Hmn, fair. I dunno if WoWs past of mostly-open-world RP would stand up through that. I mean, we do have ‘Bubble RP’ as a thing already, so it’s not too alien, I guess? Hm.
Having played before they arrived, it did definitely impact things alot. Swtor had essentially 3 big hits against public roleplay.
Strongholds(I love them) did impact it quite a bit as it became more convenient. But there was still some casual RP in the world, just alot less. Mega-Servers and removal of The Progenitor over Malgus outright destroyed it entirely however.
And then the Eternal Throne/Fallen Empire storyline was a final nail in the coffin for roleplay that wasn’t with your guild or their established allies, as everyone has different lore now.
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Heck, I’d forgotten about the server merge. Maybe I just blanked that protectively haha 
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The server merge also reduced the shard limit and created more instanced versions. So places like DK went from having maybe 200 people in the same shard to 40-50, with about 10 seperate sharded instances instead.
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The biggest, and most important difference, is that all of ESO’s world is phased as is which played a role in that particular development of the community, but the overall increasingly bubbled / ‘in group’ nature of RP in MMOs as a whole is something I’ve seen grow in WoW over the past 5 or so years as well, so personally I’d fear it’d lead to similar results with housing in WoW (…although it’d be very fun and cool, regardless!)
Regarding the thread’s main topic; TRP taking forever to load anyone’s profiles will only further increase this, and quite rapidly so, I reckon
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It will also probably hurt people with lower-end computers. And WoW has usually been good with letting potatoes run it, which also made it popular among roleplayers due to ease of access.
Anyone who has concerns, you are encouraged to share them on this PTR discussion thread, where they might get more attention from Blizzard.
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I haven’t read any posts yet but if this change goes live, wouldn’t a system like raider-io work instead?
All profiles are updated once a day by updating the addon. It’s not perfect though.
A key detail that’s missing from this is the fact that the One Tamriel update sharded up the game world, making public overworld RP impossible to find. There was a brief period of time of about 3-4 months after Homestead but before One Tamriel in the summer where open world RP existed in tandem with player housing to support it, which resulted in a big boom in RP and new RP venues.
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I already mentioned this!
Homestead released in 2017, One Tamriel in 2014
Homstead was Q1 of 2017, One Tamriel was summer of 2017. It brought down the faction barrier instances in the overworld, but the resulting lag of having every single player in the megaserver in one phase resulted in them having to shard up the world.
2014 was ESO launch.
I had to look it up, but no, One Tamriel was released in 2016. There was no period between the release of Homestead and One Tamriel, because One Tamriel released first.
I distinctly remember this because I started RPing in ESO after One Tamriel, but before any housing was added to the game. Housing added cool new RP venues, but it also caused the community to bubble up more and more in my experience.
I’m not an addon man so I don’t know the limitations but wouldn’t it technically be solved if TRP just became more cache heavy?
Your client detects a mouseover which is tied to an object with a character name, the addon then first searches its own cache to see if it can pull something up tied to the character name before it even tries to use the server messaging which is now bottlenecked and only for characters that don’t exist in the cache will it check over server messaging. At that point the throttling becomes less of an issue because its not needed as often.
I doubt they’ll throttle mouseover detection so I feel like the question is do addons need the special chat channels to detect and read out mouseovers and the data tied to that.
This way the only time it’ll message the server is when it has to update an existing profile in the cache or add a new profile to the cache.
idk maybe I’m just takling nonsense here but it makes sense in my head
This is a totally valid question! And the answer is kinda, TRP already caches way more data than all other addons combined. Where this becomes especially problematic is when meeting new people or making small updates to your currently (like health in duels etc.)
My little code monkey brain is already dreaming up workarounds and such, but they’ll still be worse than not having the limits and it’ll be hell for big profiles.
Imagine needing to skim down your profile because it legitimately takes upwards of 10 minutes to send it to 1 person
Thankfully I keep mine often to a short physical appearance, I don’t like to spoil or be spoiled.
I reckon if this isn’t going to be changed back the most important feature of TRP wouldn’t so much be the profiles tho, but moreso the ability to recognize other people who run the addon and therefor you can safely say they are RPers.
If somehow that feature could be prioritized in trying to find a new solution to keep TRP as a valid option for RPers I think you’re off to a good start, even if the end solution will be worse for profiles, that much is already pretty much guaranteed because of the throttling of addon messages
This is a heavy deep fantasy game with extensive possibilities. There are things glances can create hooks for that you cannot “see”. Auras and senses are a prime example. I’ve gotten so much walkup interaction personally from the unique magical aura my dragonsworn has.
Then there are custom weapons/armors/Items/clothing that one cannot see but have been created/obtained through extensive roleplaying experience.
AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ABOUT THE ART… I know of quite a few who have spent a small fortune on art of their characters that they want to display to their fellow roleplayers and not have to rely on a community discord for such.
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Random/walk-up RP is the heart that keeps roleplay going. For many people it is the only credible way to find new contacts and to get involved. It’s also what creates immersion.
Anything that makes this harder, from mechanics that actively prohibit RP (sharding) to content that strongly promotes inaccessible and exclusive bubble RP (player housing) or the low key removal of RP addons has a detrimental effect on the longevity of the RP community.
I am not sure if it saves other people’s profiles on our computers?
Oh, and, GW2 does have a similar addon to TRP, but it works via an overlay and an external program. I’m not sure if that may work.
It does. it caches all profiles for a few days. Anyone you add a relationship to will be kept forever.
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It’s also one of the things that make WoW’s RP scene stand out among the sea of MMORPGs. Others have already detailed some reasons why it’s less prevalent in games like ESO, XIV etc., and while each of these have their own RP scene (XIV’s in particular is flourishing), the majority of interactions have to either be planned out in advance or happen behind closed doors (i.e. player housing), which just leads to the world itself not being populated nearly as much as it is in WoW.
Even AD has taken a hit to this with the reduced player population, but the fact it still exists (and not only in hubs like Stromgarde or Stormwind, but in the surrounding zones too) is a huge point in WoW’s favour.
Not having immediate TRP loading probably won’t kill it entirely, but just being able to naturally filter past somebody that’s marked OOC and not having to spend X amount of time for them to whisper ”sorry I’m not IC” is pretty massive. I’ve made a habit of approaching people regardless if I see them in an area with RPers, but does everyone have the patience for that? And should they really have to?
As someone that very much enjoys random encounters and try to go out of my way to spawn them, I definitely hope this change doesn’t get implemented, or that they at least do something to compensate.
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I personally prefer to keep TRP profiles minimal (and I prefer to read minimal ones as well), but it really can’t be overstated what a difference it makes for RP to be able to customize your character beyond the character creator - even if only through text.
Back in the days when I wasn’t able to change my class on MRP my common blacksmith got unpromptedly called paladin IC on a daily basis.
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