Right, I agree with you on the aspect of the sharding issue, that was a very good thing. I just feel that blizzard ignores a lot of what RPers have to say.
I have only had the pleasure of using this add-on once, and was completely delighted by it. If anything, Iâd like to see its features further developed and officially addopted and supported by Blizzard.
That being said, letâs please keep wild speculation and accusations against Blizzard to a minimum. Sensationalist tactics only spread misinformation and make things messy. I donât like messy.
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First Light has always been a neutral entity, and Cross RP gave us a level of support that the core game never did. Just as PvE and PvP activities are elevated through addons that are now nearly essential, like DBM and WeakAuras, RP is enhanced by addons like CrossRP or TRP.
I understand that Blizzard is dedicated to the faction war - a relic of a game series made over twenty years ago - but the reality is that the for the core fans who have stuck with Blizzard through 14 years of WarcraftâŠweâve cultivated close friendships and relationships with people on both sides. All weâre asking is that we be allowed to continue RPing with those friends without senseless barriers being thrown up by the development team.
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CrossRP has done nothing but strengthen the community by allowing cross-faction rp. It allowed for a great deal of freedom within the rp communities between horde and alliance and the other servers since we were now able to see each otherâs profiles.
Even at this point the old reasonings for the faction barriers doesnât really exist anymore or make much lore sense. As it was said before Pandaren, Demon Hunters, and now Void Elves all have ways around the faction chat barriers. So why doesnât the other races that should be able to communicate with each other canât? Like the Draenei and the Orcs? Or a whole language for undead, covering both Forsaken and Death Knights? Blizzard could make things so much more interesting by acknowledging these things or just allowing the Addon to have functionality so that those who want this can be a part of it.
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Adding my support to this incredibly important RP mod.
There are precious few examples where the benefits of a feature extend beyond the core users of that feature. CrossRP is definitely one of the mods that offers such a feature. It has improved the quality of the gaming experience for thousands of players, even if they donât directly use the mod, by connecting players with others and keeping them engaged in the World of Warcraftâs in-game story and gameplay content. Without CrossRP, many players will simply seek outside avenues to engage in RP content with other players.
To use an example, imagine a player on an RP server walking by gathering of 20, 30, or even 100+ players, of both factions, engaging each other in the game world. With a feature like CrossRP, events like that are more possible, more accessible, and more engaging for players. The player walking by has dozens of opportunities to meet and engage with other players, and keep them invested in the game, that they would not otherwise have.
Remove that feature, and instead of players seeking or building gatherings in-game, they will instead opt to use other programs and venues as communication channels - say, Discord - in order to maintain that communication. In other words, they will not be playing WoW any more, they will be playing Discord.
The most important thing about any multiplayer or massively-multiplayer game are the people you play with. Mods like CrossRP allow players to build connections to other players. Those social networks between players are the backbone that keeps games like World of Warcraft alive, engaging, and healthy. Blizzard and the World of Warcraft community would be well-served to pay attention to this issue and address it as soon as they can.
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I mean, I could think of a lot of crazy and really bad ways that one could try to get around this â the most crazy being some kind of peer-to-peer sharing via btag friends, belves, velves, demon hunters, and pandarens across the same server dumping everything into a series of standard channels â buuuuut that would be noticeably even worse compared to this, and it would still be trivial for any supposed âexploitsâ to happen.
Note: I have yet to hear anyone make a valid case that there are exploits that take advantage of the capability of addons to listen to community chat channels. Maybe there are, but thus far just heard any number of uninformed guesses that only declare the speakerâs technical ignorance.
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Maybe someone needs to flag them on Twitter, or one of the customer reps?
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Today is my final for Software Engineering 1, a class which was a primer to software engineering and our industry. One of the things Iâve taken away from the class is that sometimes code changes have unintended consequences.
An operating system deleting files, stinky code in need of refactoring accidentally revealing othersâ real names, random features breaking, etc.
Iâm pretty sure that changes to the API protection status are having unintended consequences like what happened to Cross RP. The truth is we need more add-on support in the guild/community frames not less. We need more choices, not less.
I am someone with a perceptual processing disorder which makes certain activities like reading hard. Particularly when blue and white are involved. Being unable to change bnet chat colors away from blue (I couldnât find a place to do so before) is actually detrimental to me and is an accessibility issue.
Engineers solve problems. I urge Blizzardâs software development and engineering team to consider the impact of these changes and to search for a better, more novel approach that is beneficial not detrimental to the player base and their fun. The fun they pay for. The fun they will seek elsewhere.
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Upheart this, everyone. (Itâs the first comment on the matter I found.)
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It doesnât matter how many hoops the add-on makes you jump through. Broad cross-faction communication runs counter to a major pillar of this gameâs design philosophy, except for very specific examples where Blizzard has decided that a concession to that philosophy is reasonable.
Besides, the fact that it has the functionality of disabling itself means the add-on has, had, or can have the ability to be enabled and I donât think Blizzard thinks it can allow that.
Itâs okay to be bummed out that it may be more difficult to do cross-faction events, but everyone knows what Blizzardâs stance on cross-faction communication has always been, so I donât see how anyone thought that this sword of Damocles wasnât going to drop.
I do not see how this âblizzardâs stance on cross faction communication has always beenâ is true. I mean, they have the battle.net friends accessibility in game and you can talk to anyone no matter what faction through there, but it is through a separate screen instead of in the character chat.
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Not even a separate chat screen. You can move text in Battlenet group into a chat channel in game.
Dayon 
just didnât take the time to educate himself on the subject before expressing his take.
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And before anyone says âWell why not just do that? Why does crossrp even matter if you can just have your community chat show up in game.â
My answer is this.
You try keeping up with a chat that has 1000 people in it. (Tournament of Ages)
Or even 100 (Month end Brawl, Any of the number of markets)
Even 20 can be a hassle. (Stonewind Storytelling circle.)
All Events that happen (Some very often.) All made possible by cross rp.
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I actually answered a lot of these questions way up in post 3 when I talked about proximity.
If people actually read the first couple posts they wouldnât keep asking these same questions.
Here is a quote for the lazy.
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I know friend I remember. Big post though and a lot of people who donât read. Figured a couple explanations sprinkled in around might catch an eye. <3
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While the first three of the conditions are arbitrary things set in place by the addon just to further respect the gameplay of Warcraft and lessen the load on the servers, that last condition is part of the game itself.
The problem I see with having cross-faction chat is the threat to the game experience when people see Horde and Alliance characters cooperating in public. However, this can already be done now, by cross-faction friends going out in the world or even a competitive environment, being in the same Battlenet group together, and then chatting in there while griefing.
I still donât see this change as something that specifically targets Cross RP because its userbase was a relatively small community. I think this change rather targets more ambitious threats, such as external sources feeding the game data from a community (especially if that data is received through compensated methods), or other privacy concerns, and I urge people to keep that in mind when commenting until someone with authority can clarify or propose solutions.
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Yeah. I know. Itâs a little ironic but not really seeing roleplayers fail at reading. Youâd think people who spend all their RP time reading would have third grade reading comprehension skills.
I guess some people are just narcissists and feel that their assumptions are more correct than facts.
And besides, if blocking cross-faction communication is (for the sake of argument) Blizzardâs design philosophy, that can and needs to change. It serves absolutely no purpose and inhibits players from having fun.
Edit: Remember, folks, please try to keep this thread constructive.
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I wouldnât be surprised at all if the functionality of the add-on allowed for what you described as âmore ambitious threatsâ and it had to be closed for that reason.
Iâm also saying that since the add-on allowed for a level of broad communication that Blizzard is publicly not in favor of, I think this ultimately a scenario where itâs breaking is âbit of column a, bit of column bâ.
It hasnât been their philosophy for a while.
Pandaren, mages, demon hunters, blood elves and void elves, battletag, battlenet groups, the forums not being faction exclusive, NPCs communicating across faction, and the whole story narrative having positive and negative interactions across faction lines in official literature.