So here I am sitting in the middle of a roleplay server-wide event, now on this server there are far more Alliance than Horde. Now long story short a third faction in this event was made composing of races from both sides, but it wasn't until now that I realised how much of a pain in the arse this language barrier is.
I'd really like to talk with friends and allies on the opposite faction, but because the experiment with forsaken knowing common in the beta was abused by PvP and general knobheads no Horde races can officially speak common in gameplay.
Why should the barrier be dropped?
- There is no lore to support such, every race knows common in lore and there has very rarely been any Horde member that can't speak it to my knowledge.
- It makes communication a pain if you happen to have a group of friends on the other side, you can't just talk and go but instead have to add one another to Real ID or Battletag to talk as opposed to just talking and going on the fly. (Minor gripe in fairness)
- In large gatherings such as the event above, unless EVERYONE is in the same conversation it is very easy to miss out on information and it's just plain frustrating when the "enemy" faction are talking rapidly but you can't have one poor soul translate EVERYTHING through Real ID.
- No other MMORPG has one (Again, to my knowledge), Rift, Guild Wars 2 and other such games do NOT have a language barrier blocking any and all communication between enemy teams or factions. Inability to party up but last I checked Rift didn't have a language barrier, but I may be recalling wrong.