It’s definitely made regular interactions (aka literally everything that isn’t RP-PVP) way better and more convenient. You could still do cross-faction RP prior to the potion thanks to stuff like b.net chats (until they removed the group function of that) or through b.net whispers to sort of translate what the other faction was saying, but man was it way more complicated and a lot slower.
Only really think it’s impacted RP-PvP negatively, as I prefer the old/non-emote way of doing it. Not too interested in actually writing the combat stuff myself and it’s occasionally a bit weird when your opponent wants to engage in a philosophical debate on the moral implications of your actions while you’re locking swords/slinging fireballs. It’s still good to have as an option for those that like it, though.
It definately has made things a whole lot more interesting. I remember during the Drums of War campaign an old guildmate tried to mislead horde forces through different impressions.
If you set it up you absolutely can, but the majority of RP-PvP is handled with emotes now so there isn’t much interest. You can’t exactly join an emote battle and then not emote.
Most of what has kept me interested in RP has been because of this in the last few years. I could trawl the old forum archives for more, but without this, and the precursor form of CrossRP, I know many people wouldn’t be playing.
Illidari guilds can exist cross-faction, Argent guilds exist, Dalaran has a thriving, regular RP community, Booty Bay can also have the sensible cross-faction pirate theme. There’s really nothing negative this gave in my opinion.
Some ongoing/upcoming examples of what couldn’t exist in the form they do (or at all) without them as well.
Yeah it’s made things better, but let’s not get it twisted - CrossRP was fine outside of being able to be used in a way that Blizzard didn’t want it to be used, and if Elixir of Tongues hadn’t been sitting in the games code since vanilla I doubt Blizzard would’ve bothered to create an alternative solution, and just broken our toy and walked off. The only reason we have it is because it was win-win for Blizzard with absolutely zero effort beyond slapping it onto a vendor and calling it a day.
I’m a big supporter of this item.
When it came out it was a huge sigh of relief ‘’looks like Blizzard cares about us after all, the roleplay community that is’’ because they, correct me if I’m wrong, at the time had issues with an addon who did just the same.
It makes it special that it comes from Blizzard themselves, a much needed handout after years of working around the system to… well… have tea with your alliance friend.
As a player I felt appreciated.
It enables people to unproblematically interact across factions, it makes complete sense in a roleplay context. The world is not all black and white even if some may wish it so, just look at the interaction between NPC’s
The point is that it’s nothing new, people have wanted this for years and at last we got it.
It was rewarding. I recall the community flourishing, and it’s still going!
The potion opens many doors.
I do understand some may enjoy faction wars, however it seems to be a thing of the past.
