive majority.
Its like saying nobody should eat peanut butter because some people have a nut allergy. (an extreme example, but a valid one)
Its also like saying that the whisper function should not exist because some people will make an alt to whisper harassment to other players, something I myself have experienced multiple times to the point I got an entire new account and switched servers AND faction to get away from it.
If a person truly wants to be malicious, nothing will stop them. That does not mean any possible route they may used should be cut off while everyone else can play nice.
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Yeah, but what I’m asking is for something a little bit more specific to the possible faults that could go on through this addon. Most things that I can understand are more subjective opinions on the nature of someone preferring to maintain a “If it’s red, it’s dead” mentality.
The way you illustrate this makes it seem like you don’t like the idea of these addons because of how the relative impact that happens when Blizzard went out of their way to put down a previous attempt at Cross RP’s goal (albeit through different means).
I’m going to reiterate my above point; I don’t think there’s anything that could be done with this addon or even something else of its kind without any internal barriers, that could be so malicious as to really warrant the API being locked and thereby disabled.
In the same vein, I don’t think there’s anything to say it should be disliked about it unless you’re already embittered by a previously negative experiene.
If that’s the case then I genuinely am sorry you didn’t get to intimately interact with the addon because it provided a very positive environment for me and evidently hundreds of other people during the last 5-ish months of its existence.
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