Obligatory contribution:
Extend b-tag into /s /em /w. They already have “cross faction” chat in place, they just need to allow it. If you are in combat zones or WarMode, have it auto-disable.
Then, those that want to cross-faction communicate can, and have control over it thereby not causing an increase in tickets.
That wouldn’t help events like Tournament of Ages.
When you think about it, it’s your fault for having fun against Blizzard’s parameters. You violated their faction fantasy.
No, but it would be a start. A step at a time. Blizzard took out sharding for us, they might be willing to open it up at certain times.
They’ve listened to the RP community in the past though.
They disabled sharding VERY quickly on RP realms, when we said it was a problem.
I think giving constructive feedback can be a very good thing. It might not always work, but if we don’t even bother fighting the battle because we just give up… well. There’s 0 chance, isn’t there? Maybe if we fight, there’s 1% chance or something. But it’s better than none.
There’s a difference between a shared language between one race on each side, and unfettered communication between all races on both sides.
That’s not even true anymore. This year at ToA we had massive sharding problems. I contacted a GM about it and they straight up said that Sharding is a thing on all servers and in all areas (Except for outland, Something about Sharding being introduced after BC and all the zones before it not being effected. Cata added sharding to everything except Outland.) So we don’t even have that.
I got banished to some random realm along with a few dozen others a few times. It sucked.
Sharding is less of a problem than the fact that members of groups or raids can be sent to different shards.
I tried RPing with my guild in Dalaran in Legion, but we kept having to relocate to the Wrath version of Dalaran to avoid getting split up.
Still it brings home the fact that there is sharding on RP realms. I keep on seeing people bringing up the fact that “Well they got rid of sharding on rp realms”. It’s just not true, at least not anymore.
ToA is just one event, I’ve seen so many people get Thanos snapped into other Realms even during smaller events.
It wasn’t unfettered though, but instead used the cross faction communities feature to facilitate communication.
A random human and a random orc wouldn’t be able to talk unless both were members of the same community, which was a Blizzard sanctioned feature. CrossRP simply took community communications and reformatted it so that it appeared that you spoke the same language.
Chances are, this addon was just a causality of war. I’m willing to bet that another addon was causing trouble using the communities feature, so Blizzard disabled addon access to it. Which sucks for properly written addons, but it is just a consequence of how disabling a part of the API works.
Once you jumped through the hoops, it may as well have been unfettered. It’s evident that it was an unintended function of the Communities chat systems and was rightfully closed.
Did this happen when everyone is in the same group?
I’ve seen it happen both to groups and to stray people who were not in groups.
I’m not surprised that it happens to ungrouped people. Speaking pragmatically, I get why sharding is necessary for high-traffic areas, but it should at least keep grouped units in the same shard.
What’s stopping the same degree of communication coming from using the community feature by itself?
This addon only reorganized already existing cross faction communication put in place by Blizzard in an immersive manner.
It’s no more unfettered than the community system already in place.
In ToA I was pulling people into MG from WRA hordeside. A big chunk of us got zooped onto some realm like I said. Spooky.
Here’s the thing: Goblins and Gnomes of the Gnomish Illidari Forces are still working to rid distant planets of masterless demons who are up to no good.
You taller races have apparently stopped vigilance and gone back to fighting each other, as taller races are wont to do.
Without the ability to communicate, we could lose the fight and be right back where we were before, fighting the Burning Legion on Azeroth again.
And it would be all your fault.
I remember a time big bad Bajheera came to WrA with an Alliance raid. We had a massive standing Horde defense force in Undercity waiting for them.
When the groups clashed, the sharding totally screwed us. Horde bodies were getting snapped into different shards, instead of the Alliance group, so our numbers were cut immediately to about half as many, and when those characters died the remaining half trickled back in, and were easy pickings.
it really sucked.
You quite literally had to consent to join the same channel as the people you wanted to talk to.