Essentially, communication speed for addons that relay information between players (such as TRP3) is going to be throttled in 10.2.7, making TRP3 profiles load orders of magnitude more slowly than before. What once took a couple of seconds will take over a minute, meaning that it might take over an hour to load all of the profiles of a large group of roleplayers.
If enough of a stink is made about this, there’s a chance that Blizzard might roll back this change, or it could just be some screwed-up code in the PTR.
But if this becomes a reality on live servers, then we’ll need to get used to roleplaying without being able to rely on TRP3 as a method of providing other players with information about our characters. It’ll be a step back towards the old days of “what you see is what you get,” which some people will undoubtedly see as a good thing, but might render some other character concepts effectively unplayable or a little frustrating to play.
This thread mostly just exists to let people know, but I might as well end the opening post with a few questions.
How do you expect this change will impact you?
Do you consider this a change for the better or the worse?
Can you think of any methods of working around this change?
Anyone who has concerns, you are encouraged to share them on this PTR discussion thread, where they might get more attention from Blizzard.
EDIT: At this point, the throttling has been identified as an unintended issue that will be fixed before 10.2.7 leaves PTR. Catastrophe averted.
TRP makes the world incredibly more alive and provides plenty of input for RP. If you don’t like what you see on certain characters, nobody forces to act upon it. But at this point a WoW without TRP immediately loses a big pillar of what makes it a good MMORPG to roleplay in compared to its competitors.
Not fun news waking up to. The addon support is indeed what gives WoW an edge over other MMOs when it comes to RP. TRP is what enables you to walk up to total strangers in Stormwind, see what they are about, and start roleplaying. This will send us back to using external communities like Discord to find and set up scenes, and external websites to check on the character outside the in-game avatar.
This will absolutely make the game not worth it for me. I just came back to the end of Dragonflight because it looked like the game had gone to a slightly better direction since I left it almost 3 years ago, but this will send me back to FFXIV or ESO.
We need to make a lot of noise about this and hope they see and care enough to revert this mistake they’re making. Roleplayers, while a minority, are still a good chunk of their most loyal customers, holding fast during their worst of expansions.
Perhaps they could go where other MMOs don’t and implement a similar mechanic in game? Fat chance! Just too bad I bought the next expansion before this came up.
Other games can cope without RP addons fine and having a built in expectation that someone must see your external add-on is very gatekeeping for what is meant to be a creative medium that uses… and bear with me now…
What a nice trolly classic poster… Imagination is good, but some things you can’t have on a character model. The character’s injuries, appearance quirks the customizations don’t support, even the state of the equipment, we’ll lose all that and more with TRP if it happens. And indeed, it would make everyone’s life much, much worse. Even when you’ve a more or less constant circle of friends it’d not be the easiest to play, not to mention gathering in large groups or using stashes in the events.
All in all, I don’t think this will impact my RP much, most of my characters are “what you see is what you get” already anyways.
With some finer details worked into the appearance tabs, which I could just as easily write down in an emotrle should the need arise.
Ofcourse this will also mean I have to remeber stuff like names, now. Which could be awesome to RP out, because I suck at remebering names and in RP it will be no different.
And lots not forget the people who wear X ingame, but its actually Y. I will deffo get into trouble with remebering that!
Eitherway, I think it adds oppertunities, making people a tighterknit community now that you actually have to remeber certain stuff about the characters you RP with. But I also see how it can add problems down the road
It’s absolutely fine on other games, maybe advocate for better customization?
In large groups it won’t matter too much given how a lot of times to boils down to 1-to-1s anyhow, and if you need to convey all the details of your character that differ from your in-game model, I’m starting to question why you made that decision in the first place.
This is similar behaviour to how Mare shills operate in FF14.
The loss of TRP will be SO detrimental to RP in so many ways, to all RP. It’s how RPers communicate information and has been for years so to lose that is devastating.
I’m willing to bet that already established guild settings will adapt far better than other guilds but walk ups and public hub RP are going to STRUGGLE. As are new players coming to the server who have NO idea what is going on.
the best course of action is simply to make your voice heard on this issue. If you can, raise a stink and get mad because getting mad is the easiest way to make Blizzard change things.
Personally, if RP get’s gimped because of this change, I can’t see any reason for me to keep my sub. The RP is what makes this game for me, I don’t want to pay 40 bucks an expac plus 10 a month for a game that I can’t feel my characters living in.
Would a “simpler” addon like MRP help in regards to these changes? It’s been a while since I used it, but there’s a lot less on there in comparison to TRP.
Hell, I’d take just being able to show my character name and that’s it at this point if these changes go through
Because things happen? Combat trauma, all kinds of magical effects, the possibilities are endless. And if you think that looking for a specific emote describing these conditions is easier or better than having them out in the TRP to see at once just because the other games don’t have the tools of convenience, that’s quite a mistake.
I use MRP. Never understood why people prefer TRP over MRP. The amount of things you can write down in TRP confuses me endlessly, and I love the simplicity of MRP compared to it.
Just a single tab to click on, thats it.
That aside, I feel like some people are doomposting, big time. Yea its gonna suck if we’re not able to use those addons in a moments notice anymore, but people woll manage. People have always managed. And maybe this will force Blizzard to add in their own spin of TRP(which will be half baked and suck, but you never know )
My understanding is no. From reading other summaries of the issue it’s not a matter of the length/size of the ‘message’ that’s being sent from Player A’s profile->Server->Player B’s game, but just the number of them, so ‘simple’ profiles should be as negatively impacted as complex ones.
I like to think WoW roleplayers are some of the most loyal, and it surprises me and it doesn’t actually surprise me that Blizzard will always try to find a way to test that to its limit.
I hope a level-headed individual at Blizzard picks this up and puts up a storm big enough to warrant a more satisfactory solution, but I keep my reservations.
It’s sad but the roleplay scene isn’t that big in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a primary thing Blizzard have ever focused on. Probably not even a tertiary. We only got the language potion after internet outrage after Cross-RP got bulldozed IIRC.
It’s an awkward spot because Blizzard are probably justified in doing this, seeing as it’s going to affect OTHER addons/mods too that are unrelated to RP. The question is, will Blizzard backdown? Because it wont be just backing down for the roleplayer. It’ll be backing down to certain weakauras and omniCD. Among a raft of other mods that run off of this system.
If the Website Formerly Known as Twitter is correct, you probably have mythic raiders exploiting the game to thank. Now, let’s ask the question again. Are Blizzard likely going to back down to that for the sake of roleplayers? Alas. I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
They couldn’t kill RP with the terrible cluster that was SL so I suppose they have to more directly go after the addons, huh?
Most of my characters have also been the ‘what you see is what you get’, but not all, and even with straight forward characters it’s nice to put something in there.
Without TRP, how will you even know if someone is standing in, or near an RP area but is actually just OOC? The OOC tag alone is so handy to avoid situations like that.
Terrible change, but assuming Blizzard will even care about what the roleplayers say to this probably extremely optimistic, to say the least.
I think that whether or not anyone believes this will kill the RP community, it will objectively make our experience worse. So it’s worth it to raise a stink and make sure that Blizzard hears us.
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