WoW and Autofollow

[shockbeta]

Xzin Edit: This seems to have been resolved.

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So I just discovered upon logging in and using autofollow that you know "walk" to the persons location you're following. If said location is close. So it takes upto 3 seconds before you're following companions can cast any spells that aren't instant.. I figure Blizz did this for that exact reason, but even lacking that I find it annoying to walk to someone to follow me if they're close. lol.

Also with this new "walking follow" thing. I'm able to break autofollow. I use a mage to run around wiht, have a druid following in cat form. mage blinks twice and breaks autofollow since the new "Walking follow" doesn't allow you to run when close to them. So you stay a good distance away an dbreak autofollow when mage blinks. Thanks blizz for breaking it so good:p

[Buruan]

I am not sure i understand what you mean?

What exactly changed with autofollow?

[Yarddog]

Yep, I experienced this too on patch day. I'm not a happy camper.

[Steph]

Oha, that does not sound good.
I will have to look at how bad this is myself tonight.

[Xzin]

Please update me on this undocumented(?) change.

[Yarddog]

Basically when you put a character on autofollow he will walk towards your main instead of running. But if you take off running with your main before he reaches it, he WILL, at least, start running in order to keep up.

Where I found it most annoying so far with my 3 character group was charging with my warrior and having the mage and priest slowly walk to catch up to the warrior before they can start using their "non-instant" spells. So it takes longer before the mage can start winding up a fireball.

Of course I can always just hit my "stop-follow" key for the mage and priest at the same time I charge and go ahead and wind up the fireball immediately. Often I do this anyway when fighting something that I don't want to be close to with my squishies (like a fire breather).

Its probably not a show-stopper but certainly an annoyance and requires some adjustments in play style. As the OP reported, there are some weird things with blink, so there might be some other strange/annoying things that can happen because of this change.

I'll be experimenting more with it tonight to see what's going on. I'm not sure yet of the distance between the main and follower that he starts walking. It might be that he will run a short distance when first put on autofollow but then start walking when he reaches some minimum distance to the main.

I can't think of any other reason for this change other than a direct shot at multiboxers.

[Buruan]

Thanks for clarifying this YD.

Seems to me they boned something in the code.
Maybe we should report it on their forums.

[zoll]

I noticed this problem as well, but it definately feels like a bug.

Was running with my warrior as my "main" and a backup paladin for heals.

Whenever my warrior charged, the pala would "walk" behind, catching up. The difference is that I couldn't toggle the paladins walk/run at all.

In addition to that problem, I kept getting disconnected on the account I wasn't focusing on. It only took around 10-20 seconds of inactivity on the un-focused account to disconnect.. Very odd. I never had that problem prior to this patch.

[Steph]

Zoll,

when you mention focussed and unfocussed accounts, I guess you mean you are running two or more clients on the same machine?

Does anyone have this problem when using one PC per account?

[zoll]

Zoll,

when you mention focussed and unfocussed accounts, I guess you mean you are running two or more clients on the same machine?

Does anyone have this problem when using one PC per account?

Ah yes, that is correct. I'm running two accounts on one comp. Worked absolutely flawlessly prior to the patch.

[Yarddog]

I do my "three-boxing" actually with just two computers, so my support team is running in two windows on the second computer. Had no problem with it last night and there were times I would have had an unfocused window for more than 10-20 seconds, probably even for a minute or more, at least when traveling.

But I was only on those toons for less than an hour when the server was restarted and I switched to another server for a single box session with some RL friends.

I'll be watching to see if I have any disconnect problems tonight due to a window being unfocused and report any problems here.

[zoll]

Just thought of something... There might be a slight chance that I'm experiencing the disconnects due to a change of resolution.

Used to run @ 1280x960 whereas I'm now running in 1680x1050 (x2 windows that is).

Might just be my system that's screwing up at the higher resolution. Haven't had a chance to try again yet though.

[Gallo]

I suggest that everyone post something in the Bugs forum on Wow.com and also in the General Forum. I've seen several posts so far... the dual boxing community is larger than I thought.

[shockbeta]

Did some testing in the wee hours of the morning prior to going to work.. here's what I found.

First, if you follow someone up a winding staircase... you're almost gauranteed to make the follower fall. Secondly, When you first autofollow you actually start the run animation then tween to walk animation(looks horrid, I'd say as bad as the stutter run before this "fix").

Next deserved it's own paragraph... I managed to bug the autofollow. I followed my mage. Walked all the way upto her. Broke autofollow and low and behold I walked. I hit my walk/run toggle a few times... I still walked. I stopped moving forward and moved backwards.. still walked. I strafed, jumped just about every movement you could do. I still walked. I shifted to cat and I could run again. Weird crap I tell ya.

Another thing I detest with the new autofollow... If you follow someone and stop with them. In order to run anywhere, you need to first break autofollow, then press your movement key... So forward... forward now you are moving forward... Double tap to move is annoying.

And this is just me, The speed at which you walk upto someone from the distance you do is ungodly slow. I'd do that maybe if I was acting out bullet time or something. An average stride takes less then 1 second, the game makes it over 1 second. I think that alone makes you look like 1) you have a stick up your @$$ cause you think you're the sh!t. 2)Just idiotic.

BTW here's my post I put up in general forum.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=106001252&sid=1

If anyone feels like adding there two cents or can point us to a better post to add our complaints to do so. That way we can make it known how autofollow now blows. Most people who play one character won't even realize autofollow for a while. Only us multiboxers understand autofollow and know how it can effect gameplay to us, and to players in general. As I pointed out about following up stairs, and breaking autofollow with blink. I'm sure there are more things that make this go wrong. I'm sure whoever thought of this thought, hey this would be a cool feature to show. It's more realistic. But realism like this doesn't need to be in a game. I'm sure adding this autofollow code was way more important then adding/fixing any of the other countless things they could have.

[shockbeta]

Okay with a little more testing, the impact is minimal at most for multiboxing. The biggest thing to not do is do any kind of speedy range jumper. I.e. charging, blinking, any others. As was posted previously just need to change your style a little bit. Get in range. break autofollow. charge/blink in. drag back to your group. hit your autofollow key. Still annoying that they put it in. I'll detest it for enternity I swear. So much that I'm already trying to test a macro that will move forward and spam /f. The only problem I'm having right now is that sometimes it gets stuck in walking mode until you /f and break it again. Also trying to figure out how long to run it, and what to fire it. Think g15 can do a toggle macro that will work for it. Probably won't work out though... Need to bind forward to another key, then autofollow to a key then I can just spam those two keys in the macro. may work after all...

[Ceromus]

I have 5 computers in my house connected to the same wow server. When I follow character 1 character 1 and character 4 will start lagging something awful. When I follow character 5 no one disconnects but character 1 lags a bit. When I use just character 1 2 and 3 and follow character 1 nothing happens no one lags no one disconnects.

I can't figure out what the problem is but it didn't happen before this last patch. Its very disappointing.

[Bunny]

I have had a similar problem:
I had my five toons in UC and wanted to move them to SM. Every time i follow my main guy with the other four I whould get really high ping times from the server and ultimately get disconnected. I thought it was a problem of my server (EU patching was yesterday) so i created 5 little gnomes on another server (cute, aren' they?) and ran them to IF without a problem.
Kind of scares me to hear that someone has similar problems... let's see if it works tonight...
Bunny (Durotan EU)

[Steph]

I can confirm that I saw the following characters /walk up to the followed character.
BUT! This appears to happen only one time. Afterwards the characters move basically as they should.

I did not 'loose' any of them while riding about on epic mounts through shattrath or flying with my 60% gryhons.
I did not encounter any negative effects while doing the new 'kill 20 ogres' quests and was basically allways moving and then casting.

I tested this yesterday after midnight on my EU server, so after peak time. This may be a latency issue or a cosmetic change about the follow mechanics.

[Yarddog]

Last night with my two characters following my main I only experienced the walk problem some of the time and not as severely as a couple of days ago. But I was only able to get on for a few minutes of play so I can't say anything other than it was different, and not as bad, but still there in some form.

Perhaps this is just some bug that's being ironed out and not intended new behavior of the program. One can only hope, LOL.

[Yarddog]

I played some more last night. The "problem" was just as bad as ever. Again, not a show stopper, but extremely annoying. There were some times while moving around that my following characters got stuck on something because they were lagging behind a bit.

I was playing a rogue as my main and he was mostly stealthing around, so he never really got out ahead of the followers that much anyway.

[Nocturne]

I'm going to have to lean towards the latency side of this issue.

The night of the patch I had some issues with follow and two disconnects. Wednesday wasn't so bad, and running SM didn't seem a whole lot different other than a hang up or two. Last night almost seemed normal in most scenarios, there is still the initial "walk" animation/lag, but otherwise I have not had to modify my gameplay.

I suspect the core of the issue to be more in line with server lag, network congestion, patching, etc than any conspiracy theory plot by Blizzard to nerf multi-boxers.

[trigemina]

I am also experiencing this walking problem... For my style of play it's not that big of a deal, but it can get annoying. Are there / commands like "/run" or "/nofollow". It would be nice to stick something like this in my macros.

I have also noticed that my mage, who is primarily casting Arcane Missiles right now, is no longer following my main after combat.

[shockbeta]

Okay here's the deal with follow / walking. I've played a lot the last couple days and here is my best guess at how it's handled.

A = Being followed, B=follower...

if A is standing still or dazed or any other slowing effect, B will proceed to walk to A from within a certain range. If A is able to run then B will run as well. It doesn't matter what way or if you're actually moving.. I.e. run into a wall and as long as you're doing the run animation B will run to you. As I stated before this is minimal to the effect "IF" A and B both move at the same speed. If A is able to move faster or any kind of fast movement(blink,charge) B will never gain that distance back. Thus causing when A to stop for B to walk to A instead of running up as in the past.

I have time and time again got stuck walking after breaking autofollow, I'm not sure why or how I do it, but it happens and I have to refollow then break it again before I'm able to run. When B breaks autofollow from a stand still, B will walk then speed upto run speed, instead of just flat out straight to run as before.

Follow works as it did before the patch in the water. I tested with a druid in sea form, and a mage blinking ahead. Druid would catch right back up to mage, and do the run/stop/run as before when follower was able to move faster then followee.

This will not effect casual players as they will not notice the effect we do. You're able to follow as prepatch as long as you don't charge,blink or any other kind of fast speed to get ahead of the followee. So you can still travel up spirals and the such as before.

The perfect test for this is to have A mount up and B stay on foot. Now run around awhile just testing different motions and scenarios, you'll quickly learn how it can effect and change the play style we need to use now.

As I said earlier, if everyone moves the same speed then you will not notice hardly any of this.

[Xzin]

For what its worth.... any channeled spell (arcane missiles, etc) and blink have ALWAYS broken /follow.

[cubbs80]

In the event no one has checked it, I'll link a post Ceromus made in the tech support forum:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=106671383&postId=1065318485&sid=1#0

I have to say that I haven't played in a while due to some system issues, so I haven't been able to test anything or actually see what's going on. It looks as though Blizz may have stealth nerfed /follow to stop some exploits.

[thrillhaus]

Anyone heard anymore on this? And now I'm starting to get the random disconnects, but always on the same computer... very strange (and only while dual boxing)

[Xzin]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=106002299&sid=1

Here is another multi paged topic. I would strongly urge us all to report our findings here.

[Adronson]

I'm at work and just upgraded my laptop install. Patch notes say:

- World of Warcraft Client Patch 2.1.2
...
- Players will no longer slow down to walking speed when closely
following another player.

I won't be able to test this out for about eight hours. If anyone can experiment with the new patch and post results, I'd love to hear if disconnects have stopped.

[jabowah]

As soon as the servers come up I'll check. Hopefully now my shaman can keep up when my warrior charges 8)

[Nyalria]

A funny minor thing I fully realized while 2 boxing today involving follow is that if you jump while on follow you keep following normally... unless you're swimming. It breaks follow if you jump while swimming. Resulted in my 2nd character drowning because she was left at the bottom of the lake haha whoops.

[Xzin]

Don't you swim up when you jump?

[Runiat]

Don't you swim up when you jump?
That's why you stop following.

Not that it's ever been a problem for me.. I usually pull my chars to the first boss in Gnomer a bunch of times once they can enter (the staff).

[Mannyman]

There was a bug where the character on follow would disconnect if you stopped moving, and he was still "on follow". I don't get that problem anymore, maybe they fixed that.

However, the stat "increasing memory usage" goes sky high when I'm in a fight, even with one mob. As soon as combat is over, it drops back to normal.

Not sure if this has anything to do with the same issue. Anyone else getting this?

[Runiat]

Yeah that's a Mob Info or Damage Meter -type addon, and depending on your definition of "sky high" it's either bugged like hell or perfectly normal.

Well, anything tracking damage done and taken.

[Mannyman]

Good tip:) Will give it a try, thx.