When and why did Blizzard do away with /follow in battlegrounds?

I haven't played since the end of TBC boxing back in the day with AHK. I don't know why Blizz changed the follow rule in BGs, I imagine somebody went crying to blizzard that some dirty boxer pwned them 1 vs 5 or more but that kind of stuff was always world pvp not in BGs. In BGs and arenas it was the only place you could be sure of a more fair outcome, I never really liked the one vs 5 type world pvp videos, uhh I mean come on your 5 Shamans just focus fired that lone Warrior out questing or gathering to shreds, i mean big surprise there. But I am genuinely distressed that Blizzard made this decision. Anyone think we could get them to add it back? While it is not what I consider a ton of money to box for my hobby it does take alot of time and I don't want to waste it on something I'm not going to have as much fun with. Same goes for the boxing software itself. I used to use AHK but graduated to Keyclone at the end. I don't think IsBoxer was out at the time so I only started using it when I started boxing again. I love the power of IsBoxer but I also found this program called Lidc that seems pretty good so far and so I bought a license. I kept having some trouble with IsBoxer dialogue buttons appearing under the taskbar whenever I had the WoW client open and needed to change some of IsBoxer's settings. Anyway it is pretty good to be boxing again, sorry to rant some there. Anyway since I obviously wasn't around when Blizz made the decision to remove /follow from BGs for multiboxers I hope you guys gave them hell for making such a dumb decision. Cheers.

Follow was disabled in battlegrounds in March 2013 as an anti-botting measure (or at least generally understood as such.) If it was a move to eliminate multiboxing from battlegrounds, this was never explicitly stated by anyone at Blizzard. A lot of multiboxers quit the game at that time, myself included. Plenty of us are making a comeback for classic though, and its strange that the game is actually fun again.

As EatCarbS said, it was an anti-botting measure as they changed from static pathing to /follow to make themselves harder to detect.

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Originally Posted by EaTCarbS

Follow was disabled in battlegrounds in March 2013 as an anti-botting measure (or at least generally understood as such.) If it was a move to eliminate multiboxing from battlegrounds, this was never explicitly stated by anyone at Blizzard. A lot of multiboxers quit the game at that time, myself included. Plenty of us are making a comeback for classic though, and its strange that the game is actually fun again.

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i distinctly remember a multiboxer making a thread bitching about the change on the general forum, and getting a direct response from a high up blue (not one of the forum drones) about them not caring about affecting multiboxers with this change, since they were ruining other players experience.

found it:


https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/...age=6#post-104



but was wrong about the forum drone thing, it was bashiok. but tbh, he was much closer to the dev team and clearly expressed what they thought about multiboxing.

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Originally Posted by CMKCot

i distinctly remember a multiboxer making a thread bitching about the change on the general forum, and getting a direct response from a high up blue (not one of the forum drones) about them not caring about affecting multiboxers with this change, since they were ruining other players experience.

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One guy's opinion is not the same as an official statement of: "We're changing follow because of multiboxers."

i never said that, i said they didn't care the change affected multiboxers fact backed by that blue post. its just not supported gameplay, and its not "some guys opinion" it was bashiok, the king forum drone and he did keep closely in touch with the dev team.

this:

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We did consider those who use /follow for other reasons, including multiboxing, before making the change. Multiboxing in battlegrounds has been a long-fought battle within the community, as the effect of multiboxers in those situations is considered unfavorable by many. When we were looking to make a change to disable a command used by bots, which would benefit the game as a whole, we were ok with it also resulting in multiboxing in battlegrounds also going away due to the poor experience it can create for others.

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quite clearly indicates that the "we" is the dev team. and that the perception of unfairness of multiboxing weighted MUCH more than any of the tired old boxer rationalizations like "but.. you can do the same with hardware...." their decision not to care about the changes effects on boxing wasn't about the technicalities of multiboxing, it was based on its negative perception.

same reason they disable follow on wPVP now... they just don't want boxers pvping, because it is an unfair advantage.



wouldn't expect it to be enabled on classic either, even if the "realistic classic experience" had /follow and boxers ruining bgs, they didn't have IWT. IWT makes a ton of boxing teams completely OP, and goes against the #nochanges mantra.

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Originally Posted by CMKCot

same reason they disable follow on wPVP now... they just don't want boxers pvping, because it is an unfair advantage.

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Unfortunately, a small group of players can ruin it for many,

24+ multiboxes in wPVP or an entire team that takes over a battleground and ruins the experience for others.

And after we got tokens to paid for our playing time and looting has changed. 2x4 farming has become the new thing and we've have seen a massive explosion of multiboxing players, who is only multiboxing for gold.

And now we see zone disturbing ban.

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Originally Posted by Tin

And now we see zone disturbing ban.

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To be fair, that really isn't new, it's just more visible lately due to the A) number of people that semi-AFK farm hyperspawns, B) certain streamers, and C) the modern powerful PCs that let you run a lot more than 5 accounts. That said, we used to raid alliance cities and zones on Magtheridon back when that was the main multiboxer server and we never got banned for "zone disruption" or "PVPing while multiboxing" or what not.

There's little reason to multibox retail anymore. Anything we took an interest in has either been stripped from us or made so impossible to enjoy that none of it feels enjoyable anymore.

The very little enjoyment I got from retail was spinning up new teams, leveling them and doing mythic0 dungeons. Just get them to ilvl 400 and start a new team because anything after 400ilvl was not enjoyable.

I say 400ilvl because at that point you need to push M+, do some PvP or raid to hit 450ilvl. I don't enjoy any of those things in BFA. I feel at this time if 9.x doesn't make a serious return to Classic principles at the very least tuning down the instanced e-sport direction they're going I'm done with the game. I tried dual boxing it again but it just isn't the same. I have zero interest in soloing the game again and joining other people. I very much dislike the endgame experience being so isolated and elitist at the top. Along with being obligated to them. It's just not for me.

Now dual boxing might be fine for some. It definitely makes leveling in retail a lot better. You can even dual box the M0 dungeons easily and some M+ but you will likely be sitting one of them for high M+ keys and/or raiding. So if that works for you I'd just do that. Beyond dual boxing I see no point. You can make 10 accounts to farm mats but you could also just buy tokens and buy mats with gold. If you want raid gear and transmogs it might be the best justification for having 8 accounts active on your bnet license. Other than that I am hard pressed to find a reason to multibox BFA.