Depends on the type of model it is, a lot of the time. Anime egirl/eboy-styled avatars tend to be some of the worst offenders (often kitbashers who don’t know any better), while furry avatars tend to be really well optimized most of the time.
If you aim for medium, that’s generally sufficient.
It certainly doesn’t subtract from the experience, that’s for sure.
Google dropping support for XMPP is what put it one foot in the grave. They abused the protocol to gain the lion’s share of users for Google Talk, and then cut off any resistance that remained. It exists still, technically, but when’s the last time you heard about or used it? I only know about it because EVE Online players used it for large group text communication before Discord became a thing.
XMPP still exists in the same way that critically endangered animals still exist: barely and by the adamant will of some dedicated few.
As a note for Jerboa users: the above link may instantly crash the app. At least, it does for me.
I have a friend that I did some EVE work for once. Nothing dangerous or weird, just making tactical warpgate bookmarks; two above, two below, and one just off-grid for every gate in every system in a region. Paid well for something that could be done in a cheap frigate, just tedious as hell. They would then copy the bookmarks and sell them in packs on a per-region basis.
They eventually had ALL of the tactical bookmarks for all of nullsec. As it turns out, that many individual items is problematic for the game to display in a single inventory. Not because of RAM or anything, but the game itself would refuse to show an inventory with too many items and lock you out of accessing anything. I forget the exact reason but it wouldn’t crash the game or anything. The number is also exceptionally high, to the point you have to be trying to hit it.
Because EVE Online players are bastards, they also found a way to weaponize it. Luckily, it was considered an unintended exploit so I was one of few (willing) victims to it. To this day, they have to warn people buying their complete bookmark packs that they can unintentionally brick their inventory unless they follow the directions they give to work around it.