TRP3-Apocalypse

[Kirsy-wyrmrest-accord (Kirsy)]

Welp, looks like Blizz is about to seriously break TRP, Musician, Details, Bagnon and other add ons with some kind of throttling:

Once Again RP Players Get Kicked To The Curb

it’s looking like in 10.2.7 PTR the addon comms (something primarily used for addons like the insanely popular addon TRP3 used by Roleplayers) is going to be severely rate-limited server-side, making them effectively unusable. This is going to disproportionately affect the RP community and Blizzard should have communicated this much earlier in the development cycle. The author of TRP3 has stated they have been looking for a solution but as of right now, there won’t be one come patch day which …

Apparently RP addons are doomed-ish?

@keyboardturn Ellie on twitter, dataminer and all around observant gal, has very recently spoken up on some crazy new server-side apocalypse scenario for RP addons and others, to be patched soon into all versions of WoW. I can’t post a link and I don’t want to summarize or copy-paste her words as a layman on the subject, but y’all might want to look into that if it impacts you! Edit: Murlocholmes added a link two responses down!

We might wanna go hit up these threads and complain Also, back up your TRPs and save them somewhere, just in case.

[Symeont-wyrmrest-accord]

But, but I just started a thing.

[Leileran-wyrmrest-accord (Leileran)]

To give a friendly TLDR for people who don’t want to go through twitter threads and the like. Forgive me for the overly simplistic explanation, i’m not the techy sorts, but as I understand it:

The way that Addons send messages server-side is getting throttled, limiting how much info they can send in a period of time. As @Ghostopheles on twitter describes it, 10 small bundles get throttled the same amount as compared to 10 large bundles. What does that mean, practically, for a profile? In a setting, 1 on 1 with no other players, on the PTR it takes a good 60-90 seconds for a profile to load. Well, that’s not terrible, but things get messy when you are in a more crowded area (Like, say, a city with other players).

When you add other players, all simultaneously pinging another players profile, the data ends up backed up and most likely it will take you upwards of 20 minutes to get a single profile loaded to look at.

This will also interfere with addons like Musician (which sort of needs snappier speeds to wrangle audio files). It ALSO will likely interfere with addons that aren’t RP related that need to ‘talk’ to other bits of data (like, say, Altaholic, Bagnon, sharing weak aura strings, etc).

So, this isn’t like ‘oh no blizzard is tactically nuking the addons’ but it is a scenario that will essentially brick any usefulness that TRP3 has for public walk-up RP.

[Symeont-wyrmrest-accord]

Hmm, so damage the usefulness of the addons now, so that way when Blizzard installs their in-game versions of these things, people will ditch the addons?

[Topsail-wyrmrest-accord (Topsail)]

What kind of requirements would we be looking at if these addons started storing data locally, and referenced libraries based on a downloaded file?

I’m not a coder and don’t know anything about writing addons or how they work, but if these tools are in serious danger with no recourse for being salvaged, we need to act fast to maintain our communities in game.

Can we create a database which players submit their profiles to, and everyone has to download a weekly update or something to store everyone’s stuff in their local files? I’d worry about size but if it’s all text, who knows?

Alternatively, we could use find-rp websites and all have a profile on there, and addons could simple be providing a link to that page. Not anywhere near as convenient but better than nothing.

[Kirsy-wyrmrest-accord (Kirsy)]

I don’t think it’s intentional. I don’t think Blizz has any plans of replacing all of its add ons with in-game functionality created by them. That would be a huge task. I think they changed functionality and borked something.

[Yran-wyrmrest-accord]

There are likely to be alternatives to the current method of data exchange for these addons. I know that, years ago, the MRP addons for RP used a custom chat channel that was typically muted as its way of exchanging profile data. Of course, profiles had to be a lot smaller back then as a consequence, because exchanging data through the chat buffer isn’t efficient at all. Worst-case we might have to punt TRP extended or slim down profiles to make sure they load more quickly.

[Skyva-wyrmrest-accord]

@Yran-wyrmrest-accord

Worst-case we might have to punt TRP extended or slim down profiles to make sure they load more quickly.

This makes the most sense of anything I’ve seen in the thread about this “apocalypse” on PTR forum. I can only imagine the strain that some of the huge TRP3 profiles put on a server.

Cheers.

[Kirsy-wyrmrest-accord (Kirsy)]

We just got a blue post that this is a bug, not a feature. It’s gonna be corrected.

…whew.

I’m still glad we all said something. Blizz needs to know when we notice an issue and they need to know we want a response. GG everyone…I now return you to your regularly scheduled forum banter.

[Norman-wyrmrest-accord]

That went rather well. Hopefully “in a future build” isn’t like…in 2030.

[Arázi-wyrmrest-accord]

Yeah there’s no way this becomes a feature lol. Major raiding guilds rely on addons that use plenty of comms bandwidth, so ruining those would ruin a lot. Mythic Dungeon Tools, WeakAuras- tons of stuff would break and nobody would be happy.

[Leileran-wyrmrest-accord (Leileran)]

Thank goodness

[Noslferatu-wyrmrest-accord (Noslferatu)]

What’s next to raise up to their awareness?

[Rizzyfitz-wyrmrest-accord]

I never could get any of my profiles to save using TRP-3.